Wesley and Tavia nodded, and Karam wasted no time in running toward Saxony and her sister, who were flinging magic at each other.

“Saxony!” Karam called out in warning.

Zekia lifted up a hand and a cable from the bridge snapped, flicking toward Saxony in a whip. It missed her somehow, but the bridge teetered with the force of it, dropping closer to the waters below.

Karam gritted her teeth and tackled Zekia to the ground.

She pressed a knife to the young girl’s throat.

Saxony would never forgive her if she did this.

Tavia wouldn’t survive if she didn’t.

“You can’t do that!” Zekia said.

She flung her hand out and Karam was lifted off of her and thrown backward.

“You don’t understand,” Zekia said, pushing herself up. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

She tried to walk toward them, but Saxony thrust her hand out, her entire palm engulfed in bright yellow flame.

“Get back!” she said. “I mean it, Zekia. Don’t make me do this.”

Saxony’s voice splintered on her plea and it broke Karam’s heart to hear it.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Zekia said. “We’re not going to do this.”

“Yes, we are,” Karam told her.

She stood and adopted her fighting stance, steadying any doubt in her bones.

“I’m doing what I have to,” Zekia said.

“So am I,” Karam said.

Karam was supposed to be a protector, she was supposed to be honoring her family’s legacy.

And she couldn’t do that if Zekia lived.

35

TAVIA

There he was, finally.

Dante Ashwood, standing in front of Tavia and Wesley.

The man who had poisoned the poorest people in Creije with his dirty elixir long before this war, creating the magic sickness in a bid to be all-powerful.

The man who had destroyed Tavia’s home.

The man who had made her into an orphan.

Don’t cry, ciolo, the memory of her mother’s voice whispered.

“Two against one,” Tavia said. “I don’t hate those odds.”

Ashwood’s shadows shook with his laughter. “Just like a busker to be so cocky. I wonder if you’d feel the same if my boy came back to my side?”

Wesley straightened beside Tavia and she hated, truly hated, how the Kingpin’s words still had such a hold on him.

I know who you are, she thought, hoping that somehow he could hear. I love you and nothing can change it.

Then, miraculously, as though Wesley really could read her mind, he squeezed Tavia’s hand in his and she felt her heartbeat steady.

“You’re not going to make me into your little lapdog again,” Wesley said.

“You were never my lapdog,” Ashwood told him. “You were my family.”