Growling in frustration, Spellsmiter lowered the full barbell to the ground. Then he picked up a heavy medicine ball and hurled it at me. I cast a shifting spell on the ball midair, transforming it into an inflatable swimming ring. I caught the light toy around my wrist, swinging it once before tossing it to the floor.
“Cheap tricks won’t get you through this training, blondie,” Spellsmiter growled and hurled another weight ball at me.
I changed it into a pink rubber ducky and tossed it down beside the swimming ring. “Perhaps not, but at least my cheap tricks will make your company more bearable.”
“Snark will serve you no better.”
“But it might bring a smile to your face?” I said hopefully.
He didn’t favor me with a smile. He just kept throwing loaded balls at me until the rack was empty—and I was surrounded by inflatable pool toys. Making friends with Legion brats was hard. They simply didn’t appreciate my sense of humor.
Sighing, I moved on to another training station. Here, I shot an arrow at a target board and hit the bullseye. Hmm, not bad.
An arrow split mine in half. I looked back to find another Legion brat. Silvertongue, the one who’d derided me for my wet clothes. Like Spellsmiter, she had followed me to my exercise station.
The Legion brats were trying to show me they were better at every single thing in every conceivable way. They were telling me in no uncertain terms that I did not deserve to be here. I was an outsider. I hadn’t grown up in their world. I hadn’t trained in combat and magic from the time I could walk. I was not a member of the elite, the magic legacies, the closed social circles that reached back centuries.
I walked over to the mats to stretch. Sure enough, within a minute of my arrival, a Legion brat lowered down right beside me.
“Stopped by to see who can stretch for longer?” I quipped.
“Sitting on my ass doing nothing? I don’t know, Leda. I don’t think that’s a competition I can win.”
I turned to look at Jace. He was the Legion brat who’d joined me on the mats.
Instead of an insult, he offered me a smile. “We haven’t talked in a while. How have you been?”
I arched my brows. “Are you sure your friends want you talking to me?”
“They aren’t my friends. You are,” he replied.
“They don’t think I belong here, in your world.”
“No, they don’t. They think you’ve been scraping by with a lot of luck, hiding under the coattails of greater soldiers.”
I looked across the gym, watching the brats’ competitions of magic, strength, and skill. They were so polished, so practiced, so perfect—in everything they did. I had to work twice as hard for half the results.
“Maybe they’re right,” I said. “Maybe I don’t belong here.”
“No, they’re not right,” Jace said. “They are powerful and clever and the top of their game in every way. But they aren’t you. None of them were imprisoned by a demon. None of them survived hell. They don’t know how hard you’ve had it. Or how strong you truly are.”
“Why, Jace, is that a compliment addressed at me, your competitor?”
“It’s a truth. You don’t see things the same way as the rest of us. Your mind is so…”
“Twisted?” I suggested.
“Unique,” he decided. “And strong, despite what they might think. That’s how you survived hell. And that’s why you will one day be an angel.”
“Just not before you’re an angel, right?”
Jace laughed.
I smiled at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re looking better,” I told him.
His sister’s death last month had hit him hard. I hadn’t seen a genuine smile on his face in a long time.
“I’m surviving,” he said stoically. “Because that’s what we must do. That is our duty. We must be strong. So that we may defend the Earth and push back the dark forces that threaten humanity.”
I gave him a big hug.
Confusion flitted across his face. “What was that for?”
“You needed it.”
He glanced around, his hands twitching.
“Are you nervous?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Don’t worry. Your friends aren’t watching,” I teased him. “They didn’t see our touching moment. They’re too engrossed in their wrestling match.”
“It’s not them I’m worried about.” Jace dropped his voice to a hushed whisper and added, “It’s General Windstriker.”
“Nero doesn’t mind a hug between friends.”
“He once threatened to kill me for looking at you,” Jace said drily.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“I’m sure that he did.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing for you that Nero is thousands of miles away right now,” I said with a smile.
