Games Untold (The Inheritance Games #5)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

O ur version of Hide and Seek had three rules:

The person hiding couldn’t ditch their phone.

GPS tracking had to be enabled.

The person seeking had an hour.

In the past six months, Jameson and I had played in Bali, Kyoto, and Marseille; on the Almafi Coast; and in the labyrinthine markets of Morocco. Following the GPS coordinates was never the hard part, and that held true today. No matter how many times I checked Jameson’s location, the pulsing blue marker stayed in the same half-block radius, just outside of Prague Castle.

And that was the challenge.

My Achilles’ heel in Hide and Seek was always how hard it was for me not to lose myself in my surroundings, in the moment—or in this case, in the view. The castle. I’d known before coming to Prague that it was among the largest castles in the world, but knowing was different from seeing was different from feeling .

There was a certain magic in standing in the shadows of an ancient, massive structure that made you feel small, something that made the earth and its possibilities feel enormous. I gave myself a full minute to take it all in—not just the sights but the feel of the morning air on my skin, the people already on the streets all around me.

And then I got to work.

Per the GPS, Jameson’s location had varied between several points, all of which seemed to be located in the palace gardens—or sometimes, just outside the garden’s walls. I walked those walls, looking for the entry. It didn’t take me long to realize that the garden in question was actually multiple gardens, interconnected, all of which were closed —or at least, they were closed to the public.

When I approached the entry, the iron gate swung inward for me.

Like magic. I’d meant what I’d said to Alisa on the plane. I would never get used to this. I stepped through the gate. Oren followed at a reasonable distance. Once we were both inside, the iron gate swung closed behind us.

I made eye contact with the docent who’d closed it. He smiled.

I had no idea how Jameson had managed this. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. My body buzzing with the thrill of the game, I made my way inward until I reached a set of stairs, narrow and steep—the kind of stairs that made you feel as if climbing them might take you back in time.

I made it to the top, looked down at my phone, and then looked back up at the surrounding terrace gardens—and up and up and up. My brain automatically started trying to calculate the number of stairs, the number of terraces.

I looked down at my phone again and took a turn off the beaten path, jogging forward, then turning again. The instant my GPS location brushed up against Jameson’s, his blinking blue cursor disappeared from the map.

Technically, that made four rules for our version of Hide and Seek.

The hunt was on.

“Found you,” I said. Once upon a time, I’d been a more gracious winner, but now I relished my victories like a Hawthorne.

“Cutting it close this time, Heiress?” Jameson spoke from behind the tree that stood between us. No part of his body was visible to me, but I could feel his presence, the outline of his long, lean form. “Fifty-eight minutes, nineteen seconds,” Jameson reported.

“One minute and forty-one seconds to spare,” I countered, circling the tree and stopping when my body was directly in front of his. “How did you get them to open this place early?”

Jameson’s lips curved. He turned ninety degrees and took three slow steps back toward the garden path. “How didn’t I get them to open early?”

Three more steps, and he was on the path. He knelt, picking something up off the stone. I knew before he stood back up and brandished his bounty that it was a coin.

Jameson twirled the coin from one finger to the next. “Heads or tails, Heiress?”

My eyes narrowed slightly, but I deeply suspected my pupils were dilating, drinking it all in. This was us . Jameson. Me. Our language. Our game.

Head or tails?

“You planted that.” I nodded toward the coin. I had a collection of them, at least one from every place we’d visited. And every single one of those coins had a memory attached.

“Now why,” Jameson murmured, “would I ever do a thing like that?”

Heads I kiss you , he’d told me once, tails you kiss me, and either way, it means something.

I reached out to pluck the coin from his hand, and he let me—not that I wouldn’t have prevailed either way. I looked down at the coin: The outer ring was bronze, the inner circle gold, bearing the image of a castle. On the reverse side, there was a golden creature that looked like a lion.

I twirled the coin through my fingers the way Jameson had through his—one by one by one. I caught it between my thumb and the side of my index finger, and then I flipped it into the air.

I caught it in my palm. I spread my fingers and looked from the coin to him. “Heads.”