“How did you do that?” she asked.
“The Veil has been messed up for a while,” Gavin said. Then he motioned for Elionor to come closer. “Well? What are you waiting for? Come get us.”
Elionor reached forward and tore a gash in the Veil with her long fingernails. She stepped through it with a nasty smile on her face, but before she could reach them or cast a curse, Isobel appeared through the trees. “Me first.”
“I’m not taking requests,” Elionor hissed.
Isobel’s eyes briefly found Alistair’s, the shield of scarlet between them, and for a moment she froze. Alistair didn’t know why the barrier around town would tear and let them inside, but if something was wrong with the tournament’s curse, that proved it was not indestructible, that Briony was right and it could be broken. Finally, Isobel would have to see that.
Alistair’s mouth was dry. “We shouldn’t be able to…”
But Isobel turned back to Elionor.
And Alistair realized that what had happened between them in the Cave really had been a fantasy. They were too different. Alistair had spent his entire life fashioning himself out of the glamour and allure of stories. Isobel couldn’t even see that their own story was fraying at the seams. And she probably never would.
“Let’s finish this,” Isobel told Elionor coolly, stepping through the hole the other champion had torn.
The Mirror’s and Cloak’s defensive powers made them a good match for each other. A flurry of curses shot through the air in brilliant flashes of white and red.
As Alistair staggered away from them, farther into the square, the air in the courtyard trembled. A strong gust of wind blew his hair into his eyes, strewed fallen leaves across the streets, whistled between the creaky shutters. Flurries like snowflakes swept past them, except it wasn’t snow. They were dull and lifeless as ash, like pieces of burnt paper wafting into the evening light, and they were red like dried flecks of blood.
“Is this raw high magick?” Gavin asked, his eyes wide.
Alistair knew a lot about high magick. Like common magick, it was perceived as a glimmer, like pieces of glitter suspended in the breeze. The scarlet color might’ve been right, but it wasn’t supposed to look like decay.
The back-and-forth curses between Elionor and Isobel stopped.
“What is this?” Elionor called, her voice high-pitched and frightened. “Did you do this?”
“I didn’t,” Isobel answered. Though panting from their fight, her face had gone ghostly pale.
Monsters aren’t real, Alistair told himself desperately. In that moment, he was locked in his childhood bedroom with the window open and his mother’s warnings creeping in his mind. He was in the lake waiting for the leviathan’s approach. He was trapped in the woods, buried alive, locked in the darkness.
“Alistair,” that voice whispered again, this time louder. And clearer.
“What was that?” Gavin asked. The two boys took several nervous steps backward, colliding with each other. They braced themselves, back to back. The Champions Pillar loomed over them.
Alistair swallowed. He had no answer.
The doors to the banquet hall flung open. The lights of the building were off, leaving only darkness.
“Grins like goblins,” the voice murmured. “Pale as plague and silent as spirits.”
Alistair stiffened. He knew that voice.
A silhouette appeared in the shadows.
“They’ll tear your throat and drink your soul.”
The figure stepped forward into the red daylight. He tilted his head to the side, his curls falling lazily over his eyes. His fair skin was tanned and freckled from afternoons spent napping outdoors, his cheeks sunken but otherwise rosy with life. His expression was caught in a smile—as it always was—but it wasn’t as bright a smile as it had been before.
A scar was etched across his neck. Deep. Red. Lethal.
“Al,” Hendry Lowe said hoarsely, “it’s me.”
A tremor shot through Alistair, quaking in his heart.
Except for the scar, his brother looked just as he’d last seen him, only two weeks prior. He even wore the same clothes he had that day the spellmakers visited—a gray sweater and dark-washed jeans.
“But you’re…” His voice trailed off, his mouth gone dry.
“You’re the other Lowe, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be able to interfere,” Elionor told him, anxiously eyeing his scar. “It shouldn’t be possible.”
But Alistair didn’t care what was possible. He felt like the other half of his heart, of his soul, had been delivered to him once again. He was four, his brother’s arms wrapped around his shaking shoulders during a tumultuous thunderstorm. He was eight, playing the dragon who fought the knight, laughing as he dodged his brother’s halfhearted blows. He was sixteen and they were drunkenly stumbling out of their favorite pub, arm in arm.