The Blackmoore matriarch cast her a withering glare. “Unlike some, I don’t need to drag our ancestress from her rest, as if she were some common demon, just to know what she would have wanted.”
Elena rolled her eyes, a tiny, skyward flick. “So a purely self-serving interpretation, then. I would’ve expected sour grapes to be beneath you, Igraine, after all these years of winning. Isn’t rising above it all the vaunted Blackmoore way?”
“Not when my grandson has been cheated of his rightful victory!”
“Cheated?” The blasé act dropped in an instant, fire lighting in Elena’s shimmery eyes. They were a pale jade green ringed dramatically with darker color. Black wisps began to rise off her hands, curling and smoking around her fingers, the same eldritch stuff that had propelled Talia’s ascent over the lake. “Are you suggesting that my daughter didn’t fairly earn this victory for her House?”
“This isn’t a victory, it’s a goddess-damned farce!” Igraine spat, gaze trawling around for more victims until it snagged on my father, who stood next to my mother a good few feet away from the fray. “Ah, James, there you are—our voice of reason! As our record keeper, what is your opinion on the matter?”
“My daughter is the Harlow Arbiter, not me,” my father said, in a tone so frosty you could all but hear the icicles suspended from each word. “Which makes my opinion irrelevant. You should be turning to her for the final say, in respect of and accordance with the Gauntlet rules.”
Even through the mantle magic’s buffering effect, a vast relief expanded inside me at this implicit approval of my determination. I hadn’t realized just how nervous I’d been that when push came to shove, my father wouldn’t back my call. Or worse, that he’d be disappointed in me yet again, in a new and different way.
Igraine stood quiet for a moment, pale lips pinched, nodding slowly to herself. Nothing moved except the slight wafting of her robes in the breeze. The stillness felt somehow more ominous than her bluster had been, with an underhanded, plotty feel to it that I didn’t like at all.
When she turned to look up at me, her elegant face was keen with scorn.
“Perhaps I have been considering this wrong, and the collusion isn’t the trouble here. Perhaps you are the trouble, Arbiter Harlow. Tell me, how can we know that you are acting in good faith?” Her eyes sharpened with malice. “And that your verdict is not based on something . . . more personal?”
I hadn’t thought Igraine even knew about Gareth and me, any more than Gareth’s parents, Lyonesse and Merritt, had. As the Harlow girl, I’d been so far beneath Igraine’s notice before I left Thistle Grove that I couldn’t remember a single interaction with her. And let’s not forget that I’d been Gareth’s dirty little secret that whole summer by his own design; she had no reason to know we’d ever been involved.
Unless he’d gone sniveling to Grammy about how mean and unfair this whole setup was, playing the victim yet again.
The fury that rose up in me in response felt like some arcane summoning.
It grew like a conjured spirit gaining scope and mass; my own complicated anger at Gareth, magnified and enhanced by the mantle magic’s own wrath at such a blatant show of disrespect. Apparently the spell had some degree of awareness, a semisentience I could feel, brushing up against my own consciousness.
And the Arbiter in me stone-cold loathed Igraine’s trifling shit.
The banner of azure sky above us abruptly turned into a cauldron of roiling lead. Livid clouds appeared from out of nowhere, rushing and boiling until they’d blotted out the last bright swatch of blue. The day turned if not quite eclipse dark, then pretty damn close, enough to dampen birdsong and ambient insect buzz, the scent of ozone tanging in the air. Hey, at least this part would make sense to whoever might have been wondering about the random thunder rolling from the hill.
Except I was the sudden storm.
In the unnatural darkness, Igraine Blackmoore quaked a little at my feet, real uncertainty scrolled over her face. Seeing her thrown off balance sent a bolt of tingling satisfaction from the crown of my head down to my toes.
How do you like me now, you sanctimonious bitch?
“HOW . . . DARE . . . YOU!” I thundered, unsure if I was picking the words or if the magic was feeding them to me. “DO YOU PRESUME TO QUESTION THE MANTLE’S AUTHORITY, VESTED IN EMMELINE OF HOUSE HARLOW BY THE FOUR WHO MADE THIS HAVEN FOR YOU?”
She swallowed so hard I could hear the clicking gulp in her throat. “No, Arbiter, I—”