Page 63 of The Grandest Game

Lyra barely had time to decipher those words before the imagechanged to what looked like a multiple-choice test. There was no question listed, only answers. Each answer contained four symbols. One—choice C—had already been circled. Lyra tried to memorize the symbols in the correct answer, tracing them in the air with her index finger, committing them to memory.

The film jumped to a scene from a black-and-white movie. A wooden rocking horse rocked back and forth in an empty room, and then the camera turned, panning to reveal—

A man sitting with his feet up on his desk. He was smoking a cigarette, his shadow stark on the wall behind him.This isn’t from the same movie, Lyra realized. On the screen, the man took a long drag from the cigarette, and then his lips moved.

There was no sound. Whatever they were supposed to glean from this display, they were going to have to do it without the benefit of dialogue.

The man on the screen snubbed his cigarette out, and the film jumped to reveal a new scene.Yet another movie.This one was in color. A woman with a feminine bob said something to a man with slicked-back hair.Still no sound.The woman’s expression was haughty. The man’s was sizzling, as she plucked the martini from his hand and downed it in one go. He leaned forward and brought his lips within inches of hers.

The danger of touch…Lyra hated that she couldn’t forget those words. She hated that Grayson had seen them. She looked away from the screen and flicked her gaze toward Odette.Anywhere but at Grayson.

Odette’s hazel eyes narrowed slightly, causing Lyra to lookback at the screen as the cuts between scenes began coming more rapidly:

Four desperados sauntering away from an empty saloon.

A close-up of a woman’s hand purposefully dropping a diamond earring into a sink.

A man in a white suit lifting a gun.

Lyra’s stomach clenched. She hated guns.Hatedthem. And it was just her luck that the makeshift montage lingered longer on that scene. The man with the gun pulled the trigger.

It isn’t real.Lyra went very still, barely even breathing.I’m fine. There’s not even sound. Everything is fine.

And then the camera panned to a body, to pooling blood and unnatural stillness, and nothing was fine. The flashback took hold of Lyra like a shark dragging down its prey. The memory pulled her under. There was no fighting the undertow, no way to resurface.

“What begins a bet? Not that.”

She hears the man, but she can’t see him. There’s silence, and then—a bang. She presses her hands to her ears as hard as she can. She’s not going to cry. She’s not. She’s a big girl.

She’s four years old. Today. Today is her birthday.

Another bang.

She wants to run. Can’t. Her legs won’t move. It’s her birthday. That’s why the man came. That’s what he said. He told her preschool teacher that he was picking her up for her birthday. He said that he was her father.

They shouldn’t have let him take her. She shouldn’t have gone.

“You two look so much alike,” they’d said.

She should run, but she can’t. What’s happening? She brings her hands away from her ears. Why is it so quiet? Is the man coming back?

The flower he gave her is on the floor now. Did she drop it? The candy necklace is still clenched in her hand, the elastic wound through her finger so tightly it hurts.

Trembling, she takes a step toward the stairs.

“Lyra.” A voice washed over her, familiar in all the right and wrong ways, but eventhat voicewasn’t enough to bring her back.

She’s walking up the stairs. There’s something at the top. She steps in something wet—and warm. She’s not wearing shoes. Why isn’t she wearing shoes?

What is on her feet?

It’s red. It’s too warm and it’s red, and it’s dripping down the stairs.

“Look at me, Lyra.”

The walls. They’re red, too. Red handprints, red smears. There’s even a drawing on the wall, a shape like a horseshoe or a bridge.

You’re not supposed to draw on walls. That’s a rule.