Page 87 of The Grandest Game

Lyra made her way to the closest wall, pulled to it with almost magnetic force. She brought her hand to the surface of the mosaic, feeling each individual tile—so small, so perfectly set. How many millions of tiles had gone into making this room?The ceiling. The floor. The walls—all except one.

The back wall was made of glass.

Lyra stared out the wall of windows into velvety darkness. How long did they have until the first haze of soft morning light would appear? How long until the sun broke the horizon and ended this phase of the game?

Finale.This room—this puzzle—was the last.

Lyra made her way to the center of the room. The floor was smooth under her feet, the tiles laid so perfectly it felt like walking on wood. Directly overhead, there was a crystal chandelier.

Memory was a physical thing.Back arching. His fingers, my thighs.

“A ballroom is made for dancing,” Odette commented.

Lyra banished the memory and looked down at her ball gown with its cascading blue layers.Made for dancing.“I don’t dance anymore.”

Part of her wanted to.

Part of herachedto.

But she put it in terms Odette would understand: “That was another life.”

Lyra turned her focus to the pattern on the walls and floor: dark, mesmerizing spirals and swirls, each one unique. She paced the room, taking it all in.

“You never stopped dancing,” Grayson said behind her. “Every time you move, you dance.”

“I do not.” Arguing with him was the easiest thing in the world.

“It’s there in the way you hold your head, like there’s music the rest of us can’t hear.” Grayson Hawthorne was a natural debater. “Every step you take, every twist, every turn, every pissed-off whirl.”

He could have stopped there and won. He didn’t.

“The way you stand,” he continued mercilessly, “one foot slightly in front of the other. The way you lift your heels off the ground when you’re deep in thought, like it’s everything you can do not to rise all the way to the tips of your toes. The spread of your fingers when your hands hang loose by your side. The lines of your body when you stretch those hands overhead.”

The chandelier, Lyra thought.

“Believe me, Lyra Kane.” Grayson’s voice was deeper now. “You never stopped dancing.”

How the hell was she supposed to argue with that? How was she supposed toexistin a world—let alone a locked ballroom—with Grayson Hawthorne saying things like that?

You won’t be locked in with him much longer.Lyra tried to take comfort in that, but it hurt—not a sharp pain, not even a new one. The idea of this night ending hurt like a once-broken bone, long-healed, that ached every time the weather turned.

The kind that might never stop aching.

Lyra laid her palm against the tiles on the wall and began to search it the way Grayson had the fireplace in the Great Room.

“There could be something to the pattern.” Grayson came to join her at the wall, setting the longsword on the ground at their feet.

Lyra took a step back—from the wall, from the sword, from him. “What about the objects?” She turned abruptly toward Odette as the old woman began laying their objects out on the mosaic floor.

The lollipop.

The sticky notes.

The paintbrush.

The light switch.

“We started this game with a collection of objects,” Odette noted, “and I seem to recall our Mr. Hawthorne being quite certain that one of those objects would be a clue to start us off.”