I opened it up, curious to see whether Victor had written any more notes about me, whether he’d realized that I had much more magic than I let on. But the file was the same as before. I guessed that Victor hadn’t gotten around to updating it yet. But he would. I shivered and closed the file again.

Then I went over to what I was really here for tonight—finding a way into Victor’s secret room.

The snarling dragon still glared from the wall, the same as before, with that ruby serving as the creature’s eye. And once again, a cold chill of magic emanated from behind the stone. Something was back there, and I thought I knew exactly what it was, but I wanted to make sure before I told Claudia and the others.

So I ran my hands up and down and back and forth across the carving, searching for a loose bit of stone or some other mechanism that would open the wall so I could get to the room on the other side. But I didn’t find anything. All the while, the ruby in the dragon’s eye kept staring at me, smug that its secret was still safe.

I let out a soft laugh. Of course. How stupid of me. Always try the obvious first.

I reached up and pressed on the ruby. It sank into the stone with a whisper, and part of the wall slid back, revealing a large room.

I stepped inside, and a light clicked on above my head. Shelves lined all three of the walls from floor to ceiling. All of the shelves were filled with black blades, and all those blades pulsed with magic.

This was it—this was Victor’s plan.

His dark heart of magic.

I walked along the first shelf, staring at the weapons—swords and daggers mostly, with an occasional mace or a hammer. Each weapon was on a peg by itself and carefully, neatly numbered with a tag. I recognized the letters and symbols as being written in Victor’s hand, in the same code that had been on the files in his office: TT29, CC2, RM55, and the like. Now, thanks to Katia, I knew exactly what the initials meant.

At the boathouse, she had said that Victor and Blake had been catching trolls, which explained the trap I’d found on the Draconi property the first night I’d come over here. I wondered how Katia had found out what Victor and Blake were doing—if she’d discovered their cage in the woods last summer while she was planting her own traps out there. I didn’t know the answer, and it didn’t matter. But I had no doubt that Victor and Blake had trapped and killed the tree trolls for the same reason that Katia had.

They had stolen the monsters’ magic.

“Tree troll number 29,” I muttered, staring at a dagger that was the same size and shape as the ones that Katia had tried to kill Deah and me with. “Copper crusher number 2. Rockmunk number 55.”

And the weapons and codes went on and on, all the way around the room. Even though it made me sick to my stomach, I pulled out my phone and snapped photos of everything to show Claudia and Mo later. It took me a while, since there were more than a hundred weapons inside the room, enough to outfit most of the Draconi guards.

Enough to win a war against the other Families.

Mo had been right when he’d said that Victor was building an army—and he planned to outfit each and every one of his soldiers with a black blade. All those extra boosts of magic would make the Draconis almost invincible; it could only be a matter of time before Victor decided to strike out at the other Families.

But we’d be ready for him when he did.

I’d made sure of that.

I stepped out of the secret room to find two people waiting for me in Victor’s office—Deah and Seleste.

They both looked fine, and no cuts or bruises marred their faces. It didn’t look as though Victor had punished them, despite Deah’s confession that I had let her win the tournament. Making sure they were okay was another reason I’d come here tonight.

Deah had her sword out, but Seleste smiled when she saw me.

I smiled back at her. “Hello, Seleste. How are you?”

“Oh, fine, darling,” she said, waving her hand at me. “Just fine.”

“No more bones and blades?”

She shook her head. “No more bones and blades.”

“Good.”

Seleste smiled at me again, then started humming to herself and wandering around the room. Earlier today, I’d confronted Claudia and Mo about Seleste being my aunt and why they’d never told me about her and Deah. They’d said that my mom had wanted it that way, that she and Seleste had had a falling out when Seleste had announced her plans to marry Victor after he’d had my father killed. But I wanted to hear it from her.

Seleste went over to the bookshelf where Deah’s trophies were sitting, picked them up, and started polishing them with the sleeve of her dress, still humming all the while.

Deah wasn’t so accommodating, though. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, dropping her sword to her side. “Are you crazy?”

“No, just checking out a hunch. And I wanted to talk to your mom. I was hoping that she would come in here. You too.”

I went over to Seleste. Now that I was looking for it, I could see how much she resembled my mom—same dark blue eyes, same straight nose, same mischievous curve to her lips. Seeing so much of my mom in her made my heart ache, but I kept my face and voice soft and gentle.

“Aunt Seleste,” I asked. “What happened between you and my mom?”

Her hand curled around the trophy she was polishing, the gold cup from this year’s Tournament of Blades. Someone—Felix, most likely—must have found it in the boathouse and returned it to Deah. Seleste stared at the trophy a moment, then carefully pushed it back into place on the shelf.

“I loved Victor. I thought he was different from what he really was. That he was a good man.” She gave me a sad, crooked smile. “Mine is the only future I can’t see, and I didn’t realize what Victor was really like until it was too late. But Serena knew. She always knew. She tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

Seleste drew in a ragged breath, then slowly let it out. “I didn’t realize that Victor set Luke up to be killed by that nest of copper crushers. I thought it was just an accident. But Serena knew the truth. So did everyone else. But it was already too late for all of us. Claudia didn’t want Serena seeing Luke, so they fought. Mo took Serena’s side, so he and Claudia fought. Serena didn’t want me seeing Victor, so we fought. Everybody fought, all the time, until there was nothing left of us.”