All of Us Villains (All of Us Villains, #1)

by Amanda Foody

“I’m not in the mood.” Isobel swept past her, grabbed her belongings, and climbed upstairs to her mother’s apartment. Her bedroom was the first on the left. It was far different from her room in her father’s house, which was all brocade wallpaper and tarnished faux-gold everything and a musty smell no air freshener could mask. Her room here was clean and full of color, each of the walls a varying shade of gold and pink. This was the room where she hosted sleepovers, where she got ready for school dances. Her sanctuary.

“What that boy did today … it was horrible. Bayard Attwater went blind from it.” “He attacked Mr. Attwater?” Isobel asked, aghast. Bayard Attwater was a powerful man.

Her father’s raspy voice filled her mind. You’d abandon your own flesh and blood? After all we’ve done for you? Is it because you’re scared? You’re too talented to be scared. The media already loves you. Is it because you’re ashamed of us? You could win, Isobel. You know you could.

“That’s how Briony used to talk, not you,” her mother said, and Isobel flinched at the mention of Briony’s name, at the memory of everything Briony had done to her. She knew Briony must’ve been hurting since her sister was declared champion, and Isobel was glad for it. Glad Briony Thorburn had finally been denied one single thing she wanted. “When you were a baby, I didn’t worry. I thought that since you’d only be sixteen, they’d pick one of your older cousins. It’s not like they’ve paid much attention to you since your father and I split.” “They’ve always paid my school tuition,” Isobel pointed out. “And sent me birthday presents.” “Isobel, your aunts and uncles probably didn’t even know how to spell your name until last year. Your father was content with visits once a month. But suddenly, those articles came out. Suddenly, you’re the famous pride and joy of the Macaslan family. They think of you as a tool to be used, not a person.” Her words stung. Maybe most of Isobel’s childhood memories of her relatives were hazy recollections of diamond-studded wristwatches and cigar smoke. But at least, when the entire world had turned away from her, the Macaslans had embraced her with open arms.

Almost a decade ago, she’d caught her father using her business to siphon money into fraudulent accounts. Hence the divorce. “They’re still my family, aren’t they?” Isobel countered. “Don’t they have a right to use me?” “No!” Her mother reached for her hand, but Isobel jerked it away. “No, they don’t.” “So which of my cousins would you rather they use instead? Peter? Anita? Greg—” “Any

The Relics—weapons powered by high magick—fall at random throughout the tournament’s three-month duration. They are the Cloak, the Hammer, the Mirror, the Sword, the Medallion, the Shoes, and the Crown.

The same lesson they were always trying to teach him. Monsters couldn’t harm you if you were a monster, too.

“The Lamb’s Sacrifice is invincible, and an invincible curse demands an unthinkable price. This is how we always win.”

“The Landmarks surround Ilvernath at seven points … each powered by a pillar of high magick in its center.…”

“But our curse isn’t like the others. Most of them have loopholes, or end conditions. Ours exists as long as the high magick that binds it together does, high magick that has been feeding on itself and getting stronger with every champion it claims.” Innes wrung her hands.

High magick fell from the stars, and when we found it, we did what humans always do. We decided it was ours to claim.

If no victor emerges after three months, then every champion dies and no family gets high magick for twenty years. That is the inherent joke in it all—if the families compete in the tournament to win magick and glory, why, then, does it feel like a punishment?

“The Reaper’s Embrace.” Her face burned. “That’s from my family’s oldest grimoire,” he said, aghast. “I should’ve known a Macaslan would try something like that. The Reaper’s Embrace isn’t even a good weapon in the tournament. It’s a contingency curse—it weakens the mark based on the mark’s own actions. It feeds on hatred and darkness, so the victim gradually loses their life along with their innocence. Not exactly a good choice for—”

“Your sense for magick is blocked, and there are only two ways to fix it. You could reattempt the curse, and do it right this time. Assuming you know what you did wrong. And if you mess up again, you could die.” Isobel had no idea what her mistake had been. “What’s the other option?” “A Null and Void spell of a higher class. It’ll wipe the curse clean from you.”

