CHAPTER 60 LYRA

Chapter 60

LYRA

O h, stop looking at me like that, you two," Odette said. "I was young."

"Let me guess," Grayson replied. "It was a lifetime ago—and how many lives?"

In lieu of responding, Odette hit a button on the projector, and the title card for Changing Crowns gave way to a scene—to a woman. Her hair was red. Her youth was palpable, her features both striking and familiar .

"You?" Lyra asked Odette.

"For a time, I was Odette Mora —not Morales." Odette paused the film once more. "They made me change that, just like they dyed my hair red the first time I stepped on a studio lot. I was nineteen, and I agreed to it all—the name change, the hair change, the less-than-ideal contract terms. My predator of a husband got me speaking roles in four movies before I left him. He tried to destroy me." Odette smiled that eagle-on-a-hunt, grandma-baking-cookies smile. "It didn't take. I booked a string of movies without him, a few very prominent roles, including Changing Crowns ." She paused. "And then I stopped."

"Just like that?" Grayson said.

"I got pregnant." Odette clipped the words. "I was unmarried. I refused to take care of the situation , and that was the end. This was my last film."

It was on the tip of Lyra's tongue to ask Odette how she'd gone from Hollywood starlet to cleaning houses to law school—and eventually, somehow, to Tobias Hawthorne. But instead, Lyra couldn't help making an observation. "You dye the tips of your hair black now."

"Perceptive girl. I like the gray, personally—but also? Screw them for ever making me dye it red." Odette reached out and lightly touched Lyra's chin. "As a woman, I find it good for the soul to have a physical reminder of the people I've buried."

"Metaphorically buried," Grayson said. "Of course."

Odette didn't comment on that. "I was invited to play the Grandest Game," she said instead, "as one of the Hawthorne heiress's personal picks."

That makes two of us, Lyra thought. And both of them had connections to Tobias Hawthorne, to that List of his. That didn't strike Lyra as a coincidence.

"The game's architects knew that I would be playing when they designed these puzzles," Odette noted. "It appears as though they were also quite confident I would end up in this room. It makes one wonder, doesn't it, what else they arranged just so?"

Lyra thought about Jameson Hawthorne's wicked smile, back on the helipad. Right after his brother heard my voice for the first time.

"Did you ever mention me?" Lyra hadn't meant to ask Grayson that, but she didn't back-pedal. "Or our phone calls? Did you tell your brothers or Avery—"

"No." Grayson's response was so immediate and so absolute that Lyra heard it like a slamming door.

Right , she thought. Because what was there to mention?

For a long moment, it seemed like Grayson might say something else, but instead, he crossed to the projector and hit Play. "I'd wager whatever we're looking for is in the first half—perhaps even the first quarter—of the film. We're on the clock, and the one universal trait of Hawthorne puzzles is that they are meant to be solved."

Lyra had no idea how much time they had left before dawn. Minutes and hours had lost all meaning. It felt like they had been locked in for days, but soon enough, one way or another, this night would end.

Soon enough, Lyra would never have to speak to or look at Grayson Hawthorne again.

Focus on the puzzle. Focus on the movie. Focus on getting out by dawn.

Within the first few scenes, it became apparent that Changing Crowns was a heist film, a royal romance, and one hundred percent an artifact of its time.

"You, sir, are a conman and a cad." Young Odette's voice was the same as her older counterpart's—exactly the same.

"I'm also a count," came the reply from the male lead. "And no concern of yours."

Odette is an actress. Scene after scene, Lyra considered the ramifications of that. Beside her, Grayson angled his lips downward, toward her ear.

"She's very good." His voice was just barely audible—and only to her.

Lyra kept her gaze locked on the screen and her words just as low as his. "Do you think she was lying?"

"About your father, my grandfather, or her health? No. However…"

However , Lyra thought, pushing down the incredible urge to look at him, she volunteered that information right after you asked her about omega.

The film skipped. Lyra wondered if she'd imagined it, and then it skipped again.

"Stop the movie," Lyra said, but Odette had already stopped it. The old woman expertly reeled the film back, then started manually moving it forward again, one frame at a time. Eventually, a letter popped up on the screen—a single frame inserted into the film. O .

"Keep going," Lyra said, the buzz of energy audible in her voice. At the next skip, there was another letter. P . A third frame gave them E .

"The next one is going to be an N ," Grayson predicted.

It was. Frame after frame, skip after skip, the letters kept coming. T , H , E , D , R , A .

Lyra's mind began filling in the blanks, but she bided her time and waited until she was sure.

W , E , R , S .

" Open the drawers ." Lyra's voice echoed through the theater. "What drawers?"

Like magic, a section of thick, velvety fabric fell away from the wall. Behind it, there were four drawers and an arching door with an ornate bronze knob. Inside each drawer, there was an object:

A lollipop.

A pad of sticky notes.

A light switch.

A paintbrush.

"There's writing on the knob," Grayson noted. Lyra crouched beside him to get a better look at the bronze doorknob. The metal bore only one word.

FINALE .