Innes stretched out a hand toward her sister, fingers clawing at the air in a last, feeble grab for magick—and then collapsed onto the flagstones.
Briony stood there for a moment, feeling ill.
“Well,” she murmured to herself. “Let’s finish this.”
She gulped down a surge of nausea as she knelt beside her sister’s unconscious body.
The champion’s ring glimmered on Innes’s pinky finger, its scarlet stone shining in the setting sun. They were nearly out of time.
She gripped the ring and tugged, but it did not give. She pulled harder, Innes’s hand limp beneath hers, then froze. This was what Innes had meant when she’d said she couldn’t give Briony the title even if she wanted to. The champion’s ring couldn’t be removed.
But Briony knew how powerful the Deathly Slumber was. If she left Innes there, outside the border of the tournament grounds, she would automatically forfeit her life when the Blood Veil fell. And if she dragged Innes into the boundary and left her there, even with a camouflage spell, the other champions would pick her off within minutes.
Then Innes’s death would be Briony’s fault.
No, she had to see this through. She’d already betrayed Innes. Already gone against her family’s wishes.
There was no question—Briony needed to remove the champion’s ring. And if the ring’s power was what bound Innes to the tournament, maybe Briony could sever that connection.
Sever.
Briony stared at her sister’s hand, bile rising in her throat a second time.
Knocking Innes unconscious was one thing. Mutilating her was another.
But it was the only option that could save her life.
“She’ll understand one day,” Briony whispered, mentally sorting through her spellrings. “They all will.”
At least Innes would feel no pain. She laid her sister’s hand out across the flagstones, carefully separating the pinky on her left hand, and summoned the Mirror Shards.
A line of white magick appeared in the air a moment later, in the approximate shape of a jagged shard of glass. Briony’s brow furrowed in concentration—she’d never done something this precise before. She lowered it to just above Innes’s hand, then swallowed.
It was too late to turn back now.
So Briony did not close her eyes, did not flinch, as she lowered the makeshift knife.
Blood pooled from the wound. Briony hastily cast a Healer’s Touch on Innes’s hand, a spell she’d only ever used for athletic injuries, then wrapped it in a strip of cloth torn from the hem of her dress.
Her sister’s finger lay on the ground, a sliver of bone peeking out from the bloody flesh.
The world around Briony went fuzzy, and she took a deep breath, forcing her heartbeat to slow.
She was so close to finishing this. So close.
She gritted her teeth, picked up the finger, and slid the ring over the bone at the edge of the pinky. The digit was still warm to the touch. Briony bundled the finger in more cloth and placed it in her sister’s outstretched palm.
She slid the ring onto her own pinky, and a strange warmth spread through her, tingling in her toes and fingertips. Then she stepped up to the Champions Pillar and cast the Mirror Shards again, gripping the glass so hard it cut her. With her and Innes’s blood both smeared across her palm, Briony struck out Innes’s name on the stone and carved her own beneath it.
Briony felt the change as soon as she finished the final letter. The ground rumbled and shook beneath her with a quaking groan. Then the evening stilled once more.
Now that it was done, she needed to take care of Innes. She fumbled through her spellrings, found a fire spell, and sent up a shower of sparks.
It would draw people to the square like a beacon. Hopefully, an experienced healer could reattach Innes’s finger. Either way, it would not be long before they discovered what Briony had done.
Now she needed to get out of here, fast.
Crack.
Briony’s head jerked to the source of the sound. It hadn’t been loud, but it still shook Briony down to her bones. Where she had carved her name on the Champions Pillar, just at the edge of the final n, a crack crept down the stone. It was small, about seven or eight centimeters long, but an ominous red emanated from it, like a throbbing vein of light.
“Shit,” Briony breathed. It had worked—she was a champion. But she’d done something irrevocable, something wrong.
As the Blood Veil darkened the sky above her head, Briony pushed her doubts aside and headed into the woods. She had no supplies, no enchantments but the rings on her hands, no clothes but the ones on her back. But it didn’t matter.