“Xander,” Max, Thea, and Rebecca said, all at once.
There wasn’t really any further explanation needed, but as I ducked behind a screen to try on the dress Zella had sent, I couldn’t help myself. “Ah yes,” I said. “The traditional Fourth of July human and/or firework catapult.”
“I can assure you,” Zara said, “there is no such tradition.”
“There is now,” I said, stepping out from behind the screen. Libby handed Seren off to Zara, who took the baby like it was the most natural thing in the world, and then my sister zipped me up.
I knew before I even turned to look at the mirror that this gown was the one. Zella really knew how to pick them. Before I could say as much,though, the door to my bedroom flew inward and Gigi bounded in, her dark waves bouncing and her eyes dancing in a way that I foundhighlyconcerning.
“Three things!” Gigi said. “First, that’s definitelythedress. Second, I finished phase one. Worship at the altar of Gigi, for she is a most devious computer goddess.”
After everything that had happened with the last Grandest Game—and my own experiences in the Crucible—I’d decided the Grandest Game needed some reinvention. We were going digital: all the challenge, none of the danger, open to anyone, anywhere.
“You said three things,” I reminded Gigi.
“About that third thing…” Gigi gave us a sheepish smile almost as concerning as those dancing eyes of hers.
“It’s Ferris Wheel Leapfrog Death Match, isn’t it?” Max said seriously.
“They’re all playing,” Gigi said solemnly. “Allof them.”
Not just Xander, Grayson, Jameson, and Nash—but Rohan and Slate, too.“Even Knox?” I glanced at Alisa, whose lawyerly poker face stayed perfectly intact.
“Even Knox,” Gigi replied.
“And Ferris Wheel Leapfrog Death Match,” I deadpanned, “never ends well.”
“You, you, you, you, and you,” Alisa rattled off, pointing at Gigi, Libby, Max, Rebecca, and Thea. “With me, before someone breaks a leg.”
Zara followed the six of them out, Seren asleep in her arms, leaving me alone with Lyra, which my sixth sense said wasn’t an accident. I didn’t know why Alisa wanted the two of us clocking one-on-one time, but as it happened, I did have something to tell Lyra.
I have a secret…
“There’s something I want to show you,” I told her. The book Jameson and I had finally decoded didn’t just include the current members of the Blade. It was a record. A historical record, and one name had jumped out at me right way. “Just let me get changed.”
Lyra stepped between me and the rack. “You aren’t ready to take thatdress off.” Sometimes, Lyra was nothing like Grayson, and sometimes, they were almost too much alike.
In this case, she wasn’t wrong.
Enjoying the feel of the gown more than I wanted to admit, I walked over to my nightstand, opened the drawer, and withdrew a small charcoal sketch, yellowed with age. It had been in a museum when we’d decoded the book.
Less than twenty-four hours later, it was part of my private collection.
“Her name was Eloísa,” I told Lyra, handing her the sketch. “But in the Crucible, she was Aquila.” The date on that sketch was 1695. “As best we can tell, the Aquila line was thought to have ended in the mid-eighteen hundreds. In reality, one surviving daughter moved from Spain to Brazil. Nineteen years ago, one of the Ascendants discovered Katalin. Based on your name, I’m betting that same someone read Katalin in on the family history while she was still pregnant.”
Lyra stared at the sketch and looked up at me. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re about to ask me something?”
I was about to issue an invitation. It had always been our plan, Eve’s and Nora’s and mine, to not just decode the book and uncover the web, but to extend it. Power in numbers, women helping women, and the art of the cascade. It didn’t matter to me that Lyra was part of the Aquila line. It only mattered to me that she was Lyra.
“Things are different in the Blade now,” I told her. “Very different.”
Lyra looked back down at that sketch of her ancestor. “Why do you think,” she said slowly, “that Alice went to such trouble to hide the fact that I was there the night Edgar Aquila Reyes died? The cover-up, falsifying his identity, making sure no one ever connected his death to my kidnapping—why?”
“My best guess?” I’d already mulled this puzzle over—more than once. “I think Alice didn’t want Katalin to know or wonder what you’d been told. If Katalin or the Judge back then had known you were there, I’m betting they wouldn’t have signed off on Alice returning you to your family. I don’t know where they would have sent you. Maybe the Kyrie.”
Without Alice, Lyra might have had a very different life.
She chewed on that for a moment. “All of this,” Lyra said finally, “it’s your game, Avery. Not mine. Alice gave me an ordinary life. After everything, I’m partial to ordinary.”