A gust of wind blew through the gym, throwing the doors open. That wasn’t a mundane breeze. It was a gale born from formidable magic. Angel magic. Everyone stopped what they were doing to watch Colonel Dragonblood’s arrival.
But Colonel Dragonblood did not step through those open doors. Another angel did, one far more powerful. And far more dangerous.
Magic uncurled from him, flooding the entire hall with unfettered power. It ignited the air like a lightning storm. Goosebumps prickled up across my skin, responding to the overwhelming force of magic.
Unbothered by the tropical heat, he wore a black leather uniform fitted perfectly to his body. I could see every dip, every curve of muscle beneath that leather skin. His body, sculpted by centuries of merciless workouts, wasn’t human at all. It was divine—as divine as his glowing caramel hair, lit up in his halo, as divine as his emerald eyes, burning with magic.
“Nero.” His name brushed against my lips like a lover’s kiss.
“Colonel Dragonblood is unavailable,” Nero declared, addressing the entire room. “As of now, I am overseeing the Crystal Falls training.”
2
The Big Prize
Nero started us out with a magical warmup right away.
“Pair up,” he instructed us. “You are going to drill your seven basic magic skills in turn.”
That meant Vampire’s Kiss, Witch’s Cauldron, Siren’s Song, Dragon’s Storm, Shifter’s Shadow, Psychic’s Spell, and Fairy’s Touch.
“In each round, one person will be on offense, the other on defense,” Nero continued. “Before a round begins, you will each pull your ability out of this.” He held up a glass bowl filled with tiny slips of folded paper. “You may use your assigned ability—and only your assigned ability against your partner. The timer will be set to five minutes. That is five minutes for the attacker to defeat your opponent. If you succeed within the allotted time, you win. But if the defender is still standing when the bell rings, you lose. Now choose your first partner.”
The six Legion brats quickly paired up. That just left me, standing here all alone. When I’d joined the Legion of Angels, I’d not anticipated how much like high school it was going to be. Except in high school, I’d at least had my sister Bella in some of my classes. And in high school, the other kids hadn’t been killing machines.
Nero’s eyes, as hard as green diamonds, honed in on me. “No partner, Pandora?”
“I guess I’m not one of the cool kids,” I replied with a nonchalant shrug.
“Very well. You will pair with me for this round.”
His tone was very official, very businesslike. So like an angel. And so unlike how Nero was with me. Something weird was going on here.
“Where is Colonel Dragonblood?” I asked him.
“Colonel Dragonblood is engaged elsewhere,” he said coolly. “Now take a piece of paper, Pandora.”
Thus rebuffed, I reached into the bowl and pulled out a folded slip of paper. It was so pretty, so ornately folded, that it was a shame to ruin the art. I unfolded it anyway. The calligraphic text inside read ‘Defense: Vampire’s
Kiss’.
As soon as I’d read the words, the paper disintegrated into thin air. I knew that spell. Potions had been mixed into the paper and ink. Bella had made some of these self-destructing papers back when we were kids. It was a great way to pass notes without any evidence for the teachers to find.
In front of me, Nero was rolling back his shoulders, preparing to fight me.
“You didn’t draw a piece of paper,” I told him.
“I don’t need to.”
The starting bell chimed. Before its echo had faded from the hall, Nero had already launched two fireballs, three exploding potions, and a telekinetic blast at me. I zigzagged, scrambling to evade his spells. I was too slow. I avoided most of the spells, but his psychic blast grazed my shoulder. It barely touched me, but that tiny nudge shot me across the gym, slamming me into the wall.
It was then, as I untangled myself from a twisted mess of ropes, that I realized the spell on the paper wasn’t as simple as the one I knew. It hadn’t just disintegrated the material; that single touch of my fingers against the paper had blocked all my magic except for Vampire’s Kiss, including any defense I’d built up against unfriendly spells. It was no wonder Nero’s psychic spell only had to tap me to hurl me into the air.
