“It’s a spellboard,” she whispered. “This entire tournament is a giant spellboard.”
Elionor looked up from her work, frowning. “What?”
Briony hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. In the time she’d been thinking, Elionor had nearly finished crafting the curse. The Overcharge spellstone, a plain white crystal, now glowed with magick.
“I— Nothing,” she said quickly, but Elionor’s eyes narrowed.
“Didn’t sound like nothing to me,” she said, reaching for Briony’s hand. “Here. You need to give it blood.”
She looked a little too happy as she slashed Briony’s palm open, another painful gash to match the ones Briony had given herself.
Unease pulsed in Briony’s stomach as she bandaged up the wound. Elionor was skeptical of her. She knew that. She needed proof to have any hope of making her understand.
But … Elionor knew a lot about spellmaking. And she could already tell that the other champion wasn’t going to let go of this, not without some kind of explanation.
Briony tugged out the map of the tournament and spread it beside the spellboard. “Look at this. The spellboard and our tournament grounds are structured exactly the same way. A septogram…” She gestured toward the Landmarks. “And a cursestone at its center.” She jabbed her finger at the Champions Pillar.
Elionor stared at the map and the spellboard, then looked up at Briony. “Well, yeah. My family’s known that for ages. The basic curse structure is repeated across the tournament grounds. Because it’s a curse. Which I’m kind of concerned you didn’t know until just now.”
“Of course I know it’s a curse.” Briony glared at her.
“Well then, what’s your point?”
“My point is that you need more than a spellboard and a stone to craft a curse. You need ingredients, and a sacrifice. We’re the sacrifice, obviously.” Briony picked up one of the twigs and waved it dramatically in the air for emphasis. “But we’ve got the ingredients, too.”
Elionor frowned. “A curse’s ingredients wouldn’t stick around for hundreds of years. That’s ridiculous.”
“Then how can you explain the Relics?”
Elionor straightened up, her eyes wide. For the first time, Briony felt as if she were seeing her as an equal instead of a nuisance.
“But … ingredients have to go in a specific order for a spell to work,” she said softly.
Briony reached over and picked up the Overcharge. Her family had plenty of good spellwork, so she could tell immediately this curse was well-crafted.
“They do have an order,” she said. “Relics go with specific Landmarks. Doesn’t your family have a story about it? I know mine does. Finley’s, too.”
“So he knows about this.” Elionor’s voice was flat. “About your … theories.”
“Yeah, he knows. But that isn’t what matters. Don’t you understand what this means? You know about spellmaking. You know that the only way to break a curse is to undo each piece of it. If we put the right ingredients at the right points of the septogram, we can do that.”
Elionor’s hands were curled tightly around the edge of the table. Briony could tell before Elionor said a word that she didn’t believe her, that whatever moment of vulnerability she’d had was long gone.
“You can’t even craft a class seven Overcharge.” Elionor sneered. “What makes you think you could break a curse that’s held for longer than anyone can remember?”
“I don’t know if I can,” Briony said. “But I have to try. Don’t you want to save everyone?”
“I don’t need to be saved.” Elionor’s face was flushed with frustration. There was a heaviness to her words, like she had spoken them before. “Each of us champions understood what we were sacrificing when we carved our name into the Pillar. But clearly you didn’t.”
“I do understand sacrifice.” Briony thought again of the champion’s ring on her finger, what she’d done to take it. Elionor might’ve said “us champions,” excluding her, but Briony had earned her place here. She was still putting her life on the line. She was as much a champion as any of them. “I gave up everything to take my sister’s spot. Not because I wanted to win. But because I was willing to bet my life on saving others.”
“So bet your life, not ours.” Elionor swept her hands out, gesturing at the courtyard around them. “I don’t want your ridiculous idealism and half-baked theories poisoning my alliance.”