There was no point in arguing about the morality of the curse. It was what it was, and Gavin wasn’t going to feel guilty about wanting to survive it.
He was turning away from the yelling when someone slammed into his tattooed arm.
It hurt, and he turned to tell them so—then realized who was standing in front of him, pale and ghostlike in the glow of the lanterns.
Alistair Lowe.
He looked even crueler in person than he did in photographs, with his dark, slicked-back hair emphasizing his sharp widow’s peak and the angular slant of his nose. Although he was shorter than Gavin, he still managed to look down at him. He’d only been publicly named champion that morning, yet Gavin had heard his name on nearly everyone’s lips tonight.
“You almost made me spill my drink.”
Gavin looked down and realized Alistair was clutching his half-empty glass as if it were a close friend.
“I’m pretty sure,” Gavin said, “that you’re the one who bumped into me.”
Fury flitted across Alistair’s face. “As if I could’ve missed you in that tawdry excuse for a suit.”
Gavin realized Alistair was swaying back and forth, ever so slightly. He wondered what possible reason the favorite to win this tournament had for getting dead drunk right before it started.
Maybe he was just that certain he would win.
The thought bolstered Gavin’s constantly simmering rage. This boy had everything, and he had nothing. Alistair was handsome and disdainful in his tailored gray suit, and he was looking at Gavin as if he were an ant, something not even threatening enough to step on.
Gavin leaned forward, summoning his magick. Power flooded through him, his spellring buzzing with more energy than he’d thought possible. His breaths became slightly labored, as if he were underwater, and then Alistair’s arm froze.
All he’d meant to do was cast Hold in Place, but when Gavin’s anger surged again, his new powers surged with it, coursing through the spellstone. Rather than Alistair freezing, the drink in Alistair’s hand shattered.
Whisky and glass rained everywhere. Several shards sliced Alistair’s palm, leaving a smear of blood across his skin. Dimly, Gavin registered the flash of a camera somewhere behind them.
“Oops,” Gavin whispered, a rush of satisfaction coursing through him. “Looks like you spilled your own drink after all.”
Alistair’s eyes met his, but they didn’t look rattled.
They looked lethal.
“For that,” he said, each word enunciated with a careful sort of rage, “I will kill you slowly.”
Gavin’s tattoo started to throb again as the spellring refilled itself. But he didn’t care. Standing chest to chest with Alistair Lowe, with Alistair drunk and off-balance and himself victorious, he felt more powerful than he ever had.
“Weren’t you going to do that anyway?” he asked, grinning.
Alistair let out a noise that might’ve been a snarl and stalked away. Gavin looked around—people were staring—and stumbled to the line of trees at the edge of the square. Here he was finally, blessedly out of sight. Even so, he heard scraps of the protestors’ conversations.
“Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that most of them look alike? As a group, they’re generally very … pale.”
“Probably from them all marrying each other for a thousand years. I mean, would you want to wed into one of those families? Knowing this could be one of your kids someday?”
“Fair enough,” the first voice murmured. “And that Darrow boy, only fifteen … It’s unthinkable.…”
Gavin’s tattoo pulsed with a fresh jolt of pain, and he let out a muffled curse. He tuned the voices out, shrugged off his blazer, and hastily rolled up his shirtsleeve.
The tattoo had moved again. Gavin stared at the grains of sand clumped in the bottom of the hourglass, feeling sick.
He’d drained part of his life force away just to make Alistair Lowe take him seriously. He’d mutilated himself just to make Ilvernath take him seriously.
But at least it was working.
Gavin yanked down his sleeve and stalked back inside.
ALISTAIR LOWE
High magick fell from the stars, and when we found it, we did what humans always do. We decided it was ours to claim.
A Tradition of Tragedy
Alistair sat at his family’s banquet table, surrounded by those who had murdered his brother.
He was wearing his best. The gray suit, freshly pressed, was tailored perfectly to fit his slender shoulders. His dark hair was combed back, sharpening the hollows of his cheeks. The cursering holding the Lamb’s Sacrifice on his fourth finger felt heavy as he clenched his fist.