The God of Heaven’s Army waved his hand at the doors to the gym, and they swung open. Five angels strode into the room: Colonel Fireswift, Harker, Leila Starborn, and two angels I didn’t know, one male, one female. The new arrivals formed a cluster to the right of me and the Legion brats.
“You too, Windstriker,” Faris told Nero, his brows arching.
Nero joined the other angels, silent, expressionless. And cold. So cold I could feel a shiver trickle down my spine.
I scanned the group of angels, doing the math. Seven of us and six angels. There was still an angel missing.
Faris waved his hand at the First Angel. “They are waiting for you, Nyx. We wouldn’t want you to miss out on all the fun.”
Nyx was a demigod. She was above all the other angels. But right here and now, Faris was making it very clear to everyone that he didn’t subscribe to that view of heaven’s hierarchy. He could have summoned another angel here, but instead he’d lumped Nyx in with the others. He’d put her at the same level as the angels she commanded. If that wasn’t a power play, I didn’t know what was.
As Nyx joined the other angels, I could only guess at the fury burning inside of her, but the First Angel didn’t betray it. In fact, each and every angel was doing their best to keep any hint of expression off their face—even though they must have been shocked that Nyx was training with them, she who had trained with gods.
“Now that you’re all sorted, let’s begin,” declared Faris.
Zarion’s gaze zeroed in on me. “Wait one moment. This training session is for angels and angel candidates only. She doesn’t belong here,” he hissed, contempt dripping off every syllable.
Zarion glared at me like I was a gatecrasher, as though I were the dirtiest, vilest thing ever to crawl the Earth for even daring to come here. I wasn’t surprised. Zarion was a stickler for the rules, including ones he and the other gods had only made up five minutes ago. Or maybe especially the rules he and the other gods had only made up five minutes ago.
When I’d arrived at Crystal Falls, I had qualified for the training. It was supposed to be for level six and level seven soldiers. It wasn’t my fault the name of the game had changed mid-play. They couldn’t punish me for failing to predict that the gods would change their minds…or could they?
Oh, gods, Zarion was going to make a fuss until the other gods agreed to kick me out of here. Despite the inevitable strike of lightning to the ass on the way out, getting kicked out of here might just be the luckiest thing to happen to me all day. I didn’t know what the gods’ had planned for this training, but I was pretty sure it was going to hurt like a rusty razor blade to the eye. Suddenly, running several miles barefoot over burning coals and trekking through a monster-infested jungle sounded like bliss.
On the other hand, if I got kicked out of Crystal Falls, I couldn’t watch Nero’s back. I didn’t want to leave Nero here under the gods’ kind and caring tutelage. Sure, Harker and Leila would look out for him. And maybe Nyx would too. I wasn’t so sure about the other angels, though. Angels had a reputation for being cutthroat. And that reputation was well-earned. Colonel Fireswift sure wouldn’t be looking out for Nero’s well-being here. On the contrary, he’d be looking for any sign of weakness in Nero’s armor.
Sure, I wasn’t as powerful as anyone in this room, but I couldn’t help but want to stay by Nero’s side. Perhaps it was hubris to think I could make a lick of difference when it came to protecting him against angels and gods, but I didn’t care. As far as sins went, I’d committed worse ones to do the right thing.
“Indeed she does not belong here,” Faris said to Zarion.
That must have been the first time in millennia that the two brothers had agreed on anything. They were always standing at opposing ends of the cannon fire.
But Zarion’s self-satisfied smirk faded at his brother’s next words.
“However, that problem is easily remedied.” A hard smile twisted Faris’s lips. “Congratulations, Leda Pierce. You’re being promoted.” A bottle of Nectar appeared in his hands. “Step up to the stage.”
5
Fairy's Touch
I felt my legs moving me along toward the gods’ stage. My mind, however, was still stuck back where I’d stood a few moments before. Faris was promoting me. My mind struggled to digest that.
