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The Lowes shaped cruelty into a crown, and oh, they wear it well.
The Lowe family had always been the undisputed villains of their town’s ancient, bloodstained story, and no one understood that better than the Lowe brothers.
Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because the children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat and drink your soul.
Pale skin from a lifetime spent indoors, eyes the color of cigarette ashes, a widow’s peak as sharp as a blade.
Alistair was thinking about death. More specifically, about causing it.
Magick was a valuable resource throughout the world—something to be found, collected, and then crafted into specific spells or curses.
No one wore heels to a dive bar if they didn’t care about their reputation.
And raw magick was a tricky thing to find. It could appear at random: in the accidental shattering of a mirror, tucked into the pages of dusty books, dancing in a clover patch the hour after dawn.
Full of dark-stained pine wood and iron candelabras, it was where maidens pricked their fingers on spinning wheels, where every fruit tasted of poison and vice.
The Lowes did not tell their children monster stories so that they could slay them. The Lowes told them so their children would become monsters themselves.
The Lowes win even when no one expects it, even when another champion is deemed the strongest or the favorite. And the rest of us are left to ask how. We never get an answer.
The same lesson they were always trying to teach him. Monsters couldn’t harm you if you were a monster, too.
“There is a reason our champions so often prevail.”
In every story his family told, the villains won. They crossed the lines no one else would. They struck when the hero least expected it.
“The Lamb’s Sacrifice is invincible, and an invincible curse demands an unthinkable price. This is how we always win.”
Gavin fought down the thought that Reid had wanted this all along. That Gavin had agreed to press the knife to his own throat.
Innes had called the tournament a pattern. Patterns could be disrupted. Reid had called it a machine. Machines could be broken. Briony had only ever thought of it as a fairy tale. But even the grandest stories eventually found their ending. And so, in the shadow of her family’s Landmark, unchosen, unwanted, Briony Thorburn vowed that this ending would somehow be caused by her.
High magick fell from the stars, and when we found it, we did what humans always do. We decided it was ours to claim.
“It’s funny.” Alistair glared down at his mother. “For years you told me stories about monsters. But all along the monster was you.”
“I guess you’d better sharpen your pitchforks, gents,” Alistair said, then laughed and strode away.
We’re raised to call them champions, but I would argue there’s a better word: sacrifices.
And so she made her decision. She would be the princess to walk willingly into the dragon’s lair, and she would beg the dragon to save her.
He was a dagger in the darkness, quiet blood spilled on nightclothes, a scream that died in your throat.
The corner of his lips lifted in a smile. “If you want to know all my secrets, you’ll have to force them out of me.”
In a war between logic and wickedness, his wickedness always won.
“What the fuck happened to you?” the Grieve growled, looking at Alistair as though the sight of him bloodied and vulnerable personally offended him. The thought of a Grieve seeing him like this offended Alistair, too.
The Grieve let go of Alistair, and Alistair crumpled gracelessly in the dirt. “Crawl there, Lair.” “Fuck yourself, Castle.”
Alistair rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know your name, you absolute gremlin.”
Do not judge the champions too harshly. Survival could make villains of any of us.
