“I have been inside it. Who do you think hinted to Briony that the tournament could be broken?” he asked, and his tone made Isobel’s skin crawl. “Who do you think made a Grieve so powerful? Who gave you the idea to go seek out Alistair Lowe? The Null and Void spell never would have worked, you know, princess.”
Isobel’s already cold blood ran colder. He’d tricked her? He’d led her to Alistair?
She glanced at the spellrings on her hand. But the few enchantments she had left wouldn’t hold against the arsenal of an accomplished cursemaker. Not in a real fight.
And so, deftly, she reached forward and took Reid’s hand. He jolted, surprised by the touch, but before he could pull his hand away, the magick of the Divining Kiss had already seeped out of its spellring. It was her final charge before she would need to refill it; the spellstone flickered, then dimmed. Reid stiffened as white lips appeared on the inside of his wrist, in the shape of Isobel’s own.
A handful of Reid’s thoughts from the past few minutes tumbled into Isobel’s mind, one after the other. And with them, the secrets he’d withheld.
Then Isobel’s otherwise still heart gave a terrified clench. She wrenched her hand back and slid as far from the cursemaker as she could. She needed to flee. She needed to warn Briony and Finley. All the champions were in danger, and not because of one another.
“You wrote the book,” she hissed. “It wasn’t a Grieve. It was you. Why?”
Reid’s expression turned furious. He grabbed her by the forearm and yanked her forward, his nails digging into her skin. Isobel considered screaming for help, but she sensed a shield spell descending over the room, locking the two of them inside behind the black velvet curtains. She had a terrible feeling only one of them would make it out.
“Because when the tournament collapses and the rest of you die,” Reid growled, “the high magick your families have hoarded for so long will be visible to everyone. And I will be the one who controls it.”
ALISTAIR LOWE
I think, deep down, some people don’t want their stories to have happy endings.
A Tradition of Tragedy
As the boys approached, a chilling breeze tore through the October morning, and the wrought iron gates of the Lowe estate creaked open to welcome them home.
The first boy took a deep breath and squinted up at the sun as though he hadn’t seen it in a long time. It was on a morning like this one that he’d been betrayed, and after, there had been nothing but the dark.
The second boy shivered at the reminder of his days in this place, of hours spent sequestered in its shadowy alcoves. Every arduous lesson, every haunting story was intended to shape him into a deadly weapon.
When the two brothers—the discarded and the broken—returned home, they did so with cursestones in their pockets and wrath in their hearts.
But as they crossed the gate, Alistair Lowe hesitated.
“Are you sure?” Hendry breathed.
Alistair had never been more sure of anything. All his childhood spent in terror over the nightmares threatening to torture him or devour him or take him away, and he had never realized the greatest evil was within this estate, not outside it.
The nightmares had not taught him to fear the dark.
The nightmares had taught him to become it.
The magick of the tournament was ancient and binding, yet Alistair, a champion, walked freely onto his family’s grounds. The fabric of it all was breaking.
But if the tournament ended, then Hendry would, too.
“I am,” Alistair answered. “But it’s still your choice. You don’t have to.”
Hendry looked coolly at the bleak estate. “I need to see them. I need to hear them tell me why.”
“But you know why.”
Hendry sighed. “I guess I need to hear it, anyway.”
Even at the entrance to their home, Alistair couldn’t imagine facing their family, either. When he’d resigned himself to dying in the tournament, he had thought he’d never have to see them again.
In one hand, he clutched the front page of the Ilvernath Eclipse. But his hand did not look normal. The fingertips had gone white as frost, the symptom of a curse that killed its victims slowly rather than all at once. And it would certainly kill him—Alistair had helped Isobel study the curse enough to understand its power.
Most of the page was taken up by a massive photograph. Alistair on his knees, Isobel limp and half dead in his arms, their lips locked in a kiss. Briony’s spell had missed someone’s camera. They must’ve been delighted when they developed their film and saw their next headline waiting for them.