After all, I hadn’t yet trained the power Fairy’s Touch, the magic of healing. I’d just gotten here, to this training that was supposed to make me stronger, to prime my magic and prepare me for the next level. And now I was skipping all of that, jumping to the front of the line. Or, as I now feared, I was being pushed in front of the firing squad.
What the hell was Faris up to? Did he not care if the Nectar killed me? Or was he really that confident that I could absorb the Nectar and gain the gods’ next gift, the power of healing? After all, he had instructed Harker to feed me pure Nectar, the immortal elixir that created archangels, just weeks after I’d joined the Legion.
I didn’t think Faris wanted to kill me. Not that he cared about my life. But he did want to level me up to a second-tier angel so he could use my connection to my brother Zane to find him—and then add Zane to his collection of powerful telepaths.
Faris couldn’t level me up if I was dead. On the other hand, he also couldn’t level me up if I didn’t drink the Nectar. Maybe this was his way of shortcutting the leveling game, of changing the rules, of pushing me up faster than the Legion’s bureaucracy generally allowed. By being here at Crystal Falls, by training under the gods, I could be playing right into his hand. I cringed. All these machinations were making my head hurt. My life had been simpler before gods and angels had entered into the equation.
Though, considering what I was, gods and angels had always been part of the equation. And demons too. Past, present, and future. There was no avoiding them. This was my life.
I stopped in front of Faris, my gaze dipping to the glass bottle in his hands. As you moved up the Legion, the Nectar grew brighter, shinier, less diluted. Pure Nectar looked like liquid diamonds, the fluid so bright it was almost blinding. The Nectar Faris held now, the Nectar to make me a level seven soldier, wasn’t that white yet. It was white-silver in color with occasional pale gold streaks swirled into the mixture.
Faris uncapped the bottle. No one said a thing, not even Zarion to protest that my filthy transgression was being rewarded by leveling me up. As the God of Faith, he probably figured if I wasn’t worthy, I’d just die and that would settle that.
Faris poured the Nectar into a goblet. The drink was thick and silky, like hot liquid metal.
My heart hiccuped. I didn’t feel ready. Not yet. This had happened so suddenly. I wasn’t prepared.
You are prepared, Nero’s reassuring voice spoke in my mind, even as a panicking part of me was preparing to bolt out of here.
I sent him a silent thank-you for being here. Even though he wasn’t standing beside me, he was always right there with me, lending me his strength and love.
Most Legion leveling-up ceremonies were characterized by long, flowery speeches brimming with jingoistic fervor. Everyone was dressed to impress for the ceremony and the wild party that followed. But Faris wasn’t saying a thing. And besides some of the gods, no one was dressed in formal attire. I also seriously doubted there would be a party to follow this ceremony.
Faris set the goblet in my hands. All eyes were on me, and I was sure at least some of the people here hoped I wouldn’t survive. I lifted the goblet to my lips and drank.
Fire and ice exploded inside my mouth. Lightning flashed through my veins, igniting my blood. Dizzy with magic and delirium, I stumbled back. I steadied my steps, regaining my balance before I fell off the stage. Waves of euphoria pounded into me like a hammer. It felt so good—and hurt so much. I hiccuped. Something was wrong.
“You are now a soldier of the seventh level,” Faris declared.
No, it was wrong. It was all very wrong.
The whole room was spinning around me
like I was caught inside a vortex. I stepped off the stage, almost falling flat on my face. As my feet hit the gym floor, vibrations pulsed through my legs. Vertigo swallowed me. I rushed past everyone, their faces a blur. I hurried on shaky steps to the nearby bathroom.
An earthquake shook the bathroom. White tiles poured down the walls like a stone waterfall, covering the floor, burying the toilet stalls.
I blinked, and the tiles were back on the walls.
I rushed to the sink. My shaking hands fumbled with the faucet.
“What the hell was in that Nectar?” I coughed, splashing my face with water.
