To win, you had to be extraordinary. And he wasn’t.
For a moment, he wanted to surrender. To let death take him the way it had always been destined to: first. But that same stubborn determination that had brought him to Reid MacTavish’s curseshop refused to let him give up.
One more spell. One more. He took a deep breath and cast Trancewalker—a mild hypnosis spell, just enough to confuse an enemy while he escaped.
It worked. Elionor’s and Carbry’s eyes went glassy, and they both froze, looking bewildered. His arm was numb now, but his body still spasmed with the pain of refilling the spellring.
Gavin stumbled backward. He didn’t care about winning anymore. He just needed to run.
But before he could move any further, another burst of cursefire peppered the cobblestones at his feet.
“Shit!” Gavin snarled, turning. How many champions were in this alliance?
Briony Thorburn appeared at the edge of the courtyard. She was still wearing the skin-tight dress she’d had on the night before, but it was absolutely filthy, beads and fabric crusted with grime. A handful of spellrings glimmered on her fingers.
“You…” Elionor gasped at Briony as the Trancewalker began to wear off. “You stole your spellrings back.… Shit, my spell—”
“Stand back!” Briony snapped, raising her hands in the air.
Gavin had expected to face one champion, not four. He raised his shaking hands, panic surging through him, but he knew he couldn’t cast anything else. If his enchantments refilled themselves again, he’d pass out. And if he tried to take them off, he’d be defenseless.
He needed to run. Now.
Gavin dove through the doorway a moment before a fresh burst of cursefire rained down on the spot where he’d been standing. A curse struck his shoulder, then his back, as he bolted from the Monastery.
His journey back to the Castle was fueled by nothing but pure will. His new cursemarks burned with every step, and the pain in his arm was so excruciating that he had to fight to stay conscious.
All that kept him going was one simple thought.
This new power Reid had given him wasn’t what he’d expected. It was stronger, yes, but it was warped and broken. He needed to learn how to manage it in a fight. And if he did figure out how to claw his way to victory, he would make the cursemaker pay.
ALISTAIR LOWE
The spellmakers of Ilvernath denied interviews or requests from my publisher to comment for this book. Considering how the champions must rely on them for their survival, imagine what it takes to dub one a “favorite.” Imagine what it takes to turn a desperate child away.
A Tradition of Tragedy
Alistair hunched over his spellboard, all too aware of Isobel hovering beside him. He flipped through the pages of one of her mother’s grimoires to a water purifying spell. It had been a week since the tournament began and, according to the Cave’s pillar, no one had died. Alistair imagined that the other champions had also kept to the safety of their Landmarks, waiting for someone else to make a move.
And Alistair would have to make a move soon. The pair had depleted almost all of Isobel’s basic nourishment spells, and both were tired of subsisting on her meal replacement bars and Alistair’s instant noodles. The Cave, though aesthetic perfection, did admittedly lack the supplies of some of the other Landmarks.
“You need more spearmint leaves,” Isobel instructed him, nodding at the pile of dried herbs on one point of the spellboard’s septogram.
“I know what I’m doing.” Alistair didn’t care that Isobel was a trained spellmaker—he knew how to craft a class two Purify spell without her step-by-step guidance.
“I’m just showing you how to make it more effective.”
Then she reached forward and grabbed the sealed vial of leaves, but it tipped in her hands, and a flurry of mint dusted over him. He coughed and spit several bits out of his mouth.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. She reached down and brushed them off his sweater. Her hands found their way up as well, cleaning off his forehead and cheeks.
Alistair flushed at her touch. It was hard not to, the way her thumb lingered at the edge of his lips. And it was not the first time she’d touched him. At every opportunity, their hands or knees managed to graze. She’d wiped fallen eyelashes from his face for him to make a wish. Each night in bed, the distance between them seemed to grow smaller and smaller.
But as much as Isobel believed otherwise, Alistair was no fool. These endless, trivial instructions to prove her spellmaking expertise. These “accidental” excuses to make her seem anything other than an opponent.