She can’t have learned much, he thought. Otherwise, she’d be afraid.
Isobel smiled smugly. “Maybe it’s you who should be afraid of me.”
Alistair swore silently. Of course the spell hadn’t ended yet.
And with that, she left, heels clicking on the tiled floor. Alistair stared as she disappeared out the door, strangely disappointed to see her go. Their nighttime excursions were rarely so entertaining.
Once she left, Alistair felt the gazes of the room hot against his skin, and he suddenly wished he hadn’t worn such a heavy sweater. He heard a few of their whispers: “terrible,” “heartless,” “cruel.” Beneath the smoke-hazy neon lights, those words felt more real than their family’s usual bedtime stories. Harsher. He tried not to flinch.
Hendry pursed his lips. “The Asp’s Fang? She’ll be unwell for days, and she’s another champion.” His brother shot him a wary look. “Some might call that cheating.”
Alistair shrugged and finished his beer. Unlike Isobel, he genuinely didn’t care what the world thought of him. “She saw it coming, otherwise she wouldn’t have shaken my hand.” He tugged his sleeve to conceal the spellmark she’d left on him. Though he’d never have dreamed it, there might be another champion as cunning as he was. Almost.
“You are a monster.” Hendry swallowed the dregs of his glass and hiccuped. “Rotten to the core.”
Even though Alistair knew his brother was joking, he suddenly was no longer in the mood to laugh. “I’m blushing.”
“You’re absurd.”
“You’re drunk.” And from one pint of ale, no less.
When Alistair turned, he came face-to-face with the bright flash of a disposable camera clutched in the greasy fingers of a cursechaser.
Rage surged through him. The world hadn’t paid Ilvernath a passing thought for hundreds of years. Not its bizarre natural phenomena. Not its whispered fairy tales. Not the blood splattered across the secret pages of its history.
Until now.
“I hate that fucking book,” Alistair growled. Then he seized Hendry by the shoulders and steered him out of the bar. If that photo was in the papers tomorrow, his grandmother would kill him.
It must’ve been the fury in Alistair’s tone that made Hendry stop once they were outside.
“Al,” he said in a low voice. “If you ever want to talk about the tournament—really talk about it—I’m here. I’ll listen.”
Alistair swallowed. The Lowes had prepared Alistair for this tournament his entire life, cultivated fear and fostered ruthlessness, teaching a child to twist the stories that scared him into ones he told about himself. They didn’t accept weakness from a champion. Hendry was—and had always been—Alistair’s only confidante.
Alistair wanted to win the tournament for many reasons. He wanted to survive, of course. He wanted to make his family proud. He wanted to return to his brother for nights like this one, drunken pinball and shared secrets at a local pub, pretending to live the life of normalcy they’d never had.
But most of all, he hated to imagine his brother grieving him. They had never been without each other.
“I will talk to you,” Alistair murmured. “But not tonight.” There was no need to spoil a rare night of freedom. Especially when it could be their last.
“If that’s what you want,” Hendry answered.
Alistair grinned mischievously. “What I want is another round. Let’s find another pub, with fewer tourists.”
And so, two hours later, their heads buzzing, the white kiss still stained on Alistair’s wrist, the Lowe brothers returned home to their bleak estate.
Each one, in very different ways, dreamed of death.
ISOBEL MACASLAN
Though it was seven great families who originally founded the tournament, it’s important to remember—that was a long time ago. Not all of them have remained great.
A Tradition of Tragedy
The funeral party flocked around the grave as the pallbearers lowered the casket into the earth. The weather was dreary and damp, heeled shoes sinking into mud, the grass field trodden and flooded, black umbrellas raised skyward. Funerals in Ilvernath were solemn, traditional affairs of veils and pearls and handkerchiefs. Families had lived here so long that many had designated burial grounds, where descendants could be entombed beside their ancestors.
Atop the hill overlooking the graveyard, the Macaslan family watched, licking their lips.
The Macaslans were a vile lot—stringy red hair, bulging purple veins, reeking of the most expensive yet repulsive cologne money could buy. There was no funeral in Ilvernath they didn’t attend, but it wasn’t to pay their respects.