Page 57 of Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game #2)

GRAYSON

G rayson slipped on his tuxedo jacket as Lyra lifted Odette’s opera glasses to her eyes.

She truly was terrifying, Lyra Kane—the way she’d pieced together the meaning of his interaction with Savannah, the way she’d known that his conversation with Toby had affected him, when to the rest of the world, Grayson’s stony mask was impenetrable.

Terrifying though you may be, Lyra Kane, there is so much that you don’t know.

So much that he could not tell her.

As if on cue, the watch on Grayson’s wrist vibrated. He had sent a message to his brothers in response to what Toby had said on the chopper. Three words, sufficiently vague:

TOBY KNOWS SOMETHING.

The reply he’d just received was almost, though not quite, as oblique. ABOUT EVE?

The or on the end of that question went unsaid.

“Grayson,” Lyra said beside him. “There’s something written on this wall.”

Taking advantage of the fact that she still had the opera glasses to her eyes—that she could not see him —Grayson typed back two letters, the briefest of messages. NO.

He trusted that Jameson and Avery, at least, would read the correct meaning into that: Not about Eve. About Alice. What specifically Toby knew, Grayson had not been able to ascertain, but whatever it was, Grayson’s Hawthorne intuition said that Toby had known it for a very long time.

Grayson forced himself to set that thought aside and crossed to Lyra. He had to stay the course: keep Lyra focused on the game, try again with Savannah as soon as he could get her away from Rohan, and trust that Avery could get something out of Toby.

“May I?” Grayson asked Lyra. She handed him the opera glasses, and he looked at the wall.

There was indeed something written there—a hint, he would wager.

Unfortunately, the script that the opera glasses revealed was not nearly as clear as the writing on the compass.

There were some letters visible on the wall but also disjointed symbols. Or parts of letters.

“Invisible ink.” Grayson lowered the opera glasses and walked to the wall in question. It had an abundance of seams. Squares , Grayson realized. The seams divided the marble into twenty squares— four by five. Grayson recognized this particular trick for what it was.

“Look for a loose square,” he told Lyra. “One of these will come off.”

A few seconds passed as they searched. “Here,” Lyra called. “This one.”

Grayson slid in beside her and helped remove the piece of marble in question—thin enough not to be too heavy. With that piece removed, he put a hand on one of the other sections and slid it sideways—assumption confirmed.

“It’s a puzzle,” Grayson told Lyra. “Slide the squares, arrange them just so, and a hint to the riddle will appear.”

They got to work. It took time. The countdown overhead hit zero.

The deadbolt flipped open, but no one was waiting on the other side of the vault door.

We were the last to this clue. That didn’t sit well with Grayson, but as their hint took form on the wall, Grayson knew: They wouldn’t be behind for long.

Lyra did the honors, peering through the opera glasses one last time and reading the message on the wall aloud: “ Actions speak louder than words .”