Frowning, I pushed away from the wall. Without my other magic, I couldn’t cheat. Not that I’d planned to—or at least not more than a teensy bit.
As Nero strode toward me, each step as soft as a feather and as powerful as an earthquake, I moved away, keeping my distance. That would give me more time to react to his attacks.
Ten seconds later, Nero had me pinned to the ground, my arms pulled painfully and awkwardly behind my back, my legs locked beneath his knees.
“That didn’t go according to plan,” I grunted.
Nero had slammed a continuous barrage of spell walls into me from all directions. All my strength and speed had not been enough to avoid that. Not even close. Not against an archangel.
Nero rose smoothly. I flopped over, my body throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. Nero stared down at me expectantly. He was waiting for me to stand up. I wasn’t sure I could.
“It’s not fair.” Gritting my teeth, I rose slowly, my balance wobbly. “You got to use the whole spectrum of your magic and I didn’t.”
“Nothing about this training is fair. You’d best get used to it from the start.”
Ever since the angel Colonel Battleborn had died in the battle at Memphis last month, things had been different. The Legion was pushing harder than ever before to level up its soldiers’ magic, for more power to beat the demons’ Dark Force. In my time at the Legion, I’d battled dark angels. I’d crossed the plains of monsters. I’d been kidnapped by a demon and injected with Venom. But none of that scared me as much as the look on Nero’s face now. Something was really, seriously wrong.
“What happened to Colonel Dragonblood?” I asked again. I spoke my next words barely above a whisper. “Is he dead?”
His death would have rattled the Legion. Colonel Dragonblood wasn’t just an angel. He trained the Legion’s best mid-level soldiers, those with the potential to become angels. And angels were in short supply right now.
“Colonel Dragonblood is not dead,” said Nero. “He is busy with something crucial to the Legion’s future.”
That sounded dangerous. And really foreboding.
“And I told you not to worry about it,” Nero added. “I trust I won’t have to repeat myself in the future. Today’s training ends at nineteen hundred hours for everyone—except for you. You will run around the island’s outer trail. Fifty miles. That should give you enough time to consider the benefits of following orders.”
I frowned at him. Gods, it was like being an initiate all over again, training under Colonel Hard Ass. Except now Nero had been upgraded to General Hard Ass. I didn’t say any of that aloud, however, for fear that he would make it two laps around the island.
Nero nodded, a hint of that delightful fire shining through the cold marble sheen of his eyes. “A wise choice.”
As I moved down the line in the warmup rotation, I heard a few muted laughs from the Legion brats at my expense. Jace, my next partner, wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t laughing. He was, however, looking at me like I’d completely lost my mind to question Nero.
He was probably right. The Crystal Falls training was serious. These soldiers were fighting for the big prize: to become the Legion’s next angel. None of them were taking it lightly. And neither could I, even though I wasn’t in line to become an angel this time around.
I was working toward something more important than immortal glory and honor. I had to level up my magic, to gain the power of telepathy I needed to find my brother Zane. And I had to do it without clueing in the gods, or anyone at the Legion, as to what I really was. Because they certainly wouldn’t welcome that revelation with open arms.
“Getting into trouble already, Pandora?” Jace said as we took our magic origami papers from the bowl.
Mine read ‘Defense: Witch’s Cauldron’, his ‘Offense: Psychic’s Spell’.
“Trouble? Me?” I said with a shrug as our papers disintegrated. “Well, you know how I am.”
“Yes, I know how you are. All too well.” He said it with both admiration and admonition.
My gaze panned briefly across the five other soldiers training with us. “But I don’t know who they are.”
“Are you trying to make new friends or dissect their weaknesses?”
“Maybe a bit of both,” I admitted with a smile. “Though they don’t seem amenable to the idea of friendship.”
“No. They are here for a single reason.”
“To win. To become the Legion’s next angel. And to bowl over anyone or anything in their way.”
Jace nodded.
“Tell me about them,” I implored him.
