Page 112 of The Brothers Hawthorne

That hurt in the best possible way.

“Watch yourself,” he murmured, his lips just barely pulling back from hers. This was what it meant to focus. Toplay.

“The last clue,” she murmured back. “One last chance to win this game.”

Screw Ian. Jameson didn’t needIan.It was—now and always—Jameson and Avery against the world.

Back inside the manor, they started looking for mirrors. In a house of this size—of this type—there were dozens, many of them too large and heavy for even two people to lift. So instead of lifting them, Jameson and Avery probed the frames, running their fingers along the sides, looking for hinges, a button, a hidden compartment.

Eventually, they hit paydirt.

In a long hall on the fourth floor, they found an enormous mirror with a bronze frame. When Jameson pulled on the side of the frame, there was no resistance. It swung open like a door.

Watch yourself.Jameson stepped into a long, nearly empty room, Avery on his heels. The room was dark, lit only by candles on a single chandelier in the center. Although the ceiling was at least twenty feet tall, the chandelier hung low, almost to the floor. Looking at it called to Jameson’s mind a pendulum.

As the mirror swung closed behind Avery, Jameson realized just how little light the candles provided. The dark green walls looked almost black. Portraits hung every ten feet, all the way down the length of the room.

Jameson didn’t see a treasure box, let alone three.There’s nothing in this room except for the chandelier and the portraits.He strode to examine the closest one. Ian smirked back at him from the frame.

Jameson set his mouth in a firm line. It made sense. Ian Johnstone-Jameson was the most recent owner of this place. Jameson looked to the next portrait and saw a woman. The resemblance between her and Ian was uncanny.

“I guess I don’t just have his eyes,” Jameson said quietly. “They’re yours, too.”

He’d grown up with a grandfather, singular, and no grandmother. This woman, the one in this portrait, was every bit as related to him as Alice Hawthorne—and just as much of a stranger.

You had three sons.Jameson addressed those words silently to the portrait.You raised them here, when you could.Vantage was her ancestral home—and that makes it mine.Jameson ran his fingers along the edge of first one frame and then the other. Once he was satisfied that these two were clean, he began to move to the next one.

“Jameson.” Avery’s voice cut through the air. “This one’s you.”

He whirled to face her. “Me?” Jameson had no intention of letting that matter, so why did each breath he took suddenly feel like sandpaper in his throat? Why, as he crossed the room and stared at the portrait that someone had commissioned ofhim, did some part of him want to be on those walls?

To belong here.

Jameson locked his fingers around the frame, then pulled—first one side, then the other. Nothing happened until Avery ran her fingertips around the edges of the wood. Jameson knew the exact second she found the release. Once it was triggered, the portrait swung away from the wall, revealing a hidden compartment. Nestled there was a jeweled chest, its dominant colors emerald green and shining gold.

The Game is almost over now.Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Jameson absorbed every detail of this moment and knew three things immediately, courtesy of instincts hard-won over years and years of playing games just like this. First, the chest was green, and that made it a match for the key that Branford had found in the caves. Second, the chest had been hidden behind Jameson’s portrait, which he was willing to bet meant that it heldhissecret. And finally, this portrait hadn’t been painted in quite the same style as the portraits of Ian and his mother. That, combined with the fact that his uncles reallyhadn’tseemed to know about Jameson’s existence, suggested that this painting was likely a recent commission.

Very recent.

Rohan did this. How did he even know the Proprietor would choose me for the Game?

Right now, that wasn’t the question that mattered most. “We need to find the other two boxes,” Jameson told Avery. He started running from portrait to portrait, even more adrenaline flooding his veins, an old friend, a needed rush. He stopped when he reached a portrait of Branford.

Jameson’s fingers found the release almost instantly, and the portrait swung away from the wall to reveal another jeweled chest—gold again, with pearls inlaid.A match for the second key.

Jameson inserted the pearl key in the lock. It turned. The lid to the box opened. Inside, there was a scroll. He undid the ribbon, unwound the scroll, and was greeted with words scrawled in sharp and angular script.

I have a son.

Jameson knew almost nothing about Simon Johnstone-Jameson, Viscount Branford. He didn’t know if his uncle was married, or if he had any other children, but the Proprietor had been very specific about the kind of secrets he was interested in.

The kind men would kill and die for. The kind that shakes the ground beneath our feet.

Jameson tucked the scroll into his waistband, then gave the jeweled chest a once-over, just in case.

“Jameson!” Avery’s voice cut through the air like a knife. Immediately, he looked toward the door.Branford—and he’s not alone.Zella strolled in behind the viscount, and Jameson thought to wonder if Katharine wasn’t the only one who’d struck a deal.

“Avery!” Jameson called. “The chest!”