“And being totally pathetic in battle?”
“Pathetic is better than dead.”
“No, pathetic leads to dead.” Gavin scowled. “Why didn’t you warn me this might happen?”
“Would you have chosen not to go through with it if I had?”
His words made Gavin pause.
The truth was, he’d come to the MacTavish curseshop out of desperation. He would’ve agreed to anything. There was no price too high. No line he wouldn’t cross.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “I would’ve done it anyway.”
Reid’s smile was a little smug, and a little sad. “Then why are you complaining?”
The hourglass pulsed painfully on Gavin’s shoulder. He didn’t have an answer. Instead, he opted for another question.
“How is it even possible that I’m here?”
“I’m not completely sure,” Reid answered. “But my best guess is that because you’re working with something that’s not exactly common magick, not exactly high magick, the tournament’s curse doesn’t know what to do with you. You’re bending its rules.”
Gavin contemplated this. He was still confused about how it had interfered with the rules of the tournament. It seemed inconsistent. He’d managed to claim a Landmark; he’d carved his name into the Pillar and received a champion’s ring. But he could speak to someone other than a competitor. He could pass through the barrier.
Holy shit. He could pass through the barrier.
“Do you think I could run?” he asked Reid. “Just … leave the tournament completely?”
He had never before considered that he could find a way out of this. The shreds of hope within him felt painful—he hadn’t even known they were still there. He’d forgotten how to feel like there was anything in his future aside from bloodshed.
“Maybe,” Reid said carefully. “But if it worked, there’s a chance that would automatically forfeit your spot in the tournament, and then … well, the enchantment would take someone else.”
Gavin pushed his hope back down. There was only one other Grieve of tournament age: his little brother. Gavin might not have wished himself a champion in the tournament, but he didn’t want Fergus to die in his stead.
“So then what’s the point of any of this?” he muttered, feeling foolish for hoping at all. “My magick is stronger, sure, but I have so much less of it than anyone else.”
“You came here because you didn’t want to be like the rest of your family. Isn’t that the point?”
His words reawakened the reasons Gavin had made this bargain at all. To make himself powerful enough to stand a fighting chance. If that meant swallowing more pride and being careful about managing his spellrings, so be it. The other champions wouldn’t be able to laugh at him if they were dead.
There was nothing else for him here. He took a deep breath and turned to leave, but like the last time he visited Reid’s shop, that same row of curserings on the shelves caught his eye. They didn’t just look similar to him now—they looked familiar. He was pretty sure he’d seen one of those distinctive MacTavish rings in the tournament, but he couldn’t remember who it had belonged to.
“You didn’t help any other champions,” he said abruptly, turning back. “Did you?”
Reid dragged his gaze up to him. “None of the other champions who came to me, no.”
That was carefully worded. Maybe because Reid remembered that Gavin carried a truth spell on him, although Gavin didn’t want to waste magick on that. It didn’t seem worth pressing the issue by asking, either. But Gavin trusted his gut. And his gut said something was strange about all of this.
“All right then.” Gavin did his best to copy Alistair Lowe’s threatening smile. “Well, now that I know I can visit you … I suppose I might have to take advantage of that again.”
Reid’s smile was equally barbed. “I look forward to it.”
As Gavin passed through the barrier and trekked back to the Castle, bleeding away precious power on yet another Shrouded from Sight, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Reid was studying him instead of helping him. Like a rat in a cage.
Maybe the cursemaker and those reporters clustered outside the Blood Veil weren’t so different after all.
BRIONY THORBURN
The tournament has only failed once, when several champions eluded one another for the full three months. And so they all perished. Seven dead champions. And unlike every other tournament, their deaths meant nothing—the high magick they had fought for remained inaccessible to every family until the Blood Veil fell again.