“It’s hard to say. When curses break, it’s either because they’re taken apart delicately, or because they’re smashed to bits. Avoid the second option. It would definitely leave all the champions dead.” Briony

“You’d need to dismantle the high magick that holds the tournament together, piece by piece.

“The seven Landmarks,” Briony answered quickly. “And the seven Relics.”

“Yes. The seven Landmarks and Relics. But also the story itself. The patterns, repeating every generation, reinforcing the magick and making it stronger.” Stories. Patterns. Clichés. That was how Innes had talked about the tournament before. Maybe Briony could convince her there was something to this.

“Would you have to do it all together?” “You can safely take a curse apart piece by piece. I assume high magick works the same way.” “And if you do that, it won’t collapse? What if it destabilizes everything?” “Do you think I have all the answers?” He looked at her disdainfully. “I’ve spent years studying the tournament, but I’m not from your so-called ‘great’ families. I’ll always be on the outside. All I know is that curses last for centuries when nothing about them changes. Somehow, after all this time, the tournament has managed to stay the same. If you go back to the beginning, find its patterns, and break them, then you could destroy its very foundation. Maybe build something new. Maybe burn it all down.”

She gripped the ring and tugged, but it did not give. She pulled harder, Innes’s hand limp beneath hers, then froze. This was what Innes had meant when she’d said she couldn’t give Briony the title even if she wanted to. The champion’s ring couldn’t be removed. But Briony knew how powerful the Deathly Slumber was. If she left Innes there, outside the border of the tournament grounds, she would automatically forfeit her life when the Blood Veil fell. And if she dragged Innes into the boundary and left her there, even with a camouflage spell, the other champions would pick her off within minutes.

There was no question—Briony needed to remove the champion’s ring. And if the ring’s power was what bound Innes to the tournament, maybe Briony could sever that connection. Sever.

Her sister’s finger lay on the ground, a sliver of bone peeking out from the bloody flesh. The world around Briony went fuzzy, and she took a deep breath, forcing her heartbeat to slow. She was so close to finishing this. So close. She gritted her teeth, picked up the finger, and slid the ring over the bone at the edge of the pinky. The digit was still warm to the touch. Briony bundled the finger in more cloth and placed it in her sister’s outstretched palm. She slid the ring onto her own pinky, and a strange warmth spread through her, tingling in her toes and fingertips. Then she stepped up to the Champions Pillar and cast the Mirror Shards again, gripping the glass so hard it cut her. With her and Innes’s blood both smeared across her palm, Briony struck out Innes’s name on the stone and carved her own beneath it. Briony felt the change as soon as she finished the final letter. The ground rumbled and shook beneath her with a quaking groan. Then the evening stilled once more. Now that it was done, she needed to take care of Innes. She fumbled through her spellrings, found a fire spell, and sent up a shower of sparks. It would draw people to the square like a beacon. Hopefully, an experienced healer could reattach Innes’s finger. Either way, it would not be long before they discovered what Briony had done. Now she needed to get out of here, fast. Crack. Briony’s head jerked to the source of the sound. It hadn’t been loud, but it still shook Briony down to her bones. Where ...

What Isobel needed was more time. If she claimed one of the Landmarks, she’d have protection. She’d originally hoped to seize the Crypt and all its magickal booby traps, but the Castle had the most powerful defensive enchantments of any of them—it was effectively impenetrable. The champions could each choose their starting point at the edge of town, so Isobel didn’t know where the other champions were. But the Castle was close. If she could make it there, she’d have somewhere safe to figure out how to fix her mistake. One more

Overhead, red seeped across the sky like paint on a canvas. It swept up past the treeline, devouring the oranges and violets of sunset, swallowing each of the stars until they shone scarlet, as though trapped behind a window of stained glass. Soon the sky was red across every stretch of the horizon. This was the fall of the Blood Veil, the signal of the tournament’s beginning. Day and night, Ilvernath would remain a haunting crimson until all but one of the champions were dead. Isobel turned around to see the other, inner Veil that had fallen around the city, a darker curtain stretching from land to sky. She stilled for a moment, taking in the phenomena she had only ever seen in poorly saturated photographs. The inner Veil blocked her path back into Ilvernath—and prevented any spectators from venturing onto the tournament grounds. Starting now, she was truly cut off from the life she’d known. Starting now, all the champions would race from town into the wilderness to claim their Landmarks. Starting now, Isobel could be killed at any moment.

