Page 103 of Glorious Rivals

Gigi offered Eve her sweetest smile.“Full disclosure: I am still planning your doom.”

“I’m still planning his.”Eve eyed Slate.“It evens out.”

Eve rounded to the back of the chair to work on his wrists, and Gigi approached from the front, squatting down in front of Slate and attacking the bindings on his ankles.Gigi didn’t have nails as sharp as Eve’s—but shedidhave teeth.

The duct tape made a satisfying sound as it tore, and within seconds, thanks to Eve’s nails and Gigi’s teeth, Slate was free.As he stood, Gigi popped back to her feet.

Dark eyes found hers.“Are you all right?”

To prove—to herself as much as to him—that she was, Gigi forced a grin.“Teeth like a beaver,” she told him.

“Not what I was talking about,” Slate replied, and then he turned.“Eve?”

Eve tossed her hair, which Gigi figured meant about the samething as her own grin.“I’m fine,” Eve said.“I gave our visitor what she wanted, and she left.”

“What exactly did you give her?”Slate shot alookat Eve.

“Lyra,” Gigi realized belatedly.“You gave herLyra.”

Gigi had no idea what anything Eve had said meant—omega,lilies,Alice Hawthorne—but Gigididknow what throwing someone under the bus sounded like.She also knew how her brother looked at Lyra Kane.She knew that a target on Lyra was as good as a target on Grayson himself.

First Savannah.Now Lyra and Grayson.

“No time like the present,” Gigi said, and that was all the warning Eve got.Nobody expected a Tasmanian devil pounce—pretty much ever.As flying tackles went, it was a thing of beauty.

Slate gave Gigi a second or two, then hauled her off Eve.“Nicely executed.”

“Thank you,” Gigi replied.“But I’m not done yet.”

“Easy there, sunshine.”

Eve picked herself up off the ground.It took Gigi a second to realize that Eve was holding something in her hand.It looked like a coin of some sort but unlike any that Gigi had ever seen.

“How many of these is it going to take,” Eve asked Slate, “to make you mine again?”

Mine.Gigi’s brain latched on to that word.Hers.

“It was never just about the seals for me,” Slate said, “and I think you know that.”Something unspoken passed between him and Eve, the intensity in his eyes matched by a slight narrowing of hers.

Slate broke eye contact first, turning to Gigi.“And…false.”

It took Gigi’s scrambled mind a second or two to think back to the last True or False question she’d asked him.This was MattiasSlater, telling her that he and Eve didnothave the kind of relationship that involved making out.

Before Gigi could make heads or tails of that, the wall to her left parted.

Gigi whirled.Slate slid in front of her and Eve as the wall closed behind a woman who wore not a spot of red.She was tall and willowy in a way that should have made her look slight but didn’t, her skin very nearly ebony—luminescent,flawless.Thick black braids of varying sizes streamed down her back.

She was one of the most beautiful, self-possessed, arresting women that Gigi had ever seen—and Slate slammed her back against the wall.

“Are you quite finished?”The woman’s voice was familiar, but her accent was much stronger now.The first woman in red.The one who wasplayacting.The one who used us to bait the other.

“You’re…” Gigi thought of about a thousand different descriptors that would have applied.“British?”

“When it suits me,” the woman replied.“Zella,” she introduced herself, like Slate didn’t have her pinned to a wall.“Charmed.Now, I’m going to need at least one of you to tell me, word for word, what the Watcher said to you.”

Chapter 74

LYRA