Reid’s black-lined eyes widened. “You can’t be foolish enough to try and cast that spell on me. I’m warded.”
“I’m not.” Gavin took a deep breath, sucking the spell in. It tingled in his lungs like a hot beverage. Although he couldn’t see it, he knew a line of common magick was appearing on his throat—spells where you needed to touch the recipient usually left a mark. “I cast it on myself. Now listen. Either you’ll help me win the tournament, or I’ll find a way to do it alone. Maybe I’ll lose. But if this thing ends and I’m still alive, I will find you. Somewhere outside your safe, warded shop. And I’ll have just watched six people die, so…” He shrugged, magick flowing around him. The spell made the world feel strangely distant, like he was in the middle of a flowing stream, letting the current take him where it would. “I don’t think one more will weigh that heavily on my conscience.”
The spellmaker sighed after Gavin’s spell fizzled out. “You didn’t have to enchant yourself to prove your threat was real. And I should kick you out for it regardless.”
But he didn’t move. His piercing clinked against his teeth again. Gavin was starting to realize that meant Reid was thinking.
“You’re tough, I’ll give you that,” he said finally. “Stronger than I thought you were. And you’ll clearly do anything to stick it to the other families.”
“I will,” said Gavin, unsure if the cursemaker was praising him or damning him.
Something flickered in the depths of Reid’s eyes. “What if there was more to the tournament than winning it?”
Gavin frowned. “There is. There’s losing. My family literally wrote the book on it.”
“Hmm.” Reid fiddled with A Tradition of Tragedy’s worn cover. “You’re clearly tired of all of this. The same story over and over again. If you could change it—”
“I can change it,” Gavin said forcefully. “I can win this tournament. But I need your help.” He didn’t know how much longer even his meager pride could stand this. He locked eyes with Reid, waiting nervously—until the other boy finally broke their gaze.
“I won’t officially endorse you,” he said, and Gavin’s stomach dropped. “But I might have something to offer you. Something that will make you more powerful than any of the other champions.”
Gavin felt the slightest stirrings of hope, but he wasn’t foolish. No one would make an offer like that without some serious strings attached. “What’s the catch?”
“It’s not just any curse,” Reid said gravely, leaning over the counter. “It will turn you into a vessel. Still interested?”
The shadows in the spellshop suddenly seemed darker and longer, the cluttered shelves and countertops pressing in around Gavin’s field of vision. He was dimly aware of his heart ricocheting off his rib cage, of the way he’d frozen in place, stiff as a corpse.
It was a rumor spread in the back corner of a pub or in an alleyway over a shared cigarette, a story that everyone had somehow heard but no one could remember being told.
That if you knew how, you could draw raw magick from your own body to make your spells more powerful. Turn yourself into a vessel, capable of increasing the class of any spell you used—just like high magick. But with a terrible price.
Everyone who’s ever used it lost their mind, the whispers said. And then they lost their life.
But Gavin was already lost. “I’m in.”
“Then there’s no time to waste,” Reid said, disappearing through the velvet curtains. Gavin followed, wincing as the sudden rush of an enchantment coursed over him—some sort of teleportation spell.
The room he’d been transported to was a small, pristine space that reminded him of a physician’s office, right down to the smell of antiseptic. The only hint that there was more to it was the flasks of raw magick and spellboards stacked neatly on the shining white shelves.
Reid caught Gavin’s confused glance as he unfolded a cot in the corner. “Oh, the back room doesn’t always look like this. This is just where we work on our more … experimental cases.”
Gavin fought down the thought that Reid had wanted this all along. That Gavin had agreed to press the knife to his own throat.
“How exactly will this work?” he asked.
“Turning your body into a vessel requires a particular type of curse. I need to unlock your ability to access your own life force. After I’m done, you won’t need to collect or store raw magick anymore—you’ll be able to draw on yourself as a source for your magick, amplifying your spells. Everything you cast will be at least two or three classes higher than the original spell. It’s not as strong as high magick, but no one else in the tournament will have power like it.”