Behind it stood a pillar identical to the one he’d carved his name into earlier that evening. The pillars were the center of every Landmark—the objects that fueled their high magick like giant spellstones. Grinning, Gavin prowled around it like a hyena. On its opposite side, also matching the Champions Pillar, was a symbol: seven stars arranged in a circle. Gavin—like all the other champions—knew the symbol represented the Relics, and he knew which star represented which one. When a Relic was about to fall, its corresponding star would glow red on each of the Landmarks’

“You’ve lost your sense for magick.” Alistair let the illusion of the spider dissipate and flashed his best, wickedest smile. All of those insults she’d flung at him before, and now she truly was powerless. It must’ve been quite a blow to her pride to come here. She lifted her chin higher, looking down on him even though they stood eye to eye. “Only you can help me get it back.”

“You’ve always been the enemy. You still are, even now.” Isobel took a step back from him, as if reminded of that fact. “But with my help, you wouldn’t need to lurk in your Cave, wondering who or how many had shown up to attack you. With my help, you wouldn’t need to worry that every curse you cast will kill you.”

“Who said anything about leaving? It will take high magick to bring my powers back, and you’re the only champion with the expertise. If you can fix my powers, then I promise you that I will, to the best of my ability, help you craft all the new weapons you need to win. And then…” She took a step closer again. Unlike at the banquet earlier that night, Alistair was no longer drunk, but her closeness still made him feel light-headed. He got the feeling she knew that. “When we’re equal again, we can have a duel like proper rivals. The victor takes the glory, the loser dies. The sort right out of your monster stories.”

“Just remember,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “In those stories, the monster always wins.”

“You can’t just empty the magick out if the spell is contaminated,” Isobel told him. “You need to bury the stones. It’ll cancel out the recipe entirely.” It was no different from how raw magick dispersed from a body at a funeral.

“According to her, curses aren’t magick’s natural state. You need to twist the power into that shape, and it will do everything it can to resist you. So you have to mean them. Death curses especially. If your command is weak, the curse won’t work—or worse.” He gave her a pointed look.

“It doesn’t matter,” Isobel bit out. “None of it matters. We only need to make the high magick spell.”

“The tournament is full of high magick. That’s what holds it together. I figured you knew how.” “You’re right about the tournament, but none of that power comes in raw form. The high magick in the Landmarks and the Relics is already crafted into spells and curses.”

“What if we buried a Relic, like we did with your rings?” Isobel suggested. He paused to consider her question. “The raw high magick would seep out, but we wouldn’t be able to sense it. The only people who can sense it are the members of the winning tournament family, and until this tournament is over … that’s no one.” Isobel’s heart sank. “So we can wield the high magick enchantments that have already been given to us, but we can’t make new ones.” “Exactly.”

Without using raw high magick, it would be impossible to craft a Null and Void spell stron...

“Because I can’t stop thinking about our duel.” Isobel sucked in a breath. Even now, he was thinking about killing her. “In an equal match, I know I’d win. I have more … finesse. That’s the word you’re looking for.” She pointed at the empty vertical spot, a smug smile playing at her lips. It wasn’t easy to feign confidence when she still teetered on the edge of a breakdown. But before she was an outcast, there had been a time when Isobel Macaslan was an expert flirt. “Stop doing that.” Alistair threw the crossword down and turned to her, his dark hair spilling across his gray eyes. He propped his head up on his elbow. “You wouldn’t win.” “Even in a match without magick, I’d win. You’re clumsy.” Isobel remembered the way he’d so gracelessly flopped on the bed earlier, how often he tripped over his own feet. “Careful where you walk. When your back is turned, I might just push you into the lake.” “It’s not just a lake,” he said seriously. “It’s a grotto.” She snorted. “Why are you like this? What sort of person dreams of being a monster?”

