Karam scrambled to her feet and pulled Tavia up with her, but Zekia was already sending another shot of lightning her way. Karam pushed Tavia again, but the busker’s ankle caught and when she crashed to the ground for a second time, Tavia’s head bounced against the pavement.

There was blood in her mouth.

She’s going to kill her, Karam thought.

This was the moment she and Arjun had seen in that vision.

This was the bridge that Tavia was going to die on.

“Yes,” Ashwood cheered. “My little warrior, you are a wonder.”

Karam half-expected Saxony’s sister to be laughing maniacally beside him, but Zekia stood still, with an odd crease in the center of her tiny brows. She did not look happy to see Tavia’s blood painted across the bridge.

Wesley and Saxony ran over and while Wesley lifted Tavia from the ground, Saxony cast a wall of protection in front of them.

Karam pulled out her knives.

She wouldn’t let this happen.

“Don’t do this,” Wesley said. “Don’t turn your back on your family.”

“I’m not,” Zekia said. “I know who my real family is.”

Whatever side Zekia was on, she would have family. Ashwood had plagued her thoughts and twisted her mind so that she saw him as a father she would gladly choose over her sister and her brother.

“Gods damn it, kid,” Wesley said. “Don’t be an idiot!”

“Wesley,” Ashwood said.

His voice filled with something close to love.

“Don’t be rude. You’re standing in the way of our new world.”

“A new world,” Zekia repeated.

Her voice was smaller than Karam remembered.

“I’ve seen the world and—”

“I have seen things too,” Karam said. “And unlike you, I will not let them come to pass.”

She threw her knife at Zekia.

It sailed past Ashwood, nearly clipping his shadow ear as it twisted into the air and landed straight in Zekia’s shoulder.

She fell back and Ashwood yelled with such force that the beams of the bridge clanged and shook.

Saxony started to run toward her sister, and Karam realized at the last minute that it wasn’t to help Zekia to her feet, but to keep her perpetually on her ass.

Magic against magic.

Tavia fell into Karam, who just barely held her footing, as the bridge shook with Ashwood’s anger. But Wesley seemed unmoved, unfazed, as though even the possibility of the bridge crumbling could not shake him.

Karam twisted her extra knives in her hands.

“You two take Ashwood,” she said. “Saxony and I will handle Zekia.”

Anything she could do to keep the girl occupied.

“Karam,” Tavia said.

She could see the fear on her friend’s face.

“I will handle it,” Karam told her. I will keep you safe, she thought. “Just finish what we started.”