The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

Silence had never sounded this loud. I’d never seen the Hawthorne brothers so still—all of them, like they’d been stung with a paralyzing venom. As big an impact as hearing the truth from Tobias Hawthorne’s mouth had on me, he wasn’t the formative influence of my life.

I forced myself to speak because they couldn’t. “You always did say that the old man liked to kill ten birds with one stone.”

Jameson brought his eyes up from the ground to me, then let out a rough, pained chuckle. “Twelve.”

Twelve birds, one stone. I’d been warned. From the moment I’d received a ring holding a hundred keys—from before that, even—I’d been warned by each of the Hawthorne brothers in turn.

Traps upon traps. And riddles upon riddles.

Even if you thought that you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.

This family—we destroy everything we touch.

You’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.

And then there was the message that Tobias Hawthorne had left me himself, back at the very beginning. I’m sorry.

“We did exactly what he thought we would.” Xander snapped out of it and began to move—wild gestures, weight on the balls of his feet. “All of us. From the beginning.”

“That sonofabitch.” Nash let out a long whistle, then leaned back against the wall. “How dangerous do we think Vincent Blake is?” The question sounded casual and calm, but I could imagine Nash strolling up to a rabid bull with that exact expression on his face.

“Dangerous enough to require a decoy.” Grayson’s calm was a different sort than Nash’s—icy and controlled. “We’re dealing with a family whose fortune, though significantly smaller, goes back a lot further than ours. There’s no telling what people or institutions Blake has in his pocket.”

“The old man took the four of us off the board.” Jameson swore. “He raised us to fight but never intended this fight for us.”

I thought about Skye saying that her father had never considered her a player in the grand game, then about a letter that Tobias Hawthorne had left his daughters. There was a part where he’d said that not one of them would see his fortune. There are things I have done that I am not proud of, legacies that you should not have to bear.

The truth had been there, right in front of us, for months. Tobias Hawthorne had left me his fortune so that if and when his enemies descended after his death, they would descend on me. He’d picked his target carefully, placed me as a cog in a complicated machine.

Twelve birds, one stone.

If you are listening to this, Blake is coming. He will box you in. He will hold you down. He will have no mercy. I could feel something inside me hardening. Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t foreseen exactly how Vincent Blake would come at me. Hawthorne hadn’t known that Toby would be caught in Blake’s plot, but he’d damn well known what the man was capable of. And his only consolation to me had been that he thought there was a sliver of a chance that I could survive.

I wanted to despise Tobias Hawthorne—or at least judge him—but all I could think was the other words he’d left me. You may be tested by the flames, but you need not burn.

“Where are you going?” Jameson called after me.

I didn’t look back over my shoulder, couldn’t quite bring myself to look at any of them. “To make a call.”

Vincent Blake answered on the fifth ring, a power play in and of itself. “Presumptuous little thing, aren’t you?”

You’re young. You’re female. You’re nobody—use that.

“Eve is gone,” I said, banishing any hint of emotion from my tone. “You don’t have anyone on the inside now.”

“You seem very sure of that, little girl.” Blake was amused, like my attempt at playing this game was nothing to him but that—an amusement.

He wants me to believe that he has someone else inside Hawthorne House. Staying silent even a moment too long would have been seen as weakness, so I spoke. “You want the truth about what happened to your son. You want his remains found and returned to you.” My breathing wanted to go shallow, but I was a better bluffer than that. “What, besides Toby, will you give me if I deliver what you want?”

I didn’t know where whatever remained of William Blake was. But a person could only play the cards they’d been dealt. Blake thought that I had something he wanted. Without Eve here, I might be his only way of getting it.

I needed an advantage. I needed leverage. Maybe this was it.

“What will I give you?” Blake’s amusement deepened into something darker, twisted. “What, besides Toby, do I have that you want? I am so very glad you asked.”

The line went dead. He’d hung up on me. I stared down at my phone.

A moment later, Oren stepped into my peripheral view. “There’s a courier at the gate.”