The Grandest Game

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Maybe I made a deal with the devil.” “I doubt you have anything he wants.” “Everyone wants something from me.”

Best-case scenario, Knox and Brady would perform an exorcism on the ghosts of their past and hug it out, all while Gigi brilliantly and single-handedly solved their riddle.

It was so obvious now that she’d seen it. She’d thought that she’d hit the motherlode, but in a game that was meant to be competitive—and fair—why would there be a motherlode?

“I have spent my entire life being fine when I wasn’t. I know the price. I know what it’s like to bear that price with every cell in your body. It isn’t worth it, Lyra.”

There was something about the way he looked at her, something so unexpectedly raw,

Grayson bent to block out the rest of the world from her view. “Give me your eyes, sweetheart.”

Savannah didn’t say his name often, but when she did, she made it count.

Lyra thought about the cost of being fine, of running—and running and running and running—away from every person who might have realized that she wasn’t, of keeping the whole damn world at arm’s length.

“It is less about whether I like it than whether I do it.” She gave him one of those very Savannah Grayson looks, icy and sure. “I do not. People make mistakes. If you rely on others, their mistakes become yours.”

“Working as a team—becoming a team—requires cooperation,” Avery continued. “It requires a certain amount of openness. In some cases, it requires risk.”

The way she said his name was like a knife slid between ribs.

Rohan took the knife in his hand and wondered if she was punishing herself for feeling—or him for making her feel.

“I bet,” Savannah said, calmly picking up the rose, “that no stranger has ever told you to smile.” She paused. “Perhaps I’m angry because women like me don’t get to be angry.”

Grayson’s response was so immediate and so absolute that Lyra heard it like a slamming door.

Minutes and hours had lost all meaning.

“You never stopped dancing,” Grayson said behind her. “Every time you move, you dance.” “I do not.” Arguing with him was the easiest thing in the world. “It’s there in the way you hold your head, like there’s music the rest of us can’t hear.” Grayson Hawthorne was a natural debater. “Every step you take, every twist, every turn, every pissed-off whirl.” He could have stopped there and won. He didn’t. “The way you stand,” he continued mercilessly, “one foot slightly in front of the other. The way you lift your heels off the ground when you’re deep in thought, like it’s everything you can do not to rise all the way to the tips of your toes. The spread of your fingers when your hands hang loose by your side. The lines of your body when you stretch those hands overhead.”

What did her tragedy matter to him? What did she matter?

“just enough challenge in your tone. But the body never lies, love.”

“Perhaps old age is making me paranoid.” Odette paused. “Or perhaps it’s what I see when I look at the two of you. The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.

“I’ve always had a certain fascination for broken things.” “Because you like to fix them?” Savannah’s tone was scathing. “Because I like to scavenge them for parts.” Rohan looked up at her. “I don’t believe in fixing things or people unless I need them whole.” “I would not advise trying to fix me,” Savannah told him. “I am under no misapprehension that you need fixing.”

Savannah smiled—not a socialite’s smile, not a wolfish or roguish one. No, her smile was ecstasy and victory and sharp around the edges, and Rohan drank it in like wine.

And each time he looked up, Lyra felt his gaze as a physical thing.

“Love is a strange and wild beast,” the old woman said. “It’s a gift and a comfort and a curse. Remember that.” She looked toward Grayson. “Both of you.”

The toll of burying Alice was etched into his face and body for everyone to see.

There was something there besides the way she looked at Grayson and the way Grayson looked right back at her, something raw and maybe even desperate.

She touched him, and the power of that touch exploded through Rohan’s body like fireworks, like fire, like the snapping of bone.

Baring your soul in a tone that made it clear you don’t even know how to flinch.

As a rule, when I can no longer deny that I am hurting, I push people away. I find a way to hurt more.” “To prove you can,” Lyra said, thinking of how many times she’d run until she hit and surpassed the point of pain. “To prove that no matter how much you hurt, you’ll survive.”