Alistair’s nails were also brown with dirt. His hair was greasy. His sweater was torn and stained where Elionor’s curse had struck him in the gut. Even he knew, no matter how much good he did, he would always look like a villain. He would always be a Lowe. Isobel had proved that he couldn’t convince anyone of anything.
“I have to stay behind,” he told her. “The Castle is a Lowe favorite— I know the wards will only trip if someone comes in, not if someone goes out. And since they’ll still think you’re here, it’ll give you a head start to go find your allies. They both have Relics, don’t they?”
“Allies,” she murmured. “I … I’m not sure I have those anymore.”
“You have one,” he said quietly.
Her lips quirked into something resembling a smile. “I’ll do my best to convince them. Well, convince Finley. I don’t think Elionor can be swayed.”
Alistair thought of the night before—what he could remember of it, anyway. The Payne definitely hadn’t seemed like the easily convinced type.
“Can you test your theory before there’s a battle?” he asked. Isobel and the Grieve were preparing to leave in only a few hours, and Alistair didn’t know how to stop them.
“Probably not,” Briony said darkly. “But I’ll try.”
The only way Alistair could protect Isobel and the Grieve was to be on the battlefield beside them. But the moment they realized what he’d done, he would be their enemy, too.
“Then hurry,” he choked.
Briony walked to the stairwell, then she turned around. “Thank you,” she told him, before fleeing up the stairs.
Left alone in the dungeon, Alistair’s monster stories returned to him. Shadows danced in the corners of his vision, and he glimpsed a familiar, ghostly silhouette.
“Can the tournament really be broken?” he whispered to Hendry. He knew it was only his imagination, his grief, but it still felt good to ask his brother for advice. Whenever Alistair got carried away with a story, Hendry had always been the one armed with reason.
But the shadows didn’t answer, and as Alistair climbed back up to the Castle, all he heard was his brother’s laugh.
BRIONY THORBURN
The Blairs who’ve won the tournament have almost always done so through an alliance.
A Tradition of Tragedy
The sunlight on the moors shone more brightly than Briony had grown accustomed to over the past several weeks. She’d cast the Compass Rose a little while ago, a tracking spell she’d borrowed at the Monastery that required something of the person she was looking for. Finley had lent her a spellring, and that was enough for it to work—a line of silvery white had looped around her wrist and shot off into the distance. She followed it across the rugged landscape, her stomach churning.
Isobel had betrayed her. Alistair had freed her. And even though Briony had taken her spellrings and fled, she couldn’t shake Isobel’s words back in the Castle. But Alistair was counting on her, and she didn’t want the risk he’d taken to be in vain. So she soldiered onward, trying to push her fears away.
Her senses flared with warning, a shiver running down her spine. The spell changed a moment later, and a second line of magick wrapped around her wrist.
Finley Blair appeared at the crest of a distant hill. Silver stretched between them, binding them with a cord of magick. Briony watched him approach. Something inside her withered as he coiled his finger around the edge of the spell and snapped it in two. There was no emotion on his face at all.
Briony hoped he could see the honesty on hers.
“I don’t want to fight you,” she said quietly.
Finley’s hand clenched around the hilt of his sheathed Sword—then released it, his head bowing slightly as he closed the distance between them. They stopped less than a meter apart. Briony felt exposed out here in such a large, open space. Nowhere to run, even though she’d brought this confrontation upon herself.
“So it was all a trick,” he said matter-of-factly, as though he had already made up his mind. “You only allied with us until the Relic you wanted fell.”
“That’s not what happened,” Briony said. “I told you the truth. I want to end the tournament. Elionor manipulated me, then made it look like I betrayed you.”
“How can I possibly believe that?”
“Your truth spell—”
“I don’t care what you meant to do.” Finley’s neutral expression wavered. “I care about what actually happened. You told me there was a chance Carbry wouldn’t have to die, and then you killed him yourself.”