“Your alliance?” Briony’s temper flared. “Your alliance is a death trap. All you’re going to do is pick off the others, and then whoever’s strongest will kill the rest.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Elionor snorted. “Finley’s plan is transparent, but I don’t care. It’s my plan, too. My crafting skill is far greater than his. Without that Sword, I can take him and Carbry out. Especially once I have a Relic of my own.”
“Finley’s plan has changed,” Briony snapped. “He believes me. And if the four of us work together, if we share each of our families’ stories, we might actually be able to end this.”
But Elionor just shook her head. “You’re just drawing out the inevitable. Six of us will die. One of us will live. If you can’t accept that, you don’t belong here.”
Briony grabbed the map again, then waved it in Elionor’s face. “Carbry clearly cares about this stuff, too. Why don’t we talk to him about it? Put it to a vote?”
Elionor slapped the paper away. “We are not giving him false hope.”
Briony was ready to go tell the others about it anyway when red light splashed across the table. Both of them whipped around to face the pillar and watched silently as the sixth star streaked down the ancient stone in a straight line.
Briony’s heart leapt. The sixth star meant her Relic. The Mirror.
It was perfect. It was fate. It was time for Briony to prove she was the hero of this story.
“You don’t have to believe me yet,” Briony said. “But we’re going to get this Relic. And then I’m going to prove you wrong.”
ALISTAIR LOWE
What is a happily ever after to the child is a nightmare to the monster.
A Tradition of Tragedy
The evening the sixth star of the pillar shone red, all Alistair felt was disappointment.
Another week had passed since Alistair had given Isobel the Cloak, and in the darkness of the Cave, time managed to slip by unnoticed, its passage marked only by their diminishing supply of processed food.
And now the Mirror was falling, exactly as they’d hoped.
But foolishly, selfishly, Alistair would’ve traded it for one more night with Isobel. So they could keep pretending to be in any horror story other than their own.
“You don’t have to come,” he told her as she slipped on her mud-stained trainers.
“Of course I do,” Isobel said. “You’re not lugging around the duffel bag this time. All the champions will want the Mirror—our best strategy is me coming along and touching it first.”
Alistair knew this. They’d rehearsed the strategy many times, but Alistair still didn’t like it. Isobel might’ve been protected from common magick while wearing the Cloak, but the Blair’s Sword used high magick.
Outside, the wind howled, making the Cave’s defensive enchantments thrum. Alistair’s skin prickled, and like he always did, he crept toward the entrance. He needed to know his wards had held. He needed to check—
Isobel squeezed his shoulder, and he jolted. “Don’t you dare leave without me.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “But promise me—if we encounter trouble, you run. No matter what.”
Something between sadness and resolve crossed her face, and Alistair noticed that, for the first time since she’d arrived in the Cave, her hands glittered with spellrings. “I can’t run anymore. I need the Mirror.”
Without the Mirror, Isobel would likely kill herself trying to get her powers back, and that would undermine all the other plans Alistair had spent the past week brewing.
“Are you all right?” she asked him suddenly. “You’re jumpier than usual, and you haven’t been sleeping.”
“I’ve never been better.”
He strode toward the Cave’s exit, where the Blood Veil washed the darkness in harsh crimson. At this elevation, he could spot Ilvernath in the distance.
It had all felt so important, once. Being champion, his family’s high magick, his grandmother’s approval.
His mother had told Alistair to ensure that his brother hadn’t died in vain, but the weight of that death was on her shoulders, not his. When she killed Hendry, she’d lost both her sons.
Which was why, once Isobel got her magick back, once they were the only two champions remaining, Alistair would ensure she won their “duel.” He had nothing to go back to in Ilvernath, not anymore. But she did.
The red streak of the falling star ripped through the sky, headed for the forest.