“How are you doing this?” he demanded. “What power, what Talent, do you have that lets you withstand raw magic?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I growled back at him.
“Oh, soon I will,” he promised. “You might have siphoned off some of my magic, but I can cut it right back out of you again, one slice at a time.”
“Never!” I hissed back.
Victor stepped forward, once again calling up his lightning and throwing it at me, and I shrieked as a fresh wave of his power rolled over me. It was all I could do to stand upright, much less withstand and channel another brutal assault of magic. But I gritted my teeth and forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, creeping closer and closer to him. The black blade was soaking up as much of his power as it could, but all the magic crackling through the air around me was overloading my system, just like the copper crusher venom had. I had to do something to get rid of the excess power or the magic would burn me to a crisp from the inside out, in a way worse than Victor’s lightning had.
So I surged forward, drew back my left fist, and punched him in the face, putting as much strength into the blow as I could, both physical and magical.
I screamed as my hand passed through the lightning still crackling around his body, and I screamed again as my fist slammed into his face. For a moment, there was just a bright blaze of magic, hotter and whiter than any that had come before it. The burst of power was so intense that it stunned everyone on the bridge, and they all threw their hands up over their eyes and staggered back, just trying to get away from the two of us.
Victor staggered back as well, and his lightning magic was snuffed out completely. He brought his hand up to his lip, then stared at the bit of blood glistening on his fingertips. His eyes widened, as though it had been so long since he had seen his own blood that he couldn’t even remember what it looked like anymore. Then he glared at me, his eyes narrowing to slits. But instead of summoning up more magic, Victor raised his fists and came right back at me.
His lightning hadn’t burned me to death, so Victor decided to change tactics and use his Talents in a different way. This time, he used all that power to make himself impossibly fast and strong, slamming his fists into my face and stomach over and over again, like a boxer working a heavy bag, his movements almost too fast for me to follow, much less defend against.
Pain exploded in my body, blood filled my mouth, and the force of the hard, repeated blows made me double over. But once again, I channeled the magic still running through my veins and my black blade and sent all that cold, cold power shooting outward, healing the areas of my body that Victor had damaged.
He snarled and charged at me again, but I used his own trick against him, sending the magic down into my legs and forcing myself to move quicker than he did. I managed to sidestep him, and we both whirled around, facing each other again.
Instead of attacking me, Victor actually smiled, as if he were happy that I’d taken his punches and was still standing.
“You . . . you have transference magic,” he said in a high, giddy voice. “That’s why you aren’t dead yet. You’re absorbing all of my power and taking it for your own, and your black blade is helping you do it.”
His eyes narrowed again and I could see the hunger in his golden gaze, even more intense than that of the copper crushers who’d tried to eat me. “And now, your power is going to be mine.”
I thought he might try to blast me with his lightning again, but instead, Victor whipped around, waded into a group of guards, and grabbed a sword from one of them. He pushed that guard aside, his strength still so great that he made the other man fly back ten feet, hit the side of the bridge, and flip over into the empty air. The guard screamed as he plummeted toward the river below, but Victor didn’t give him a second thought.
Instead, he raised his sword and attacked me.
Victor was using his speed magic again and I barely managed to raise my own sword in time to stop him from splitting my skull open. Once they realized that the two of us were finally fighting sword to sword, the rest of the Sinclairs and Draconis raised their own weapons and went at it again, with even more screams, shrieks, and shouts tearing through the night air.
But I only had eyes for Victor, and he for me. Back and forth we fought on the bridge, our swords crashing together time and time again. High, low, side to side to side. We whipped our blades back and forth, and back and forth, both of us using magic to make ourselves as fast and strong as possible, and both of us evenly matched in that regard.
Victor was a good fighter, one of the best I’d ever been up against, cold, calculating, and ruthless, but I was just a smidge better, and he knew it. So he did what anyone would do in this situation—he decided to fight dirty.
While our swords were locked together, he snapped up his hand and slammed his fist into my jaw. He put the full force of his lightning magic into the blow, making me scream and white stars flash in front of my eyes again. I stumbled back, but for once, my sight magic deserted me and I could barely see Victor standing in front of me, much less actually fend off his blows.
And that’s when he stabbed me.
Victor slipped past my defenses and rammed his sword into my side, making me scream with pain. The stars finally faded enough to let me see his gaze locked onto his sword in my side and all the blood pouring out of the deep wound.
“Mine,” he whispered. “Your magic is going to be mine.”
Despite the pain pulsing through my body, I managed to snarl back at him. “Never!”
I shoved him away and Victor stumbled back, tearing his sword out of my body as brutally as he could and making me scream again. Before I even had time to catch my breath, he came right back at me, swinging his sword, wanting to cut me again and rip my magic out of me, one bloody slice at a time. All around us the fight raged on, but I blocked out the shouts, screams, and everything else, knowing that this was the most important battle of my life.
Victor and I kept fighting. Well, really, he fought. I just parried his blows, clutching one hand to my side to try to slow the blood loss. With every blow, I grew weaker and weaker, and he pressed his advantage, concentrating his strikes on my sword hand. I knew what he was trying to do—knock my weapon away so he could stab me through the heart and take my magic for himself.
