Deah’s lips twisted with misery, but she sat up straight and tried to rally. “Well, it’s always nice to have some competition. But it’s only the first day of the tournament. What matters is who is left standing at the end, right?”

Katia scowled at her, and Deah shot her a dirty look in return. Victor glanced back and forth between the two girls, nodding his approval. A smile curved his lips, and I realized that he was enjoying pitting them against each other. It was just another sign of his cruelty.

Deah’s phone buzzed, and she picked it up off the table and read the message on the screen. But when she realized that her father was still staring at her, she set her phone aside, dropped her head, and concentrated on her lasagna.

“I’m glad that Deah enjoys the competition,” Nikolai drawled. “Perhaps this will be the year when that competition finally beats her.”

His voice was pleasant enough, but his brown gaze was hard and expectant when he looked at Katia. She gave him a curt nod, as if promising that she wouldn’t let Deah defeat her again.

Victor’s smile widened. “Care to make a friendly wager on that?”

Nikolai reached up and stroked his brown beard, giving himself time to think. “What sort of wager?”

“Oh, I’m sure I can think of something that will be to our mutual benefit,” Victor said, his voice smooth and seductive. “We are allies now, remember?”

“Mmm.” Nikolai’s tone was far more noncommittal.

The two men stared each other down, the silent tension between them growing and growing.

I looked back and forth between them, but the angle was too high for me to use my soulsight to see what they were really feeling. Still, Victor’s words troubled me.

Allies? Since when were the Draconis and Volkovs allies? The Volkovs were the third most powerful Family in town, behind the Draconis and the Sinclairs. Everyone knew that the Volkovs wanted the top two Families to destroy each other so they could step up and seize power. So what had changed to make Nikolai join Victor?

More worry rippled through me. Maybe Claudia was wrong. Maybe Victor wasn’t going to wait until after the tournament to strike out against the Sinclairs.

Maybe he’d already set his plan in motion—whatever it was.

Carl broke the silence by reaching out, grabbing a bottle of wine from the middle of the table, and filling his glass all the way to the brim with the blood-red liquid. Then he raised the glass to his lips and guzzled down all the wine like it was water and he was dying of thirst. Glug-glug-glug. He let out a happy sigh, smacked his lips together, and refilled his glass as quickly as he had drained it. He held up the full glass and used it to gesture at the others.

“You should take Victor up on his bet, brother,” Carl proclaimed in a loud voice, slurring his words. A few drops of wine sloshed out of his glass and stained the white tablecloth. “And you should bet a lot. Because my girl will win this year. She’s got a secret weapon. Don’t you, Katia?”

Katia’s cheeks flamed in embarrassment, and she gave her father a sharp, disapproving look, but he was too busy gulping down his wine to notice, much less care. A spurt of sympathy filled my chest. It was obvious that Katia’s father drank—a lot.

Victor’s eyes narrowed with interest. “Really?” he asked, his voice taking on a sly, knowing tone. “And what would this secret weapon be?”

Katia’s cheeks were still red, but she shrugged, trying to deflect the question. “I’ve just been training extra hard. That’s all. But my father’s right. It’s going to pay off. I know it will.”

She stared at Deah, waiting for the other girl to react to her challenging words, but Deah was busy checking her phone again, and she didn’t even glance at Katia. Apparently, talking about the tournament wasn’t nearly as important as whatever texts were on her phone.

Blake had been shoveling food into his mouth during the whole conversation, but he stopped long enough to snicker. “Looks like some folks don’t care about your training.”

Katia’s cheeks burned again, with anger this time, and her lips flattened out in a harsh line. She didn’t like Deah ignoring her. I wondered what Katia would think when she found out that Deah was dating Felix, or whatever the two of them were doing besides stupidly sneaking around. It had been obvious at the tournament that Katia wanted to hook up with Felix again. I wondered if Felix had talked to Katia yet and told her that he was seeing someone else. Probably not, given everything that had happened with the rope ladder.

“Well,” Victor murmured. “I suppose we’ll see when the tournament resumes tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Katia muttered, stabbing her fork into the salad on her plate.

“I’ll be interested in watching you compete, Katia,” Victor continued. “I always admire strong fighters who are determined to win. Perhaps if things go well, Nikolai might let me borrow you for some . . . special projects that the two of us are going to be working on together.”

Katia blushed again, and her hazel eyes lit up with pleasure, as if she would actually enjoy working for Victor.

My stomach twisted with a combination of worry, disgust, and dread. Special projects? That certainly had an ominous tone to it. I waited, hoping that Victor would elaborate, but of course he didn’t.

Victor and Nikolai kept talking about the tournament, mainly who the other Families had entered. Blake and Katia both chimed in with their opinions. So did Carl, although his words slurred so badly that the others just ignored him. Deah kept sneaking glances at her phone.

They also chatted about the rope ladder, but everyone agreed that it was an unfortunate accident. If Victor or Blake had been behind someone cutting the ropes, they weren’t going to come right out and say so. Or maybe they hadn’t had anything to do with it and Vance was the guilty one, as I suspected.

I waited a few minutes, but Victor and Nikolai didn’t talk about anything else interesting or sinister, so I slithered away from the edge of the balcony and left my view of the dining hall. I probably had at least forty-five minutes before dinner would end, and I needed to get to Victor’s office, search it, and get out of here before then.

Still keeping to the shadows, I skulked through the mansion, moving from one hallway and staircase to the next, climbing higher and higher all the while. According to the blueprints Mo had given me, Victor’s office was located close to the greenlab, the space where both common and magical plants were grown, including stitch-sting bushes, which were harvested for their healing properties. I headed in that direction, and soon, the delicious smells of dinner were replaced by the softer, floral scents of flowers.