CHAPTER 33 ROHAN

Chapter 33

ROHAN

T he rose petal wouldn't burn—wrong kind of mirror, perhaps, or the wrong kind of light. But not , Rohan thought, a total loss. There had been a moment in the process when he and Savannah had both had hold of the plate, a moment when her breathing had fallen in sync with his.

Just a moment. But every plan was a collection of moments, and Rohan was no stranger to the long game. He was also becoming increasingly sure with each move she made that Savannah Grayson was a queen.

She returned the words the , rose , will , be , and burned to her neat little rows of magnets. "We tried this your way, British. Now we do it mine."

She looked down at the words, and Rohan obliged her by doing the same.

Rohan had a knack for zeroing in on possibilities. Beauty . Danger . Skin . Touch . Cruel . Fast . Fair . Burned . Gone . Those were the words with emotional resonance. The rest was noise.

"And what," he queried, "might your way be?"

Savannah reached across him—for the Scrabble tiles. The next thing Rohan knew, she'd pulled a word from the third row of magnets.

BEAUTY.

Rohan watched as she lined five tiles up beneath the word. B-E-A-U-T-Y.

"A little compare and contrast?" Rohan pulled a word of his own, then another. "Don't mind if I do, love." He kept the pace of his speech even, but his hands—a dealer's hands, a thief's—moved faster and faster, lining up Scrabble tiles beneath the magnetic words.

The result was two words, added to the one she'd made. BEAUTY. DANGER. TOUCH.

There were only five letters remaining.

Savannah swept the tiles into her hand, a power move. "Mine," she told him.

Rohan raked his gaze from her hand to her shoulder, from her shoulder to her neck, her mouth, her eyes. "By all means," he said, "have at it."

Lifting her chin, she placed the letters down, one after another. P-O-W-E-R. There really was no hesitation in Savannah Grayson.

Power. Rohan took the word as a reminder. Power was why he was here. Power was the Devil's Mercy, the Proprietorship. Power was winning the Grandest Game and winning the crown. And to do that, he had to remember: Savannah Grayson, glorious though she might be, is an asset—a queen, perhaps, but a game piece nonetheless.

In life, everyone was a piece to be moved around the board. Rohan was a player, and in an endeavor like this, the only true opponent was the game itself—and the people pulling the strings behind the scenes.

So Rohan directed his mind away from Savannah and concentrated for a moment on them. Avery. The Hawthornes. "We're complicating this." Rohan was certain of that. To clear his mind, he curled his right hand into a fist and watched the knuckles pull against the skin.

"You're going to bust that cut open," Savannah said dryly.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Rohan told her. He wasn't afraid of pain. He hadn't been, even as a child. By the time he'd come to the Devil's Mercy at the age of five, there had been no fear left in him.

A single bead of blood welled up on his knuckle, and Rohan lowered his hand, his mind sharp. "The best puzzles aren't complicated." He was certain that the makers of this game knew that. "Take a step back. We were told to focus on the words."

"And we did," Savannah countered.

"Did we?" Rohan challenged. To solve the puzzle, focus on the words. Her breathing fell in with his again, and suddenly, it clicked.

He saw it. The simplicity of the puzzle. The beauty of it. A clever architect built challenging games, yes, but there had to be objective answers, a clear path, one that, once recognized, was starkly, obviously correct.

Rohan moved the Styrofoam Sonic cup next to the quarters. And then he paired another two objects: the rose petal, the mirrored plate.

That just left the Scrabble tiles and the poetry magnets.

"Forget everything we've done," Rohan told Savannah, his voice charged. "Forget the letters on those tiles, forget the words in the poetry kit, forget any ideas you might have entertained about searching this room for more clues. All paths lead to Rome."

Who knew how many hints there were in this room—or any of the others? Who knew how many ways the puzzle makers had given them to realize that it really was this simple ?

"Do you see it?" There was a low hum of anticipation in Rohan's voice. He wanted her to solve this, wanted her to see what he saw. The cup, the coins, the petal, the plate.

"Focus on the words," Rohan murmured.

He knew the exact second Savannah saw it.