Page 31 of Glorious Rivals

“A useful thing,” Grayson said crisply.“A reputation.What, I wonder, is yours?”

“I’m the scholar.”

“What kind of game are you playing, scholar?”

Seemingly unbothered, Brady pressed his watch to the ledger.“The same game as everyone else.”

“I doubt that very much.”Grayson had always excelled at fighting calm with calm.“Tell me that you don’t have a sponsor, Mr.Daniels,” Grayson suggested, just enough silk in his tone.“Tell me that the only game you’re playing is one with clues.”

Brady told him nothing and walked to the compartment he’d just revealed, removing from it the charm and the bracelet.He listened to the recorded hint, and it took him all of two seconds to drop his key into the liquid.

A scholar, indeed—either that, or he’d been spying on them all along.

Once Brady had reclaimed his key and skimmed his gaze over the highlighted letters, he finally turned his attention and calm-waters gaze back to Grayson.“I’m not your enemy.Or hers.”Brady shifted pensive brown eyes to Lyra.Grayson marked the exact moment that the scholar saw the calla lily in Lyra’s hand.His gaze lingered on it at least a second and a half longer than it should have.

“You were saying?”Lyra replied.

“Is that a part of the game?”Brady queried.

“No,” Grayson said.“It most certainly is not.”He’d played enough Hawthorne games to be sure of that.“Tell me you don’t know where that flower came from.”

“I don’t know where that flower came from.”Brady weathered Grayson’s stare for three seconds, then looked away and adjusted his glasses.“I just know that it’s probably for me.”

Lyra stepped past Grayson, and it took every ounce of control Grayson had not to pull her back and put himself between her and Brady Daniels once more.

“Why would this be for you?”Lyra asked Brady, brandishing the lily.

The scholar’s left hand reached for his jacket pocket.Grayson prepared to move should the need arise, but all Brady withdrew from his pocket was a photograph.“I have a theory,” Brady told Lyra, “that everyone is playing this game for a reason.”

“Like twenty-six million dollars?”Lyra said dryly.

“There are a lot of things a person could do with twenty-six million dollars,” Brady agreed.He held the photograph out to Lyra, and after a moment, she took it.

“The girl in the photograph,” Brady told Lyra quietly.“Her name is Calla.She would be in her twenties now.”

Calla, like the lily, Grayson registered, but he read more into Brady’s statement than just that.Language had a way of betraying people—her nameisbut shewould be.Part present tense, part conditional.Whoever the girl in that photograph was, Brady hadn’t seen her in years.

Whoever thisCallawas, Brady Daniels was not entirely certain she was still alive.

“Calla?”Lyra looked down at the flower in her hand.“What was her last name?”

“Does it matter?”Brady asked.

Grayson’s brain was wired to look for connections, to hunt for layers hidden from ordinary minds.A third party had put Lyra in this game, but Avery had chosen Brady as a player herself.If there was any connection whatsoever between the girl in Brady’s photograph and the flower Lyra’s father had given her the night he died, that was a very big coincidence.

Too big.

“If that flower was meant for you”—Grayson aimed those words at Brady with the same precision with which he’d learned to throw knives—“where did it come from?”

Who left it on that rock?

Brady gave the barest of shrugs.“My money’s on Rohan.I get the sense that the Brit trades in knowledge and subterfuge, don’t you?”

Grayson recognized redirection when he heard it.Brady hadn’t been lying before, but he was now.

“You have a sponsor,” Grayson said.

“I am not your enemy.”Brady addressed that sentiment to Lyra this time instead of Grayson.“I’m not anyone’s enemy.I’m a doctoral student.I’m interested in how the artifacts we interact withform us into the people we are.I like books.I like stars.I like numbers.And I am playing this game for a very good reason.”