“You!” he yelled. “I’m going to kill you for that!”

“Blake! No!” Deah screamed, but it was no use.

Felix scrambled backward, managing to put a table between the two of them, but Blake slammed his sword down on top of the table, using his strength magic to crack it right down the middle. He snarled, waded through the two broken halves, and charged at Felix again.

Felix didn’t have a weapon, and his Talent was for healing, not fighting, but he stood his ground and raised his fists, just like I’d taught him to.

But it wasn’t going to help him. Not against Blake, his sword, and his strength magic.

“Run, Felix! Run!” I yelled, but my voice was lost in the screams, shrieks, and shouts of the fight.

Blake lashed out with his sword. Felix dodged the blow, but his foot slipped in a puddle of water, and this time he was the one who slammed up against one of the booths. His legs went out from under him and he sat down hard in the padded seat. He landed awkwardly and started struggling, trying to get out of the booth and back up onto his feet. But he was moving slow—way too slow—and Blake was already surging forward for another strike.

Felix was trapped and there was nothing I could do to help him. Still, I kept shoving people out of my way, trying to get to him. Across the restaurant, I spotted Devon doing the same thing, realizing that Blake was about to kill Felix. But neither one of us was going to be able to save our friend.

But we didn’t have to.

At the last second, Deah stepped in front of Felix and snapped up her sword so that it clanged against Blake’s. The sound seemed as loud as a clap of thunder in the restaurant, although it was quickly drowned out by all the continued fighting.

Blake stood there, his sword locked with Deah’s, glaring down at his sister. “I knew it!” he hissed. “I knew that you liked him! Traitor! You little traitor!”

Instead of answering, Deah shoved him away. Behind her, Felix finally managed to get to his feet and stumble out of the booth. He staggered forward and stopped so that he was standing right beside Deah.

Blake roared and charged forward again, bringing his sword up over his head and then down at Deah, trying to kill her with that one, powerful blow. But Deah raised her own sword and blocked his blow again.

“I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else!” she screamed.

She whipped her sword out in a quick counterstrike, although it wasn’t nearly as vicious as her brother’s attack had been. Blake dodged her blow and came right back at her, attacking her with all the skill and strength magic he had. But Deah was the far better fighter, and she parried his blows with ease, using her mimic magic to copy and counter every single one of his moves, even as her face grew harder and tighter with each of Blake’s charges.

Her own brother was trying to kill her and it was breaking her heart, one clash of their swords at a time. Deah whirled around and her eyes locked with mine, just for a moment. The red-hot needles of her pain and anguish stabbed me in the gut, just as Blake was trying to do to her with his sword.

Once again, I started to head over to help her, but a man screamed, the sound louder and sharper with fear than all the others. I whipped around just in time to see Claudia clamp her hands around the wrists of the Draconi guard that was attacking her. As soon as her skin came into contact with his, Claudia blasted the guard with her magic, and his hands immediately turned a dark blue from the force of her cold touch Talent. The guard screamed again and wrenched his wrists out of her grasp, although his own frostbitten hands flopped uselessly by his sides, his sword painfully frozen to his own fingers.

Claudia turned to freeze another guard who had been creeping up on her, but that man quickly backed away from her, as did all the other Draconis.

Except for Victor.

He’d been hanging back during the fight, letting his guards do his dirty, bloody work for him, but now he stepped up so that he was standing directly in front of Claudia. The way they were facing off reminded me of an old spaghetti western that Poppy and I had watched a few weeks ago.

“You think you’ve won?” Victor snarled. “You haven’t won anything. I’ll get my weapons back. And by the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish that you and everyone else in your pathetic Family was dead.”

Claudia’s hands curled into fists. “I will never give you those weapons,” she spat out. “I’ll die first.”

Victor’s hands tightened into fists as well. “Something that I will be happy to help you with.”

The guards standing between them realized that they were in the line of fire, and they scrambled out of the way. Claudia and Victor didn’t move, though, each one glaring at the other, even though the fight still raged in the rest of the restaurant.

I looked for my friends. Deah and Felix were still battling Blake, and Mo, Angelo, and Reginald were standing back-to-back-to-back, punching, kicking, and lashing out at the guards who surrounded them. Devon was fighting two more guards, trying to reach Claudia again, now that he realized she was about to go toe-to-toe with Victor.

But I was closer to them than Devon was now, and it was up to me to help Claudia battle Victor. Good. My hand tightened around the hilt of my stolen sword and another surge of strength flowed from the black blade into my body. I’d waited a long time to make Victor pay for what he’d done to my mom, and this was finally my chance.

But I was too late.

Even as I headed toward them, Claudia surged forward to touch and freeze him with her power the same way she had the guard. But Victor casually waved his hand, as if he wasn’t worried about her magic at all.

And that’s when the lightning started.

At first, I thought that I was just imagining the white lightning that was crackling on Victor’s fingertips. But the sudden, intense chill of magic flooding the restaurant told me the lightning was very, very real—and very, very deadly.

Claudia stopped short, her eyes widening as she stared at the lightning flashing on Victor’s hand. She couldn’t get close enough to freeze him with her magic, not without getting electrocuted herself, and Victor knew it. He let out a low, satisfied chuckle.

Then he reared back and threw his lightning magic at her.

Crackling white streaks of magic erupted from Victor’s palm, zipped through the room, and slammed straight into Claudia’s chest, knocking her back. She hit a table and dropped to the floor. She didn’t move after that, and I couldn’t tell if she was just unconscious or dead.