“What does that mean?” I asked her, heart in my throat, my hands twisting into the mantle.
“It means that . . . that she’s essentially become an open conduit between this side of the veil and the other,” Elena said, her voice close to cracking before she gritted her teeth and, with a monumental effort, wrestled her poise back into place. “Anything can come through her—into her—and stay. There are quite a few shades inside her already, and if we don’t act fast, there’ll soon be many, many more. A legion of them.”
I thought of those mournful trees in the Witch Woods, twisted around the restless spirits that inhabited them; and those trees had to house only one ghost apiece, not some horror movie horde. Fear for Talia tore through me in wracking bouts, and I was suddenly, desperately sorry that I hadn’t at least tried to talk to her before the challenge. Now what if she never came back at all? How would I live with something like that?
“What do you need?” I asked Elena hoarsely, sick with fear for Talia, heart crashing against my ribs like cymbals. “What can I do?”
“We’ll have to cast a banishment, here and now. The biggest that we’ve ever done together. It’ll take all of us, down to the last Avramov.” She glanced over to where her other children stood, beckoning them into motion. “Micah, Isidora—muster the family, and quick. Tell them we need them all in here, now. Adriana, kitten, you fetch henbane and nightshade for us from The Bitters, and anything else we might need.”
As they rushed off to do her bidding, Igraine stepped forward a few feet, hands clasped in front of her.
“And what of the Gauntlet, Arbiter?” she said placidly, as if she was inhabiting some balmy reality completely divorced from this one. “How shall we proceed with the tiebreak challenge?”
“Igraine!” Gabrielle snapped at her, low and furious. “Mind yourself! This is clearly not the time.”
“Of course it is,” the Blackmoore elder replied, unperturbed. “What other time would there be? There’s been a dreadful accident, yes, but one that, it could be argued, the combatants’ own questionable strategy brought down on Scion Avramov’s head.”
“You mean one that your grandson caused!” Gabrielle retorted, her dark eyes sparkling with ire. “Own that much, at least.”
“As I said, an unfortunate mishap,” Igraine repeated with a magnanimous shrug. “My grandson may have been the catalyst, but Thorn and Avramov conduct clearly set the scene. Certainly we all saw as much. The question remains, how do we carry on? The Gauntlet rules state that the tiebreak challenge, should one become necessary, must follow on directly after the tie.”
Every other head in the courtyard swiveled to me, waiting for the Arbiter to make the call. At least Gareth had the good grace to look abashed, clearly miserable at the idea of moving forward with Talia heaped on the cold stones with ghosts swimming in her eyes.
Unfortunately, I already knew from my own careful reading of the rules that Igraine was technically right; worse yet, the mantle appeared to agree with her, too. I could feel its approval emanating from within me, and the beckoning pull of the Grimoire from beyond the castle walls, where it had likely already cooked up the challenge that would break the tie.
“That’s correct,” I confirmed, the words curdling in my mouth even as I spoke them. “We do have to go on. Tonight.”
“But the Avramovs won’t have a champion!” Elena protested, one hand still on Talia’s forehead, fury seething in her eyes. “I just said the banishment will take all of us, and it needs to happen now—which means there’s no one left to take Natalia’s place as alternate! How are we meant to compete if—”
“Then the Avramovs must forfeit,” Igraine interrupted, as if such an injustice made all the sense in the world. A silky, malicious pleasure laced her tone, almost undetectable if you weren’t listening for it as closely as I was. For all her practiced decorum, the miserable old scally was beside herself with glee. You could almost hear how much effort it was costing her not to grin from ear to ear. “And allow Scions Blackmoore and Thorn to carry on alone. Is that not the case, Arbiter? Rule Twenty-Two covers this exigency, I believe: protocol in the absence of a champion.”
Except that there was a loophole here, I realized, with the sudden stirrings of excitement, the barest tickle of an idea burgeoning. The Gauntlet rules didn’t specify any requirements for an alternate champion, besides the fact that one couldn’t be drawn from the other competing families—which usually did mean they had to come from the same family.