“This tournament is a curse,” Briony continued. “And curses can be broken.”
“The tournament isn’t an ordinary curse, Bri.” The gentleness in her tone surprised even her. “It’s ancient. Powerful.”
“Just think about it. If we—”
“You’re not the first person to consider that. But every champion who got it in their head that the tournament could be broken failed. And died.”
“But that’s because they got it wrong. There are—”
“And you have it right because…？”
“Just listen to me,” Briony huffed, her voice rising, amplified by the lofted ceilings and echoing stone. Isobel struggled to contain her shock. Briony truly believed what she was saying. “Haven’t you ever looked at a map of Ilvernath and thought it strange that there are seven Landmarks, arranged in a circle? That’s because they don’t make a circle. They make a septogram, and the Champions Pillar is at the center.”
Isobel had never thought of the city that way, but she supposed it made sense. Even so, she didn’t see how drawing a star over the map changed anything.
Seeming to take everyone’s silence as encouragement, Briony continued, “When our ancestors cast this curse, they made the Landmarks the board. And the Relics were the ingredients. That means, if we arrange the board as it was originally, we can destroy the curse altogether.”
“You mean, put a Relic in each Landmark?” Gavin asked, sounding as skeptical as Isobel felt. “This curse has lasted eight hundred years. That’s definitely been done before. If only by accident.”
“It can’t just be any Relic in any Landmark,” Briony said. “I talked to a spellmaker who had the same theory—that buried in the tournament’s history, every family has a story. About a Landmark and Relic their champions favor. A pattern.”
Isobel remembered what her father had told her about the Macaslans once having a special connection to death, which was why their champions usually favored the Crypt and the Cloak.
Not that it proved anything. Every old lineage had stories.
Briony shot the others a triumphant grin. “Don’t you see? I’ve found a way to save all of us.”
But it wasn’t just the logic that bothered Isobel. There was something in Briony’s expression, something proud and eager and familiar. Unwanted, unbidden, memories flared behind her eyes like a camera flash.
* * *
“What the hell?” Isobel had breathed, halting in front of her locker.
Pages torn out from the Macaslan chapter in A Tradition of Tragedy had been taped over the entire door. Spray-painted vertically across them, in big red letters, was the word “LEECH,” and a rancid smell leaked out of the locker’s slits, as though someone had slipped a Rotten Egg curse inside.
Beside her, Briony stormed forward and ripped every paper down. She crumpled the wad of them in her fist. “It’s been weeks. You’d think everyone would be over it by now.”
This was far from the first vandalism Isobel had experienced since that book was released last month. But it was the first time anyone had targeted her at school.
Isobel glanced down the corridor to Briony’s own locker—untouched.
“It’s not about the book,” Isobel murmured, shrinking under the stares of the other students who walked past. “It’s because of my family.” It wasn’t enough that the Macaslans had amassed a fortune through deplorable means. Now they could add murder to their list of sins, too.
“That’s bullshit. You’re nothing like them. You barely even talk to your dad.” Then Briony cast a Matchstick spell, dropping the heap of papers and letting them burn on the linoleum floor.
Isobel lurched back, not wanting to be burned. “What are you doing? You’ll get us in trouble.” It was Isobel who deserved to be outraged, not her. And Briony’s tone when she talked about Isobel’s dad bothered her. Just because she didn’t always live with her dad didn’t mean he wasn’t still her father.
But Briony only stamped the flames out with her loafer. Soot stained her Ilvernath Prep uniform. “They shouldn’t treat you like this. You’re capable of so much, and now all of them know you’re part of something special. Something great.”
Isobel changed the subject, as she always did whenever Briony described the tournament as a fairy tale instead of a curse.
“They’ll stop eventually,” she said, tugging Briony along to class. But the stench of the curse followed her for the rest of the day, no matter how often she spritzed the air with peony perfume.