Page 35 of Glorious Rivals

“Stop,” Gigi told herself.“Breathe.”She’d daydreamed her way through worse situations than this.She needed to go to a happy place, and then she could strategize, but for some reason, as she tried to conjure up that happy place, instead of bunnies and ice cream, what she got was Brady.

Full lips, strong jaw, velvety brown eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses.Gigi thought for the briefest of moments about chaos theory, about closed systems, about a deep, gentle, river-flowing kind of voice.

“A voice thatlied,” Gigi reminded herself.At least Slate was open about what he was: fourteen notches in a leather sheath, fourteen horrible things he’d done.Gigi would take that over someone who’d gone out of his way tomake hertrust him any day—not that either of them were up fortakingper se.And regardless, Gigi had bigger things to worry about at the moment than her pitiable romantic history and perpetually unfortunate taste in men.

Savannahknew.Precisely what Eve had told her about their father’s death was unclear, but Gigi was all too aware that her sister didn’t see the world with many of shades of gray.There was excellence, and there was failure.There was power and powerlessness.

There was truth, and there were lies.

Savannah had always been their father’s favorite, the one he’d pushed, the one whomattered.All Gigi had ever been expected to do was smile, and all she’d wanted, coming into the Grandest Game, was to prove to herself that she was capable ofmore.

Instead, she’d been bamboozled by a recovering physicist, gotten herself recklessly and needlessly kidnapped, and abjectly failed to see what was right before her eyes.Savannah.She’d been different.For months, Savannah had been different, and now Gigi knew why.

Holding her sister’s image in her mind, she took a deep breath.“Enough with the wallowing.I’m getting out of here.”Gigi put some pep in her words.“Step one: free my wrists.”

She rolled up into a sitting position, then stood.Gigi had no idea what direction she was facing, but in a round room with almost nothing in it, that didn’t matter.She hopped.Then hopped again.And again.Eventually, Gigi hopped into a wall.

“That could have gone smoother,” she admitted with a wince.Her head wound throbbed slightly, but Gigi persevered, turning her back to the wall so that she could feel it with her bound hands.The stones that made up the lighthouse walls were uneven, crumbling in some places, jagged in others.

Jaggedwas exactly what Gigi was looking for.

It took her three minutes to find a rock that suited her purposes.

“Hello, my very sharp friend,” she told the stone, and then she grinned.How long could it possibly take for a highly motivated individual to use an extremely jagged rock to cut through bindings made of silk?

Chapter 28

LYRA

In the music box, a marble flower turned and turned.Another calla lily.Lyra stared at it, and soon, she couldn’t hear the music, couldn’t see the mosaic ballroom where she and Grayson had gone to dissect the clue.

Happy birthday, Lyra.The memory of her father’s voice threatened to drag her under.

Lie-ra.

Lie-ra.

Lyra fought to stay in the here and now, the way she’d somehow managed to back at the helipad, but this time, the undertow of memory would not be denied, locking its jaws around her, pulling her down—and back to being four years old.

Back to being given a flower and a candy necklace.

Back to the gunshot.

Back to the blood.

Bare feet on pavement.Running.

“Breathe.”Grayson’s voice wrapped itself around Lyra, keeping her from falling into a full-on flashback, but still, thesoundsof that day—

Happy birthday, Lyra.

Lie-ra.

Lie-ra.

“Breathe for me, Lyra Catalina Kane.”Grayson said her name exactly right.In true Grayson Hawthorne style, he said it like an order—or maybe a prayer.

“I’m breathing,” Lyra said, but she still couldn’t look away from the marble flower spinning slowly in the box.