Opening
A sudden island-wide blackout shatters the rules of play and forces every team to confront a new, unpredictable opponent. In the dark, alliances form, secrets surface, and the “grandest game” expands beyond Hawthorne design into something far more dangerous.
What Happens
Chapter 66: The Grandest of Games
Darkness drops—every light out, every mechanism dead. Lyra Catalina Kane, still reeling from Grayson Hawthorne’s confession that he didn’t mean it when he told her to stop calling last year, gropes for control. Odette Morales hisses that the outage is a twist to steal time; Grayson counters that Hawthorne games foreshadow and never run on senselessness, a core law of Games, Puzzles, and Strategy.
Lyra presses the emergency and hint buttons—nothing. The dead controls confirm Grayson’s fear: this is not part of the official game. Odette shifts the ground beneath them. “In the grandest of games, there are no coincidences,” she says, pointing out the electrified locks and mechanisms. Without power, they are not “safely contained” by design—they’re trapped by an outside force.
Chapter 67: Sunshine
Upstairs in her team’s room, Gigi Grayson stands alone while Knox Landry and Brady Daniels bicker below. She replays Knox’s confession about Calla Thorp and fingers the listening device she carries. If the outage isn’t sanctioned, someone else is on the island—Knox warned her “the Thorps aren’t the only game in town.” The intuition lands like a stone: she is being listened to.
Gigi lifts the bug to her lips. “I know you’re out there,” she says into the dark. Silence. Then a tinny reply crawls out of the device: “No, sunshine, you don’t.” The nickname detonates her composure. The voice belongs to a dangerous mercenary from her past, binding the blackout to a personal threat and deepening the reach of Secrets and Hidden Truths.
Chapter 68: Sunder
In another locked room, Rohan searches for a planted light, assuming a Hawthorne twist. Savannah Grayson doesn’t look; she listens—fingers on puzzle pieces, mind turning. Reading her “tells,” Rohan realizes she doesn’t buy that this is part of the game and coolly suggests she has a “sponsor” using the outage as cover.
He doesn’t leverage it for blackmail. He asks for a true alliance—a partner, not a pawn—shifting their rivalry into a charged negotiation where Competition and Ambition meets vulnerability. In the dark, they work by touch. The birthday card hums “Clair de Lune”; a closed angle on the embroidered fan morphs “SURRENDER” into “SUNDER.” They agree to sunder the fan—a decisive cut that seals a fragile, electric partnership, igniting the book’s current of Romance and Complicated Relationships.
Chapter 69: The Right Kind of Disaster
Back with Lyra, Grayson, and Odette, danger presses in. Odette warns they wouldn’t survive a fire, a stark echo of the island’s tragedies and The Influence of the Past. She studies Lyra and Grayson: “the right kind of disaster just waiting to happen,” and tells Lyra she has every reason to stay away from Hawthornes. Lyra hears her father’s last words: “A Hawthorne did this.”
Odette leans into a revelation—“Neither one of you knows what you think you know. The tr—”—and collapses, seizing. Grayson catches her. The lights flicker back. Over the speakers, Nash Hawthorne calls it a “technical snafu” and restarts the clock. Odette refuses medical help and retreats into silence. Lyra, gutted by the almost-confession, demands they burn their hint and move forward.
Chapter 70: Puzzle Boxes are a Specialty of Mine
The lights glow, but Gigi is trapped in the dark of “sunshine.” She names the man: a mercenary she calls “Mr. Very Bad News,” “Code Name: Mimosas,” claw-mark tattoos, the one who once claimed to be “a friend of Grayson’s.” The knife on her thigh? His.
Brady announces Knox has already used their hint. A panel in the floor slides open to reveal a puzzle box. Gigi compartmentalizes, locking the terror away for later. To her team—and to the listener she knows is there—she says, “If you’ll recall, puzzle boxes are a specialty of mine.” She chooses defiance and control, even as the larger game presses in.
Character Development
Pressure clarifies everyone’s edges. When the power dies, masks slip, and the choices each character makes reveal what they are willing to risk—and who they are willing to trust.
- Rohan & Savannah: Their rivalry evolves into a strategic, intimate alliance. He seeks a partner rather than leverage; she gambles on a shared win. Solving by touch in the dark fuses competence with chemistry.
- Gigi Grayson: A ghost from her past steps into the present, raising the stakes from puzzles to survival. She chooses focus and performance under threat, asserting control where she can.
- Lyra Kane: Her hunt for the truth sharpens. Odette’s warnings and the near-confession intensify Lyra’s resolve to uncover what “A Hawthorne did this” really means.
- Grayson Hawthorne: He’s the stabilizer in chaos—protective, rule-bound, and rattled by senselessness. The outage challenges his faith in Hawthorne order.
- Odette Morales: Keeper of dangerous knowledge. Her seizure silences a pivotal truth and marks her as both vulnerable and essential.
Themes & Symbols
When the lights go out, Games, Puzzles, and Strategy fracture into two layers: the polished Hawthorne contest with rules, hints, and foreshadowing, and a rogue, external game that is ruthless and opaque. Each character responds in kind—Grayson clings to logic, Rohan angles for leverage through alliance, Gigi asserts agency through performance—revealing how they navigate a board with shifting rules.
Secrets and Hidden Truths steer the action. Odette’s withheld revelation about Lyra’s father, Savannah’s implied sponsor, and Gigi’s connection to the saboteur all surface in the literal darkness, while The Influence of the Past turns memory into threat: fires that could happen again, last words that won’t stop echoing. Darkness becomes a symbol of intimacy and risk—hands meeting on puzzle pieces, voices whispering through bugs—while light restores only the appearance of safety. The official clock restarts; the real danger does not.
Key Quotes
“In the grandest of games, there are no coincidences.” Odette reframes the outage as design, not accident—just not Hawthorne design. The line announces a second, more perilous game running beneath the official one and positions Odette as someone who understands its rules.
“No, sunshine, you don’t.” The pet name detonates Gigi’s past in the present. It collapses distance, confirms surveillance, and turns the blackout from inconvenience into a personal threat with teeth.
“Hawthorne games are not senseless.” Grayson’s creed establishes the baseline: order, foreshadowing, solvability. The outage violates that creed, forcing him—and everyone—to adapt to chaos.
“A Hawthorne did this.” Lyra’s echo of her father’s final words frames her storyline. Every clue, every warning, folds back into this accusation, making Odette’s silenced truth pivotal.
“The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.” Odette reads the volatile chemistry between Lyra and Grayson. The line blends romantic tension with risk, forecasting how their bond could solve puzzles—or ignite catastrophe.
“If you’ll recall, puzzle boxes are a specialty of mine.” Gigi’s declaration is performance and armor. She stakes her identity on competence, signaling to the listener and her team that she won’t be rattled out of the game.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the novel from controlled inheritance contest to thriller. The blackout exposes an infiltrator who can override Hawthorne infrastructure and who targets Gigi specifically, shifting the objective from winning to surviving. The Rohan–Savannah alliance reconfigures the competitive field, while Odette’s near-confession tightens the noose around Lyra’s central mystery. The lights come back, the clock resumes, but the real game—the one without rules—keeps playing, ensuring that every choice from here on carries double stakes.