“As a child,” Alistair continued, ignoring her, “I slept in total darkness. My mother always cut the lights, opened the windows. The more drafts, the more dark shapes in my wardrobe, the better. She was asking the monsters to come. One night, the monster grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of my bed, pinned me high against the wall.” There

“Its body was like the roots of a tree, all gnarled and twisted. The edges of it hung limply like ribbons, thin and translucent as flakes of skin.” He leaned even closer, bringing his voice down to a whisper. A warmness began in Isobel’s stomach that felt less like fear and more like desire. She scolded herself. She shouldn’t be feeling attraction during such an unnerving story—and to the very boy keeping her prisoner, no less. It was simply because they were a hair’s breadth apart in a bed, the lights dimmed low, and Alistair had a smile that looked wicked in more ways than

“all of my organs lay exposed, gray like something pickled, something dead. There wasn’t any blood.”

“It unzipped my face last. My sight split in two as my eyes moved apart. I could no longer see it in front of me.” His eyes drifted from her chin to the top of her face, as though retracing the incision the monster had made. His gaze lingered on her lips a moment too long, then he looked up again and continued his story. “But I felt it.”

“It fit perfectly. In between every bone, in my windpipe, in my skull. It was like something being stuffed down your throat, like pressure prying you apart from the inside.” Isobel grimaced, imagining such a feeling. She felt claustrophobic in her own skin. “Once it is whole, it lives in its host body forever, intertwining so completely that there is no place where the human ends and monster begins.”

“You know that monsters aren’t real, right?” she asked. “I wouldn’t be so sure. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘monster’?” Because Isobel wasn’t raised on Ilvernath’s ridiculous fairy tales, her mind didn’t conjure an image of a dragon or a big bad wolf. It wasn’t even an image that came to mind at all. It was a voice, rasping and sharp. You don’t get to choose the family you’re born into. She winced, instantly feeling guilty at her own thoughts.

And though she didn’t tell him so, Isobel realized she might have learned the secret of Alistair Lowe after all.

The first night of the tournament generally ended in at least one slain champion. But the sky would’ve lightened had any one of them died, and their names would’ve been crossed off the pillars in the Landmarks. All seven of them had survived until morning. Which meant Gavin’s next step was simple: draw first blood. Prove himself as a force to be reckoned with.

If Alistair had paid more attention to those tombstones or the portraits lining the estate’s walls, he might’ve realized the sinister truth behind his family’s success before it was too late.

It was the fourth star, the one Alistair knew from his studies signified the Cloak. The object protected the wearer from all spells and curses crafted with common magick, and it was imbued with enchantments for silencing footsteps and camouflage. It was the strongest defensive Relic of the tournament.

It was called the Conjurer’s Nightmare. Whether it was truly a spell or a curse was a matter of opinion, but it allowed the caster to engineer a vision so vivid it fooled all of your senses. The water rising to their throats wasn’t real. Its coldness, its sliminess. Every detail was the fruit of Alistair’s imagination, and they were all very convincing.

“Our alliance means that we have numbers on our side, but we agreed to wait to attack until all of us have claimed a Relic. It means biding our time, but then we’ll be strong enough to take everyone else out together.”

“I know how it sounds,” she finished. “But my family has this … story. About the Mirror and the Tower, how they go together. How they both sort of belong to us. And there has to be a reason that there are seven Landmarks and seven Relics, right? One of each, for each of us?”

“Sure,” he spit out. “About how the first Blair was called into a cave in the mountains at the edge of Ilvernath and fought a dragon for the treasure it was guarding, then pulled the Sword—our Relic—out of the lake inside. A dragon, Briony. All you’re chasing is a fairy tale.”