Toby and Eve went first. I’d played against Toby often enough to know that he could have ended it within the first twelve moves if he’d wanted to.
He let her win.
Blake must have concluded the same thing because once the board had been reset for my match against Toby, the older man picked up his bowie knife. “Throw this game, too,” he told Toby contemplatively, “and I’ll ask Eve to give me her arm and use this to open a vein.”
If Eve was disturbed by the implication that her great-grandfather would slice her open, she didn’t show it. Instead, she held tight to the seal she’d been given and kept her eyes on the board.
I took my position and met Toby’s eyes. It had been more than a year since we’d played, but the second I moved my first pawn, it was like no time had passed at all. Harry and I were right back in the park.
“Your move, princess.” Toby wasn’t pulling his punches, but he did his best to put me at ease, to remind me that even if he played his hardest, I’d beaten him before.
“Not a princess.” I echoed my line in our script back at him and slid my bishop across the board. “Your move, old man.”
Toby narrowed his eyes slightly. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Fine words from a Hawthorne,” I retorted.
“I mean it, Avery. Don’t get cocky.”
He sees something I don’t.
“Eve,” Vincent Blake said pleasantly. “Your arm?”
Her chin steady, Eve held it out to him. Blake rested the edge of his blade against her skin. “Play,” he told Toby. “And no more hints to the girl.”
There was a beat—a single second—and then Toby did as he’d been instructed. I scanned the board, then saw why he’d cautioned me against getting cocky. It took three moves, but then: “Check,” Toby gritted out.
I took in the board, all of it at once. I had three possible next moves, and I played all of them out. Two led to Toby getting checkmate within the next five moves. That meant I was stuck with the third. I knew how Toby would counter it, and from there I had four or five options. I let my brain race, let the possibilities slowly untangle themselves.
I tried not to think too much about the fact that if Toby beat me, the cover-up of Sheffield Grayson’s death would be exposed. Either that, or I’d have to give Blake something much more significant than a favor to keep it quiet.
The man would own me.
No. I could do this. There was a way. My move. His. My move. His. Again and again, faster and faster, we played.
Then, finally, a breath whooshed out of my chest. “Check.”
I knew the exact moment that Toby saw the trap I had laid. “Horrible girl,” he whispered roughly, and the tenderness in his eyes when he said it almost took me down.
His move. Mine. His move. Mine.
And then, finally—finally… “Checkmate,” I said.
Vincent Blake kept the bowie knife on Eve’s arm a moment longer, then slowly lowered it. His grandson had lost, and as the realization of what that meant fell over me, my insides twisted.
Toby had lost both matches. He was Blake’s.