The Gilded Blade

The Gilded Blade follows the disappearance of Avery Grambs, the Hawthorne heiress, and the desperate efforts of multiple characters to uncover a centuries-old secret society called the Gilded Blade.

The novel opens with Jameson Hawthorne flying to Prague in search of Avery, his girlfriend, who has vanished leaving behind a note saying she is not missing and instructing no one to look for her. The note bears one coded element: a lemniscate, or infinity symbol, which Jameson interprets as pointing to Prague, where he once encountered his supposedly dead grandmother, Alice Hawthorne. Jameson blames his brother Grayson for Avery's disappearance, believing Grayson's refusal to stop investigating Alice forced the situation.

Aboard a yacht, Rohan, a British operative raised in the Devil's Mercy, a centuries-old underground gambling club and secret society, approaches Savannah Grayson, Grayson's formidable twin half-sister. Rohan needs ten million pounds to win the Mercy's Proprietorship, and Jameson has promised him that money in exchange for help finding Avery. Rohan proposes using Brady Daniels, a competitor in the Grandest Game, a high-stakes puzzle competition, and a scholar, to lure out Brady's sponsor, a duchess named Zella, who possesses information about the Woman in Red, a mysterious cloaked figure. Gigi Grayson, Savannah's twin, joins the plan.

A parallel investigation unfolds in Texas, where Lyra Kane, a Grandest Game player who has allied with Grayson and is haunted by her biological father's violent death when she was four, accompanies him to confront his uncle Toby Hawthorne. They establish that three cloaked women operate together within the society: the Watcher (red), the Hand or Omega (black), and the Judge or Monoceros (white). Toby reveals that Alice appeared to him wearing different colored cloaks over the years, suggesting she progressed through these roles. He also reveals that Alice once offered Avery's mother, Hannah, a chance to join the group, but Hannah refused because she would never leave her daughter.

In Prague, Jameson discovers that his grandfather, the late billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, left an elaborate puzzle game across Europe as love letters to Alice. Hidden objects in a former Hawthorne hotel combine to form the alchemical symbol of the Devil's Mercy. The clues lead Jameson and his brother Xander Hawthorne to the Hawthorne villa in Tuscany for additional puzzle pieces. Separately, Toby arrives in London with a coded postcard from Hannah, written in invisible ink, that spells out the word "Crucible."

Gigi, Savannah, Rohan, and Knox Landry, a tough former game player hired as Gigi's bodyguard, track Brady to St. Adelaide Parish in the Louisiana bayou. Gigi tells Brady that Calla Thorp, Knox's former love, is alive and operating as the Woman in Red. They capture Nora, a young woman of Nordic and Asian heritage who was trained by Alice after being rescued from a warrior family within the Blade. Nora tells Gigi cryptically, "It's not going to be you."

Lyra obtains a file from Toby's daughter Eve and discovers that the dead man identified in police reports as her biological father, Thomas Valasquez, is indeed her father but was not the man who kidnapped her on her fourth birthday. Alice orchestrated the cover-up, erasing Lyra's presence from all records. Visiting her parents in Kansas, Lyra recovers a suppressed memory: her kidnapper told her, "Don't be afraid, Lyra Catalina. She will come for you."

At Helena Thorp's mansion in Louisiana, Gigi learns that the Gilded Blade selects Candidates for an initiation ritual called the Crucible, in which three women compete. One ascends to become the new Watcher, while the survivors are placed into powerful families as part of a centuries-old web. Helena, a woman in her nineties who underwent her own Crucible in 1951, insists Calla is dead. The Woman in Red drugs Savannah with a dart and offers Gigi an invitation to become a Candidate. Gigi declines and learns the organization's name: the Gilded Blade.

At Hawthorne House, the group decodes Tobias Hawthorne's cryptic file, revealing Alice was first taken by the Blade on March 5, 1967, and returned nearly a year later. Grayson's great-grandmother Nan reveals that Tobias gave Alice a hand-carved box for her secrets and a ring of 12 keys, one for each month without her. Jameson negotiates entry to the Devil's Mercy through his uncle Bowen Johnstone-Jameson and finds a message from Alice in the betting ledger: "Go home, dear boy." Following this clue back to Hawthorne House, Jameson locates Alice's box. Inside is a poem revealing she chose to return to Tobias rather than ascend and that she was the true architect of the Hawthorne fortune. Dots beneath the poem form the constellation Lyra, and the group realizes names throughout their investigation, including Monoceros, Aquila, and Vega, are constellation names used within the Blade.

Nora infiltrates Hawthorne House and reveals the Kyrie, a warrior family serving as the Blade's fourth element, which trains each new Watcher and acts as a check on the Judge's power. She warns that the current Hand must not become the next Judge. At Queensbright Stables, Jameson decodes words engraved on a racehorse's horseshoes, revealing the three current Ascendants, the Blade's highest-ranking members: Alice Hawthorne, Katalin Aquila Reyes, and Hannah. Toby vehemently denies Hannah is the Watcher. Lyra decodes constellations projected from Alice's ring in a hidden planetarium, spelling V-A-N-T-A-G-E, the name of Jameson's Scottish estate and the Crucible's location. She also discovers that Katalin died on Lyra's birthday from complications of a cesarean section, meaning Katalin is Lyra's biological mother.

The group infiltrates Vantage by sea and is captured. Jameson wakes in chains to discover the Watcher is Emily Laughlin, a girl the Hawthorne brothers believed died years ago in a cliff-jumping accident, who faked her death to join the Blade. Katalin confirms Hannah died of natural causes five years earlier. Rohan signs away the Proprietorship to save Savannah, only to learn she was never a Candidate. Alice appears in her white cloak and tells Jameson that Avery is where she needs to be. Invoking the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, she instructs the brothers to leave without looking back. As they escape, Nora detonates explosives, collapsing the cave system. Security footage later reveals the final trial: Freya, the Kyrie heir, held a knife to Avery's throat, forcing Eve to drink from a chalice; Katalin killed Freya for drawing blood; Alice drank from the same chalice; the Kyrie matriarch slashed Alice's throat; and Toby threw himself over Eve's body as the explosions began.

Rescue operations recover the bodies of Emily, Katalin, Alice, Freya, and the Kyrie matriarch. Toby is found dead, his back broken from shielding Eve. After hours of digging, Jameson finds Avery alive beneath a metal barrier, protected by Oren, the Hawthornes' head of security. Rohan and Nora also survive.

In the aftermath, Rohan returns to Savannah, having lost everything, and confesses his love. Lyra discovers that her mother, Darby, is not her biological mother but raised Lyra as her own after Lyra's biological father, Tom, brought baby Lyra home and then disappeared. Lyra sells Alice's ring, saves Mile's End, her family's property, and returns home, choosing the parents who chose her. Evidence suggests Eve survived: Alice drank from the same chalice, indicating the poison was not fatal, and the body released to Eve's family may have been Emily's. Avery, Eve, Nora, and Zella form a new organization using their influence for good rather than through violence or ritual. Jameson proposes to Avery at a lighthouse where they scatter Toby's ashes. In the epilogue, he surprises Avery with an intimate wedding at Hawthorne House, surrounded by everyone who matters to them. Avery shows Lyra a centuries-old sketch of an ancestor and invites her to join the reformed Blade. Lyra declines, choosing ordinary life. Grayson later visits Lyra at Mile's End, where her four-year-old brother pelts him with water balloons.