But I wasn’t about to let that happen so I tightened my grip on my sword, channeling the magic still pulsing in my black blade into my hands, arms, and legs so that I could keep on fighting. But I was still losing, and it was only a matter of time before Victor snuck through my defenses again and gutted me. He lashed out with a particularly hard blow and I staggered back, almost flipping over the side of the bridge.
“If you give up now, I will make your death relatively painless,” Victor said, slowly approaching me. “One blow to your heart and it will all be over.”
I let out a harsh, bitter laugh, realizing it for the trick it was. “You’re such a liar.”
He shrugged. “Certainly. I’m going to enjoy cutting you to ribbons, just as I did your mother.”
Once again, white stars flashed in front of my eyes, but they weren’t caused by any lightning or other magic. No, these stars were part of my soulsight, letting me look back into the past and see my mom’s body, bloody, beaten, and broken on the floor of our small apartment.
White-hot rage roared through me, more rage than I had ever felt before. This time, the cold burn in my veins had nothing to do with magic, but everything to do with my desire to stop Victor, to finally hurt him the same way he had hurt my mom.
Even as I raised my sword again, Victor used his speed magic to step up and pin me against the side of the bridge. He pressed the tip of his sword against my throat. I froze, my own sword raised in midair.
“Drop your weapon,” he hissed, pressing his sword a little deeper into my neck, breaking the skin there and making blood trickle down my throat. “Now.”
I slowly laid the sword down on the bridg
e ledge. I waited, wondering if Victor would tell me to take off my leather belt with its three throwing stars as well, but he just sneered at me, cold triumph gleaming in his eyes. So slowly, very, very slowly, I dropped my hand down to my side, inching my fingers toward my belt. Victor hadn’t won yet, and I could fight dirty too. All I needed was one moment of opportunity and I could finish what my mom had started all those years ago.
“I’ll admit that you put up a good fight,” Victor said, staring at me. “I didn’t expect you to have transference magic and be able to siphon off my magic into your black blade. That will be my bonus for killing you, and taking it from you will just be fun.”
I didn’t respond, although I kept crawling my fingers toward my belt.
“You might have stolen some of my magic, but I’ll use your black blade to put it right back inside my own body again,” he said, his voice ringing with triumph. “Where it belongs.”
I still didn’t say anything as my fingers reached one of the throwing stars on my belt and curled around the metal.
“Goodbye, Lila Sterling,” Victor sneered. “And good riddance to the Sterling Family once and for all—”
Even as he crowed about how he was going to kill me, I shoved his sword away from my throat. The blade cut deep into my palm, but I ignored the stinging pain, yanked the throwing star off my belt, and swiped it across his face. The star sliced his cheek, making him scream, stagger back, and lower his weapon.
Using the last of the magic in my veins, I grabbed my sword off the ledge, stepped up, and stabbed him straight through the heart with the black blade.
Victor screamed as my mother’s sword plunged deep into his chest. He staggered back, but I went with him, keeping a tight grip on the black blade. I was going to end this—now.
And that’s when his magic started pouring into me.
It was small at first, a single spark of white lightning erupting from his chest, zinging along the length of the sword, and traveling up to my blood-covered hand. The second that spark came into contact with my blood, a whole cascade of sparks erupted, until it seemed as though Victor and I were standing in the middle of a giant fireworks display.
He gasped in surprise and so did I, but we were connected by the sword in his chest and all I could do was stand there and gape, as though I were outside my own body and watching all this happen to me from someplace far, far away.
When Grant Sanderson had tried to take my magic, he’d been determined to cut me to pieces to get my power just because he wanted me to suffer. But you could also take a person’s magic by stabbing him once straight through the heart with a black blade. That’s what I’d done to Victor, not because I wanted to take his magic, but simply to end the fight. But apparently, he had so much magic, so much raw power, it was literally bursting to get out of him.
So it did—traveling straight into me.
I saw the lighting, the power, the magic, streak from Victor, up my black blade, and into my body, felt the cold burn of it in my veins, felt it gather around my own dark heart, squeezing, squeezing tight. Once again, every single part of me burned with hot, electrical pain. My legs flailed, my fingers twitched, and my teeth chattered together just like they had before. It hurt terribly—worse even than when Victor had been trying to electrocute me—but all I could do was stand there as the magic flooded into my own body.
The sharp, continuous jolts of power and pain seemed to go on forever, although they couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute. But finally, they eased up and then stopped altogether, and the white sparks went out, although I could still feel the cold chill of them in the humid night. My breath frosted in the air, as white as snow, and I felt the icy sting of power flowing through my veins, stronger than ever before. The midnight-black glow on my sword slowly lightened, then vanished altogether, until the weapon was once again its usual, dull, ash-gray color.
Victor stared at me with wide, gaping eyes. “You . . . you . . . took it all . . .” His voice failed him.
He staggered back and this time I let him, my sword sliding free of his chest. Victor wobbled on his feet for a second, then he hit the side of the bridge, fell down, and toppled over onto his side. Blood oozed down his chest and trickled onto the cobblestones, turning them a glossy, sickening scarlet. All the while, Victor kept staring at me, his golden eyes getting darker and darker, a glassy sheen slowly covering the accusation in his gaze.