Instead, Jace hurled a psychic spell at me. I grabbed a pinch of powder from my potion belt and tossed it. His spell dissolved.
Jace tried again. My powder dissolved that spell too.
“How did you do that?” he demanded.
“Magic,” I replied with a mysterious smile.
A calculating crinkle formed between his eyes. “That powder dissolved my spells.”
“Yes, it did. Neat trick, isn’t it?”
“A powder that dissolves magic. I’ve never heard of such a thing. That is a useful weapon.”
“It is indeed,” I agreed.
“How do you make it?”
He wasn’t mad at me for thwarting his attacks, not like any of the other Legion brats here would have been. No, Jace was too pragmatic for pride to stand in the way of his goals. He would build up his personal arsenal of spells and knowledge in any way possible.
“Tell me about the other soldiers here, and I’ll give you the recipe for this powder,” I proposed.
“Agreed,” he said immediately.
Jace’s gaze flitted to the soldier with long bouncy black curls pushed back from her face with a headband that closely resembled a crown. She was the Legion brat who’d mocked my wet clothes.
“That’s Siri Silvertongue,” he said. “She’s the daughter of Colonel Silvertongue, the angel who commands the eastern half of Australia.”
He glanced at the dark-haired man currently battling Siri. The soldier bore a striking resemblance to his partner.
“And that’s Siri’s cousin Andrin Spellsmiter. His father General Spellsmiter is Colonel Silvertongue’s brother. General Spellsmiter rules the western half of Australia. He also commands the Vanguard.”
The Vanguard was an elite squad of Legion warriors. They were stronger and faster than other Legion soldiers. They had a reputation for being vicious fighters who never stopped moving long enough to even contemplate the idea of mercy. They cut through their foes like a wildfire across a drought-beset prairie. There was nothing soft or easy about the ‘normal’ Legion training, but soldiers in the Vanguard took things to a whole other level. They trained harder a
nd longer, pushing their bodies and magic to the breaking point on a daily basis.
“Fireswift! Pierce!” Nero’s voice cut across the hall like a bullet. “Less chitchatting and more dueling.”
In response, Jace swung a telekinetic punch at me. My powder dissolved that too, just as it had his psychic blasts. Jace’s gaze dipped to my powder pouch. He wanted that recipe badly. I could see it in his eyes.
Which was why he risked Nero’s ire by continuing our conversation. Though first he checked to make sure Nero wasn’t watching. Nero was at the other end of the gym, chiding another pair for their ‘manic use of magic’.
“That is Arius Demonslayer,” Jace said, his voice low, indicating the male soldier in the pair Nero was critiquing.
The golden-haired man was handsome in a boyishly charming sort of way. He must have been at least the Legion’s minimum enlistment age of twenty when he’d become immortal, but he looked closer to sixteen.
Demonslayer. The name was familiar.
“Arius’s father was—”
“The angel Sirius Demonslayer, killed just over twenty years ago,” I said, remembering now.
“How did you know?”
“I once read a book about him.”
In truth, I hadn’t read any books about Sirius Demonslayer. My friend Stash had told me about the angel. Rumor had it that Sirius Demonslayer was Stash’s father. The rumors were wrong. Stash’s father was actually the deity Zarion, God of the Faith. Zarion had killed both his mortal lover and Sirius Demonslayer, the angel who had guarded her. No one knew that Zarion had killed them. Everyone thought they’d died in battle against dark angels.
“And who is the woman dueling Arius?” I asked Jace.
“That’s Isabelle Battleborn.”
Isabelle was short and slender, a lean bundle of toned muscle on a small frame. She wore her bright red hair braided back from her face; it was long in the back, reaching nearly to her waist. She moved quickly, like flames crackling on a campfire.
“The daughter of Colonel Battleborn,” I realized.
“Yes,” Jace said solemnly.
Jace’s sister had died from the wounds she’d incurred in the same battle that had killed Colonel Battleborn and so many other Legion soldiers. Venom-laced bullets had ripped their magic apart.
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 2