I cut her off with a slice of the hand. “YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS YOUR EMINENCE.”
That part was just me, but the magic didn’t seem to mind.
“Your . . . Eminence,” Igraine said through clenched teeth, as if she had a suspicion that this command wasn’t entirely aboveboard. “I am only wondering if there might be something more at play here. Something at odds with the original intent behind the Gauntlet’s rules.”
“I AM THE ARBITER, THE FOUNDERS’ ENDURING WILL MADE FLESH. AND IT IS I WHO WILL SPEAK TO YOU OF THEIR INTENT.”
Now it was purely the spell being channeled through my mouth, with me along only for the ride. My delivery took on an unfamiliar timbre with each word, a chorus of voices emerging from me as if I were possessed. An imperious feminine tone that must have belonged to Caelia Blackmoore, Alastair Thorn’s low masculine thrum, Margarita Avramov’s foreboding purr, Elias Harlow’s mild-mannered authority.
I’d become their echo, a temporary vessel for what shadow still remained of them.
I felt a moment of pure panic at being swept up by something so powerful and alien, along with a visceral urge to reassert myself as the driver of this ride—and then I remembered my nana’s advice not to fight or overthink the mantle’s spell.
With a deep breath, followed by a long exhale, I relaxed as fully as I could, relinquishing control. For once, simply letting go.
Then something else came surging beneath the mantle’s spell, that same sense of unfurling I’d felt when I first touched the original Grimoire. An encompassing awareness that spanned from the lake rippling behind me, down to where a dragonfly had skimmed it with its grazing feet; to the slapping of shoe soles over the cobbles on Hyssop Street, where a little girl scrambled back to her parents, rattled by the darkened sky; to the smoke feathering from the chimneys of hearths that had stoked their fires for the season; to the shivering of leaves in the strange woods behind The Bitters, caterpillars clinging like commas to their tips. And much, much more; more than I was capable of registering.
For a moment, I was Thistle Grove, and the town itself was me.
Having so much magic pounding through me should have been terrifying, but it wasn’t. Now that I’d chosen to let it run its course, it was gorgeous, revitalizing, like jumping into a lake after a decade of thirst, and sucking all that sweet water down your parched and aching throat.
And there was a poignancy to it, too, the bittersweet knowledge that this magic was only borrowed. For a moment, the thought of letting go of this, of the withdrawal that would set in once I returned to my small, real life, nearly bowled me over with anticipatory anguish.
Then the mantle’s magic doubled down, drawing my focus to a single point—bending Igraine to my and the mantle’s commingled will.
I folded at the waist until I loomed closely over her, my giantess’s face bearing down into hers. “Elder Blackmoore, are we understood?” I asked her in a more restrained tone, closer to a small avalanche than rolling thunder.
She struggled, lips twitching, the feeling of being outclassed clearly both new and distasteful to her. When she hesitated too long for the mantle’s liking, a bolt of lightning came streaking down from the churn of clouds overhead and leapt into my hands. It danced around them like a sparking web of electricity, warm and gently tingly, like touching one of those Van de Graaff orbs that made your hair stand on end.
It all fed very nicely into any superiority complex I might have been storing in the basement of my psyche. You know what? I could kinda get used to this.
“Are . . . we . . . understood?” I repeated, with slow and silky emphasis, twitching my fingers until sparks rained from them.
“We are, Your Eminence,” she managed, dipping into something between a curtsey and a bow. Like she’d reluctantly remembered that I hailed from royalty, or maybe one of the more obscure pantheons. “Though I did not intend any disrespect, House Blackmoore offers you apologies. Let us set aside this . . . unfortunate misunderstanding, and move forward in good faith.”
Okay, I could really get used to rolling like a demigoddess.
“Apology accepted,” I said, straightening. The tame lightning in my hands died down as though it had been grounded through my feet. Above, the welter of clouds fled to the horizon in a surging rush, like a time-lapse photograph of a retreating storm. “Once more, and for all to hear—first victory goes to House Avramov!”
This time, the resultant clamor was purely one of joy, pierced by a high, triumphant whoop I suspected belonged to Talia. When I looked across the lake to where her camp stood, I found her hovering above the Avramovs, still suspended in a cloud of that dark matter, like ink and raven feathers airily commingled.