And just like that, the cold light was snuffed out of his eyes and his head lolled to the side.
Dead—Victor Draconi was dead.
And I had taken all his magic for my own.
The greatest—and most terrifying—thing I’d ever stolen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Despite the magic rippling through my body, I was exhausted. My feet slipped out from under me, and I landed on the cobblestones. I looked up, expecting to see lightning flashing overhead and for the impending storm to finally descend, but to my surprise, the rain clouds had disappeared, revealing the moon and stars. I was going to take that as a good omen.
My final battle with Victor had frozen everyone in place and startled them all into absolute silence, except for Devon, who hurried over and dropped down beside me, with Oscar buzzing around our shoulders.
“Lila! Are you okay?” Devon asked, gently cupping my face in his hand.
All I could do was nod. I didn’t even have the strength to speak right now.
Slowly, all the guards, Sinclairs and Draconis alike, crept forward. So did the Ito and Salazar guards who’d come up behind the Draconis on the opposite side of the bridge. A few whispers broke out as they realized that Victor was dead, but they quickly faded away and everyone was still and quiet again. The guards all kept staring from me to Victor and back again, shocked that I had actually done it, that I had actually killed him and ended the threat he represented to the Families and everyone in Cloudburst Falls—mortal, magick, and monster alike.
“No!” a loud, anguished voice cried out. “No! Dad! No!”
Blake sprinted forward, fell to his knees, and shook Victor’s shoulder, but of course, Victor didn’t wake up, and he never would again. Once Blake realized that his dad was really and truly dead, he scrambled to his feet and whipped around to me, hate filling his eyes.
“You! You killed him!” he snarled.
Blake raised his sword and charged at me, but once again, Deah was there to swing her blade into his and stop him from hurting me.
“That’s enough, Blake!” she snapped, pushing him away from me. “It’s over. Look around you. Don’t you see? It’s over!”
And it was.
Dead guards—Sinclairs and Draconis alike—littered the bridge like crumpled dolls. More Sinclairs were standing than Draconis now, but both sides had sustained heavy losses. Members of the Ito and Salazar Families had been killed as well, since they’d engaged the Draconi guards from behind.
Blake looked around. For a moment, I thought he would stand down, but his mouth tightened into an ugly slash, and more and more anger, hate, and disgust filled his eyes.
He glared at me. “You!” he screamed again. “This is all your fault!”
“Blake! Stop!” Deah yelled. “It’s over!”
She moved in front of her brother again, trying to stop him from attacking me, but he used his strength magic to barrel right past her. Deah hit the cobblestones hard, but she scrambled around, trying to get back up onto her feet in time to stop Blake from killing me.
But she didn’t have to because Felix was there.
Felix stepped up and slammed his sword into Blake’s, knocking him away from me. But Blake just wouldn’t give up.
“I’m going to kill you, Morales!” he screamed. “You and all your stupid friends!”
Blake charged at him again, but Felix slid to the side at the last second, just the way I’d taught him during our training bouts. But Blake was too committed to his charge to stop and he ran right into the side of the bridge, where his momentum f
lipped him up and over the side into the water below. Blake screamed as he plummeted toward the river.
Then . . . silence.
Deah got back up onto her feet and rushed over to the ledge, staring down into the river. So did Felix. After several seconds, he turned and shook his head at me. Deah kept staring down at the river, tears shimmering in her eyes, and Felix gently put his arm around her shoulder. She let out one small cry and choked the others back, although a few tears slid down her face. Despite everything, Blake had still been her brother and Deah had loved him, along with Victor.
The seconds ticked by, and no one moved or spoke. Finally, Claudia strode forward, moving past me, Devon, Oscar, Felix, and Deah until she was standing in the center of the bridge in front of the remaining Draconis.
“Victor is dead and his cruelty along with him,” she called out in a loud, strong voice. “My champion has won the duel. By law, that makes you all part of my Family now.”
The Draconis grumbled, shifted on their feet, and looked back and forth between each other and Claudia. They didn’t know what to do now that Victor was gone.
“I do not believe that you are bad people,” she called out again. “You just had a bad leader. I don’t want to hurt you, any of you. We’ve all lost friends over the past few days, and there’s been more than enough bloodshed here tonight. It’s time to end this cycle of violence, this mistrust and suspicion between the Families once and for all. Don’t you agree?”
More mutters, along with a few murmurs of agreement this time.
Claudia looked out over the crowd again. “I’m offering you all a choice. Strip off your red cloaks and hats, take off your gold cuffs and weapons, and join my Family. Not because we have beaten you, but because you want a fresh start, for yourselves and all of Cloudburst Falls. A place where we can finally live together in peace, without the threat of war constantly looming over us.”
Claudia didn’t have Devon’s compulsion magic, but her voice boomed through the night, and more and more of the Draconis started nodding, agreeing with her. Several even started doing exactly as she asked, pulling off their cloaks and hats, throwing down their weapons, and slipping the gold cuffs off their wrists. One by one, the Draconis cast off the remnants of their old Family and embraced their new one.