The ground beneath his feet tremored, and he accidentally slammed into Alistair’s side, breaking Alistair’s concentration and making the shield fall.
“What’s going on?” Isobel asked.
“I don’t—” Alistair began, but then the sky above them flickered—red to white and back again. So fast that had Gavin blinked, he would’ve missed it.
The quaking stopped, and for several heartbeats, all four of them were still. Elionor had fallen to her knees. Isobel was braced, as though waiting for the earth to shake again. Alistair gaped openmouthed at the sky.
Taking advantage of their distraction, Gavin shoved Alistair out of his way. He didn’t have Revenge of the Forsaken anymore, but he’d taken a different death curse from Alistair, the Guillotine’s Gift, and he aimed it at Elionor. It fell through the air, a blade of white. Elionor dove out of the way. A gash sliced across her neck, but she’d avoided the full brunt of the curse. She gasped, trembling, and her grip on the Mirror loosened as she stumbled.
Ignoring the pain in his arm, Gavin lunged forward and wrestled the Mirror out of Elionor’s grasp. He overpowered her easily, then stumbled backward, clutching the handle in his fist. It was useless to him right now, but if Gavin was the one to kill Elionor, the ownership of the Mirror would transfer to him.
Elionor, still bleeding on the ground beside them, stiffened as Gavin readied himself to cast the curse again, this time aiming for her throat.
But before he could, Alistair grabbed him by the shoulder and wrenched him around. Gavin stifled a scream as his tattoo throbbed beneath Alistair’s grasp.
“Stop,” Alistair breathed. “Both of you—you can’t go through with this. Not if there’s a chance that Briony could be right.”
“What are you doing?” Isobel asked, as though she hadn’t heard him right. Gavin wasn’t sure he had, either.
Alistair jabbed his finger at the sky. “You saw what happened to the Blood Veil. You felt the ground shake. What do you think that was?”
“How could that be Briony?” Gavin asked. “She’s still locked in—”
“Because I…” Alistair swallowed. “I set her free.”
“You did what?” Isobel seethed.
“Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean there’s no hope. It could change. We could change it.”
Alistair’s anguish was visible and real, and the idea that Alistair didn’t want bloodshed but Gavin did infuriated him. His entire life, his role had been written for him. A Grieve. A loser. A dead boy walking. And Gavin might’ve wanted to change his story, but the Lowe champion, the enemy, shouldn’t want to. He didn’t deserve to. Slaying Alistair had always been the ultimate prize, and Gavin had not spent his life battling his conscience and fear into submission for Alistair to take away everything that prize had meant to him.
“Alistair,” Isobel murmured. “You can’t run from the tournament.”
“Am I the only one who saw what happened to the sky?” he growled. “Have either of you ever heard of anything like that before?”
Beneath him, Elionor let out a hacking cough and spit a mouthful of blood onto the grass. “Don’t tell me that Briony got to you, too? Pathetic.”
A dark expression crossed Alistair’s face. Gavin preferred it.
“Get out of the way, Lowe,” Gavin threatened. “Or I’ll cast your own curse on you.”
“Don’t do this,” Isobel breathed, and Gavin struggled to tell who she was talking to—Alistair or him.
Gavin knew it was a bad idea to curse Alistair, especially if it made an enemy of Isobel, too. His magick had already come close to consuming him once. And Gavin couldn’t survive this tournament alone.
“If you’re not going to fight with us,” he spat at Alistair, “then you’re not part of this alliance.”
Alistair glanced to Isobel, trying to gauge her reaction.
“Please don’t make me,” she said softly. “I don’t want to fight you. But what you’re doing … You’re not giving me a choice.”
Alistair swayed a moment, as though dizzy. “Fine,” he said tightly. “But there’s always a choice.”
And then he turned on his heel and walked away, clearly daring them to attack him.
Isobel had turned a faint shade of green, but Gavin refused to lose his focus. He took a threatening step closer to Elionor, who was curled into a ball on the ground in front of the Monastery. It was time to show Ilvernath—show the whole world—what he was capable of.