To be fair, what she’d just done was a massive flex. Portal magic was big-time stuff, an enormous exertion of power and will; the magical equivalent of some glitzy and dangerous move like a triple axel, the kind that ended in a trophy or a shit ton of broken bones. Except that it wasn’t just air, but both space and time being spun around you, dimensions wound like wool around the spindle of the witch’s body.
The seemingly effortless way Igraine Blackmoore had done it made it feel like an unspoken threat.
“Oh, come on, your grandson has a scratch,” I retorted, drawing myself up to my full, colossal height, the mantle’s gravitas lending my tone an outsized disdain. “And the Thorns and Avramovs haven’t run afoul of any rules. You saw the Grimoire’s acknowledgment yourself when the Avramov scion touched the token. According to the rules, the victory stands.”
Her regal eyebrows soared, scaling her forehead. Another inch of aggrieved contempt, and they’d be congregating right up there with her widow’s peak.
“Haven’t run afoul?” she spat. “My understanding is that this is a competition, Arbiter Harlow—which presupposes the combatants acting in their own interests. Not aiding and abetting each other to their mutual opponent’s detriment.”
“One, that isn’t strictly true. Two, maybe you should attend to the Grimoire more closely, Elder Blackmoore,” I replied, falling into the Arbiter’s authoritative cadences even without the Grimoire’s prompting. I’d always hated when people got in my face, and this time, it wasn’t just me pissed off on my own account. I could feel how much bristling exception the mantle’s magic took to Igraine’s accusations and overbearing attitude. It hissed and sparked inside me like a cat at peak aggression—if the cat were the size of a small mountain, and maybe also part dragon a few lines up the family tree. “You won’t find any prohibition on teamwork within its pages.”
“She’s right, Igraine,” Gabrielle Thorn said from somewhere beyond my hermetic eyelock with the Blackmoore matriarch. “This whole thing might be a little unconventional, but Rowan and Talia haven’t done anything wrong. The Thorns are considering it a fair-earned win.”
I looked away from Igraine to find that the other elders had arrived. Gabrielle and Aspen had reached us already, Elena Avramov and my own parents close on their heels. Gabrielle met my gaze with dark, collected eyes, and though she wasn’t quite smiling, I sensed a low-key approval there, even something like pride.
It didn’t really surprise me; Linden’s mother was exactly the kind of person who’d be proud of her son for the sort of symbolic sacrifice he’d just made for Talia, even if it had cost his own family their shot at this challenge.
“Is that so?” Igraine replied, pointedly transferring her gaze to Aspen. “Tell me, are you as convinced as your wife, Elder Thorn? Or do you also wonder why your son has taken leave of his senses to partner with the Avramov?”
“I’ll thank you not to drag our son’s faculties into this, Igraine,” Aspen said through a tight jaw. The terse courtesy had a pronounced tinge of “keep my kid’s name out of your mouth,” an even more implicit “bitch” hovering just beyond. I knew Linden’s father as an easygoing man with a ready smile, freckled and hazel-eyed like his son, always quick to lend advice or a hand. But his close-cropped black hair was flecked with gray now, the lines around his full, wide mouth more pronounced, and he clearly had a much shorter rope for bullshit.
“Just because this outcome doesn’t sit well with you is no call for rudeness,” he bit off. “I’ve got nothing else to add. Gabrielle’s made our position clear.”
“Rudeness?!” Igraine gasped, clutching a fist to her chest like some umbrage-stricken Karen. “I am not being rude, Aspen, but rather appalled at this travesty. This transgression against the very spirit of what the founders intended for this contest.”
“Spending much time chatting up Caelia these days, are we?” Elena Avramov asked, tossing a sheet of hammered-copper hair over one shoulder. She wasn’t literally inspecting her crimson nails, but the semibored detachment on her face suggested that she was buffing them on the inside. There was an indolent ease to her every movement, Big Witch Energy that somehow read like a provocation. “I had no idea you’d taken a new interest in necromancy, how fun and unexpected! You should have said, I would’ve joined you. Next time I’ll bring the vol-au-vents and the scarab blood.”