It didn’t erase the harm she’d caused. But at least, at last, she’d done something right.
Beside her, Finley cast a quick heat spell that dried out their clothes and hair. The blood had been an illusion, but the smell of it lingered in Briony’s throat all the same.
“Thank you,” she murmured as Finley tucked the spellstone away. “You believed me, even though you had every reason not to.”
“I never could’ve lived with myself knowing that there was a way to stop this, even a hypothetical one, and not trying it.”
“Well. It’s not so hypothetical anymore.”
Briony gave Finley a hesitant smile, feeling gratified when he returned it. She couldn’t help the way her heart rattled in her chest when she looked at him, how his touch had been comforting even in the midst of unfathomable horror.
But that moment in the Cave had surely been just that. A moment.
Pushing aside her feelings, she said, “Let’s go end this.” Briony thought of a world in twenty years where a Blood Moon did not rise. Where for the first time in centuries, the seven families of Ilvernath could choose a story free of slaughter.
GAVIN GRIEVE
The bodies of the victims lie there for however long the tournament lasts, left to rot.
A Tradition of Tragedy
Gavin dreamed he languished at the bottom of a pit. Strands of purple and green snared around his wrists, his calves, his abdomen, taking over his body the way they’d already taken over his arm. He screamed in pain as they pinned him to the ground. Thrashed his head from side to side as the veins crawled up his face. Even if he hadn’t yet consumed the last of his life magick, his body couldn’t stop the magick from consuming him.
And then something brushed against his cheek. He was unaccustomed to physical affection, and this touch felt like electricity against his skin. Like a rope thrown down to him from a world above, one where he wouldn’t be in agony anymore. He tried to move his arm and found he could, then his leg, and suddenly the magick receded.
“Gavin?” a voice asked, with what Gavin guessed was genuine concern. He’d never heard it before.
His eyes opened. There was a face hovering over his own, a hand cupped around his cheek. Alistair Lowe’s widow’s peak and deep gray eyes. Alistair Lowe’s surprisingly soft palm. The fact that Gavin had found that momentarily comforting was somehow worse than the fact that he’d been on the verge of death.
“Don’t touch me!” Gavin scrambled away from Alistair, trying not to show his immense embarrassment. His shirt and pants were stained where he’d hit the ground, his temples throbbing with pain. Whatever healing spell Alistair had cast on him wasn’t finished, but Gavin couldn’t let Alistair get that close to him again.
Not if it meant Alistair might see what Gavin had done to himself. To his magick.
“You’re welcome,” Alistair muttered, and after what had happened between them last night, Gavin almost felt sorry.
“I thought you didn’t know my name,” Gavin accused.
Alistair rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know your name, you absolute gremlin.” Then his eyes widened, fixed on something behind Gavin. In an instant, a shield spell sprang around the two of them, and without asking Gavin’s permission, Alistair grabbed him by the hand and yanked him to his feet.
A curse struck the shield. Dizzy, still clutching his tattooed arm, Gavin whipped around. He’d been so distracted by Alistair and his magick that he’d forgotten Elionor reflecting his spell at him and knocking him out.
Several paces away, Isobel had backed Elionor against what remained of the stone wall of the Monastery, while the flames continued to rage farther back in the Landmark. Elionor’s chest heaved. Her black clothes were covered in soot and grime, the bags under her eyes purple and puffy. But the Mirror, still clenched in her right hand, rebounded Isobel’s curses back at her.
“Where’s Finley?” Gavin asked. They’d expected to find both of them here.
Isobel gritted her teeth, focused on the battle. “He’s gone.”
Gavin swore under his breath. But at least they’d slay one champion this morning. He cast the Chimera’s Bite—another Alistair cursestone—on Elionor while she was trying to defend against Isobel. She blocked it, but not fast enough—a gash appeared on her arm, a cursemark glowing around it. A rush of satisfaction welled in him when he realized he, a Grieve, had managed to draw blood from every champion. Gavin remembered Carbry, gasping in panic when Gavin breached the Monastery; Briony and Isobel fleeing from his cursefire on the moors; Alistair’s glass shattering in his hand; and Finley scrambling for his Sword.