I looked in the mirror above the sink, but everything was blurry. My eyes couldn’t focus. They kept jumping around erratically, seeing things that I was pretty sure weren’t there. Carnivorous vines grew out of the toilets, stretching out their poison-tipped tentacles toward me. Fire wolves crashed through the bathroom door, their breath setting everything ablaze. The demon Sonja burst through the mirror, her fist reaching for my throat.
I scrambled backward, tripping over my own feet. My chin banged against the sink. As I lay curled up on the floor, hugging myself, the wildfire raging inside of me slowly settled into a steady burn. My dizziness subsided. I gripped the edge of the sink and pulled myself back up. When I looked into the mirror now, I didn’t see a demon. I saw my own reflection.
Behind me, the bathroom door swung open. I turned around to find Nero standing there.
“What happened?” His gaze dipped to my bruised chin.
“I slipped and fell.”
“Something is wrong.”
“Yes.” I sashayed up to him. “Very wrong.” Gods, he really was sexy. I looped my arms over his shoulders.
“Leda…”
A hysterical laugh burst out of my lips.
“You are drunk,” he said.
“Yes. That cup of Nectar packed a potent punch.”
“Stop.”
I looked down to see my hands were at his belt. Gods, I’d lost my mind. I didn’t even remember doing that.
He set his hands on my cheeks, meeting my eyes. “What happened?”
“Something went wrong,” I laughed shakily. The dizziness had returned with a vengeance. I crashed into Nero. “The Nectar was wrong. All very wrong.”
I blacked out. When I came to, I was on the floor, my head on Nero’s lap. My fangs pierced his wrist, my mouth sucking in his blood in long, deep draws. His other hand gently stroked through my hair. Nero’s blood tasted like heaven, sweet and spicy and oh-so-delicious. But it also tasted like love, stability, balance. It didn’t throw me for a loop like the Nectar at the ceremony had.
My mind was clearing. The jumbled flash of fractured hallucinations had petered out.
I separated my mouth from his wrist. “What happened?”
“You tried to attack me,” he said calmly. “Or tried to have your way with me. It was unclear to me. And to you, it seemed.”
I gaped at him.
“You don’t remember?”
“No.” I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “How long was I delirious?”
“For about ten minutes.”
Ten minutes? I’d been a raging lunatic for ten whole minutes, trying to hurt the person I loved—and I didn’t remember a single moment of it.
“Nero, I’m sorry. Something happened when I drank the Nectar. There was something wrong with it.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.” Now that my head had cleared, I could look back without any madness to taint my mind. “The Nectar was fine. Something is wrong with me. When I drank the Nectar, my body went all whacky.” My hands fidgeted nervously with the hem of my shirt. “Why did I react that way? What’s the matter with me?”
“It appears your body rejected the Nectar.”
Usually that meant instant death. You either absorbed the magic of the Nectar, or it killed you. That was simply how things worked. There was no magical limbo, no place between dying and leveling up, no way around the laws of magic.
“Why am I still alive?” I asked Nero.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
My heart thumped in panic. “Nero.”
Reacting to my anxiety, he cupped my hands inside his.
“I’m alive. But the Nectar didn’t ignite my magic.” I drew in a deep breath. “I don’t have the power of Fairy’s Touch.”
“That shouldn’t be possible. It’s never happened to anyone before, not once in the history of the Legion.”
“This is because of my unusual origin,” I said quietly.
“Perhaps. But we can’t be sure at this point. We’ll figure it out. Somehow.”
If this had never happened before, how would we figure it out? There was no precedent.
“We just will,” he said, responding to my unspoken panic attack. “In the meantime, you can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious, Pandora. No one must know, no matter how much you think you can trust them. Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. Even more than angels, gods are a victim of their own intelligence, of the wealth of their immortal experiences. They believe they perfectly understand the natural order of the universe. When confronted with something they don’t understand, they don’t trust it. And they respond according.”
Swiftly and without mercy. And not bothering to ask any questions first.
Nero was right. I was going to be stuck for days—or even weeks, for all I knew—with a bunch of telepathic angels and gods. I couldn’t think about what had just happened here. In fact, I had to block my thoughts completely. I’d never blocked so many telepaths for so long.
