Alistair had nearly sacrificed himself for her in the forest. She had kissed a spellboard coated in his blood. She had used every healing spellstone she had to drag him back to the living.
But Isobel couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. When it came to the tournament, none of that mattered.
They would not have a happy ending.
“We promised to duel each other when I got my powers back,” Isobel reminded him. She pressed her thumb to where the white scar of her spell had once stained his skin. It was gone now. So was hers.
“I won’t duel you,” he said seriously. “My plans have changed.”
“Then what is your plan?”
He pulled his hand away from hers and looked down. Isobel’s chest tightened.
“Your plan is to wait this out until it’s just us. To make me kill you, because you can’t bring yourself to kill me, isn’t it?” Her voice came out scathing, but she had healed him. She’d held his body in her arms. She’d pleaded for him to come back to her.
And he expected her to kill him without a fight?
They weren’t supposed to care like this. He was supposed to be her rival. But he wasn’t the same person she’d met that night in the Magpie. And neither was she.
“If Briony is right, then we could break the tournament.” Alistair’s voice cracked. “We could both—”
“You’re deluding yourself,” she snapped. “Both of you are. Both of us are.”
He looked away from her, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Isn’t it better to have hope?”
No, not for her. Isobel might not have ever called the Macaslan estate her home, but she had still been raised on a legacy of corpses and filth and rot, scavenging in the most revolting places for magick so her family could thrive. And in a choice between an ugly reality and a pretty delusion, Isobel would always choose the truth.
“But this hope is empty,” she said. “Why can’t you understand that?”
Alistair held out his hand again.
“You have your powers back. Find the answers yourself.”
Isobel reluctantly reached forward and took it. One of her spellstones glimmered, and the Divining Kiss’s familiar mark of lips appeared on his wrist.
Alistair’s most recent thoughts swept through her mind. She saw the face she recognized from the Magpie—Alistair’s brother. His anger and his grief coursed through her like a current, and as dozens of scenes passed—the somber faces of his family, pastries and pinball, a terrible curse within a gifted ring—the force of them all threatened to drown her. She could nearly feel the dirt under his fingernails as he buried the ring and all that it meant.
And then she saw herself. Even though their conversation had left his thoughts tangled and uncertain, he had opened himself so willingly to her spell that she wasn’t prepared for how much she would find. She saw a self-destructive plan that made her furious. She saw desires that made her blush. It was all so twisted together, these wants to live and this willingness to die … until the moment Briony had given Alistair hope.
In front of them, the last of the magick siphoned into the Reaper’s Embrace. The stone pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat edging toward death.
“I want to live,” he said firmly. “I want us both to live. If you want to leave, then go. But I’ll stay. And, I think, so will you.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” she murmured. After the countless funerals she’d attended, she should’ve seen the grief in him before, recognized it for what it was. “But I can’t risk everything I’ve worked for because of some desperate plan.”
“Then what’s the point, if you’re resigned to being hopeless?” Alistair bit out his words, sounding cruel and threatening even though Isobel didn’t think he meant to. “Why even put off the inevitable? Let’s have our duel now.”
This time, when he reached for her, Isobel was too shocked to flinch away. He grabbed the cursestone from the board’s center and pressed it to his own throat, the Reaper’s Embrace pale and shimmering against his skin.
Her eyes widened, and she snatched the ring back. Only minutes ago, she had marveled at the power of the curse, but she would not use it on him. Not the boy who had sacrificed himself so she could make it.
When she didn’t cast an enchantment, Alistair said, “I don’t understand what you’re waiting for.”
Maybe Isobel should go. She could hunt down Elionor and Finley alone, while the others played make-believe.