Dark Heart of Magic (Black Blade #2)(92)

“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.”

Seleste stared at me, then Deah, who’d come up to stand beside me. “I don’t want that for the two of you. You can’t fight each other the way Serena and I did. You have to work together. Otherwise, Victor will win, and he’ll destroy all the other Families.”

Deah’s eyes widened. “Mom, you don’t mean that. Sure, Dad has his problems with the other Families, but he would never try to destroy everyone else.”

Seleste stepped forward, reached up, and cradled Deah’s face in her hands. “My darling girl, always wanting to believe the best of people, even when they don’t deserve it. You are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. Always remember that.”

Seleste leaned forward and kissed Deah’s forehead. Then her blue eyes glazed over, and she skipped away, humming and lost in her own world again. Deah watched her, a stricken expression on her pretty face.

I shook my head. “Open your eyes, Deah. Your dad has been plotting something against the other Families for a long time now. And I finally figured out what it is.”

I pointed to the secret room, which was still open behind me. “Remember what Katia wanted to do to us? Well, your dad has already done the exact same thing to a whole bunch of monsters. He and Blake set out traps in the woods to catch monsters so they can rip their magic out of the creatures with black blades.”

I stalked over to the desk and picked up one of the files there. “And he has files on all the Draconis, notes about how he can use those black blades to augment their magic, make them faster, stronger, better fighters. He even has a file on you, if you care to look.”

Deah’s face paled, and her mouth twisted as though she was going to be sick. “He wouldn’t do that. Not to everyone in the Family, not to me. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I could tell that she didn’t even believe her own words.

“Go in there and look for yourself. Just be sure to close the door behind you when you leave.”

I’d seen and heard everything I needed to, but instead of leaving the office like I should have, I stood still and kept staring at Deah.

“There’s a war coming,” I said. “Between the Sinclairs and the Draconis. And you’re going to have to choose a side. I hope you choose ours, cousin.”

Deah stared back at me, her blue eyes full of worry. All the while, Seleste kept humming and skipping around and around us.

I nodded at Deah, then left Victor’s office.



I met up with Devon in the woods, and we hiked back to the Sinclair mansion. We went straight to the library, where Claudia and Mo were waiting. I e-mailed the photos I’d taken to their phones and told them everything I’d seen in Victor’s secret room, including all the black blades hidden there and what I thought he wanted to do with them.

Claudia put her phone down, took off her glasses, and rubbed her head as though it was aching again. “So Victor has enough black blades to give the majority of his guards more magic.”

“Just a boost,” I said. “Katia said that monster magic burns out of your veins quickly, that it’s not permanent, like human magic is.”

“How quickly?” Mo asked.

I shrugged. “She didn’t say. But she’d set traps along the lake, and it sounded like she’d had to kill a lot of monsters just to advance through the tournament.”

“It doesn’t matter how long monster magic lasts,” Devon said. “All Victor needs is an hour, maybe two, and he could wipe out an entire Family, including ours.”

Silence descended over the library as we all took in that not-so-cheery thought. Claudia and Mo picked up their phones again, staring at the photos, but I wandered over to the bookshelf where that picture of my mom was. Now that I knew the blond woman with her was Seleste, I picked up the picture and looked at it again.