“They are going to find out, Nero. Sooner or later, they will. I will be under close observation in this training. My magic will be under close observation.”
“Fake it.
“This isn’t something I can just fake. I can’t pretend I have a power I do not possess. What if I’m supposed to heal someone? How do I fake that?”
“I have every confidence in your ability to improvise.”
I snorted. “Funny statement coming from you.”
I’d been doing nothing but improvising since I’d joined the Legion—which had gotten me into heaps of trouble. Nero had chastised me about my unorthodox methods many times before. In the Legion, you weren’t supposed to make things up as you went along; you were supposed to toe the line, to keep to the straight and narrow path, as determined by the Legion’s handbook.
“You’re not just any Legion soldier,” Nero said, his fingers caressing my cheek softly. “Are you ready?”
“Ready to face my doom?” I laughed weakly.
He intertwined his fingers with mine, squeezing them.
“Nero?” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Why would my body reject something it always craved before? Something that it thrived on?”
“I don’t know. Something was different this time.”
I looked at the door with dread. “I really have to go back out there, don’t I?”
“Yes. If you don’t, they will come in here eventually.”
“Ok.” I rose to my feet. “Let’s go.”
He rose with me. “They will have questions.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have all the answers,” I said, putting on a bright smile.
Just as soon as I think of them, I added silently as we stepped out of the bathroom.
6
Palace of the Gods
Everyone’s eyes tracked me and Nero as we reentered the gym hall. There were a few whispers from the Legion brats about my flushed cheeks, elevated heart rate, and eyes dilated with magic. Siri Silvertongue was even brazen enough to suggest that Nero and I had run off to the bathroom for a quickie.
I did not correct her misconceptions. It was better for them to assume that we’d had sex because I’d been so completely drunk on Nectar that I couldn’t control myself, than for anyone to realize what had really happened. That I was broken, a
threat to the Legion’s established leveling system.
It was supposed to be so clearcut, so black and white. You leveled up, or you died. That was how it had always been. There wasn’t supposed to be anything in-between. I was an anomaly that should not have existed.
I breathed in and out, slow and even, Back in the bathroom, Nero had said to keep calm, to not let anyone know that anything was wrong. I was trying. And failing. No, I sure as hell wasn’t calm. And not just because of what would happen if the gods found out that I had neither leveled up nor died, that I had derailed their whole system, the foundation, the very building blocks of Earth’s army, the do-or-die duality upon which the Legion of Angels was built.
What shook me hardest was the very real possibility that I was staring at the end of my journey. If I couldn’t level up my magic anymore, if I couldn’t gain the power of Ghost’s Whisper, then how would I ever be able to perform the magic to find my brother Zane?
No, I had to push those thoughts aside and worry about them another time. I would find a way to fix this. Somehow.
But right now, I had to focus on this training—and on not letting anyone know that something was really wrong with me.
“The new Crystal Falls training will now begin,” Faris declared. “But first, a change of venue is required.” Like a crack of lightning, his hands clapped together once.
A ring of magic flared up around us, and then we weren’t in the gym anymore. We now stood in a grand hall basking in soft, ethereal light. I recognized the place, even though it had looked a bit different the last time I’d visited. This hall was the audience chamber in the palace of the gods. We weren’t on Earth anymore. We were in heaven.
“The symbols on the floor of the Crystal Falls gym are a gateway to this world between worlds,” Nero commented beside me.
Seven open arches dominated one side of the hall. Waterfalls and water worlds, mountains and deserts, plains and forests—a different magnificent view was visible through each archway. Looking closely, I realized the archways were not open. Each one contained a mirror. The scenes looked so lifelike, like they were right in front of me, like I could simply reach out and grab them. Like I could grasp the sand between my fingers, feel the cold against my skin, smell the sweet floral blossoms. But those places weren’t here at all. They were inside the mirrors.
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 5