But before he could, Elionor uncurled and launched herself at Gavin, her lips bared in a snarl as she reached for the Mirror. She missed, but as Gavin lunged out of her path, her hand struck his arm instead. He growled like a wounded animal as agony bulleted through his nerves from his shoulder to his fingertips. He fell, and the Mirror fell beside him. Groaning, Gavin rolled over and reached for it.
But Elionor got to it first. She snatched it up and loomed over him. “Now it’s only two on one. Or one and a half,” she purred, smiling wickedly at Gavin. “I like those odds.”
ALISTAIR LOWE
Victor or not, a Lowe has never left the tournament without killing someone.
A Tradition of Tragedy
After abandoning the battle, Alistair walked wherever his feet chose to carry him. Because his familiarity with Ilvernath began and ended with the pub district, he was lost until the forest path approached the edge of town. In the distance, a translucent wall of crimson light separated the grounds of the tournament from Ilvernath proper, impenetrable to champions entering or townsfolk leaving.
A dead end.
He sighed and slumped against a tree, unsure where to go, unsure if he truly wanted to leave Isobel behind, unsure who he was supposed to be anymore.
Through the red field, he spotted the Champions Pillar in the square outside the banquet hall. How ironic that, as he fled from the tournament, he was drawn back here, to the place where it had started.
He thought of Carbry Darrow’s crossed-out name compared to the dozens of Lowe names. Something burned in him knowing that his was included among them. He didn’t want this anymore. Not his family, not this story. Briony’s plan seemed like the only way to escape from it, but no one else believed her. No one else even wanted to.
He’d never felt more hopeless.
His gaze found something strange on the Pillar—another crack. Not just the ones beside Briony’s name and at its base, like he had noticed on the matching pillars in the Cave and the Castle. But a third. It trailed up the length of the stone like a vein and pulsed with light.
Maybe it is breaking, Alistair thought. After the Blood Veil had flickered earlier, it was the only explanation that made sense, even if it happened to be the one he wanted.
As though in answer, a cool wind blew from the west, caressing the hairs on the back of his neck.
Alistair, whispered a voice from nowhere. Chills crept up his spine, and he dug his fingernails into his thighs, his stomach filling with dread. The voice was a rasp, as unsettling as trees scratching against window glass, or the howl of a wolf in the distance.
You really are losing it, he thought to himself. Just like Aunt Alphina.
“Alistair!” a different voice called through the trees behind him. He recognized it as Isobel’s. She’d run after him, but for what? To kiss him? To kill him? His hope and dread tangled into something indistinguishable from each other.
“Alistair! Alistair, run!”
A death curse tore through the courtyard toward him, and he saw a flash of blond hair between the trees. Alistair scrambled out of the curse’s path, skirting the high magick wall, then he tripped and fell. He threw his arms out, expecting to crash into the town’s magickal force field, but instead he fell through it, onto the edge of the square.
Behind him, an ancient oak split down the middle, its bark unwinding like skin being flayed layer by layer.
His thoughts spun in dizzying shock. Alistair looked up to see who had cast the curse, still astonished that he’d passed through the Blood Veil … when another chill swept over him.
Alistair, the voice whispered again from nowhere.
He whipped his head around, but there was no monster—only Gavin. He stood in front of the hole Alistair had made in the Blood Veil—a messy thing, as if someone had torn a scrap of paper. The other boy walked through it, then glared at Alistair with a wild look in his eyes.
“Y-you,” Alistair stuttered. “I—How did I—”
“You just left us behind,” Gavin told him, seething, somehow unbothered by the fact that the Blood Veil had torn. “I didn’t think you actually would.”
“So you’re going to kill me?” Alistair asked from the ground.
“I wasn’t aiming at you,” he growled.
Alistair got up and turned to see Elionor several meters away in the forest, the Mirror clutched in her hand. When he’d left the Monastery, he thought he was leaving her to die. The Payne must have been tougher than he thought, to have faced down both Gavin and Isobel.
Elionor stared at the two boys through the Veil with wide eyes, then peered at the hole, the Mirror dropping to her side. She looked as shocked as Alistair felt.