Years. Years that everyone here had known one another. Everyone except me. I was the only non-Legion brat in my training group, the only one who didn’t hail from the elite inner circle, and I’d been paired with the most prejudiced, old school, snobbish, mean angel of them all. If the competition didn’t kill me, my teammate just might.
Sure, I could have focused on that, but I decided to concentrate on eating instead. That was something I could do as well as anyone here. Better even. I’d devoured the contents of three very full plates, much to Colonel Fireswift’s disgust, when Faris rose from his throne once more.
“The first challenge will soon begin,” Faris announced. “We shall begin with Aleris.” He glanced at the Everlasting.
“Aleris’s most prized possession is an ancient pair of opera glasses,” the Everlasting said. “They are rose gold in color. On their handle, there’s a painting of the moon and stars of the night sky.”
As the Everlasting spoke, Aleris listened with mild curiosity. The ever-calm God of Nature didn’t even look concerned that fourteen Legion soldiers would soon be fighting tooth and nail to steal his most prized possession.”
“The glasses are kept in Aleris’s home castle,” the Everlasting finished, then took a step back to lean against the wall once more.
“Each team will now go to their apartment to await their patron god’s arrival. There you will be briefed on your mission.” Faris waved at his soldiers. Seven godly warriors in shiny armor moved forward in perfect unison. “My soldiers will show you to your chambers, where you will stay for the duration of this training. Your bags have been brought over from Crystal Falls. They are already in your rooms. Now prepare yourselves for the first challenge.”
The gods’ council remained planted regally on their thrones, watching us leave the audience chamber like we were dramatic players running backstage to prepare for the next act. Faris’s soldiers led us up a long, winding staircase. At each floor, a godly warrior ushered one of the teams to their room. Finally, it was just me, Colonel Fireswift, and a poker-faced female soldier with a shaved scalp.
“We get the penthouse suite?” I asked her brightly.
Her response was to shove me toward the old wooden door.
I looked over my shoulder at her. “So what’s your name?”
“You talk too much,” she told me, lifting her arms.
Before the muscle goddess could push me again, I turned the handle to open the door and ducked inside. My backpack was already waiting there, as were Colonel Fireswift’s five bags.
“Not really a light packer, are you?” I asked him as he opened his bags, presumably to check that the contents were still all there.
Every single bag was filled with weapons—and some scary-looking instruments I could only assume were used for torturing people. Oh, boy. This was going to be a long few days.
“Faris’s soldier is right,” Colonel Fireswift snapped. “You talk too much.”
I merely shrugged, turning my back on the battle chests, and moved further into the room. It was enormous, easily large enough to comfortably sleep twenty soldiers. And yet there was only one bed.
“Faris, you are sick,” I cursed under my breath. Then I spun around to face Colonel Fireswift. “Shall we flip for the bed?”
He coolly considered the gold coin I’d pulled out of my bag. “That is unnecessary. I outrank you, so I must clearly take the bed.”
“What ever happened to chivalry?” I muttered as he set his armory of bags on the mattress.
“If you wanted to be treated like a lady, you should have taken up employment at a brothel, not the Legion of Angels,” he declared, his hard blue eyes cutting through me like a knife. “In the gods’ service, there is no special treatment for anyone. You are either strong and survive, or you are weak and perish.”
I had to give it to Colonel Fireswift. Twisted as he was, he at least believed in equality of the sexes. Not equality of heritage, mind you. I was still a dirty street urchin in his eyes—and I always would be.
I wondered what he would think of me if he’d known what I really was, if he found out about my divine blood. He’d probably call me an unnatural anomaly of magic. Best not to think about it, lest he picked up on my thoughts. I grabbed my backpack and tossed it onto the sofa.
As I exchanged my skirt, tank top, and slip-on shoes for leather armor and boots, Colonel Fireswift kept his eyes firmly on me. A gentleman would have turned his back, but as we’d just established, Colonel Fireswift was devoid of chivalrous aspirations. He wasn’t gawking at me, at least. His face was cold, detached. He’d probably seen a lot of naked bodies—both living and dead ones. A shiver rippled down my spine.
“The gods sure do like to stir the pot, don’t they?” I commented. “Pitting you against Jace, and me against Nero.”
His blond brows drew together. “Why are you talking to me?”
To fill the silence? To connect to my teammate? Colonel Fireswift didn’t look like he’d appreciate either answer.
“The gods do as they see fit, and we obey,” he told me. “That is the way of things. It is not our place to question it. There’s no room for emotion or speculation.”
No room for emotion? My mind flickered back to his face as his daughter died, her body poisoned, her magic torn apart by Venom. He hadn’t been logical or cold then. There was a real person inside of Colonel Fireswift. Maybe not a good person, but someone who had feelings. Someone who experienced pain and joy and all those other pesky human emotions he tried to pretend were not a part of him.
“The gods command the angels, and the angels command the Legion.” Colonel Fireswift’s voice was as hard as a diamond drill. “When we get out there in the field, I will command. And you will obey. There is no room for anything else. You will not question me. You will not take matters into your own hands. And you will most certainly not antagonize the gods. You will act with the dignity expected of a Legion soldier. If you do not, I will use your body as a shield on the battlefield and let our competitors kill you for me. Do you understand?”
I considered my response carefully. Angels demanded obedience, but they respected strength. If I let Colonel Fireswift walk all over me, I’d act obedient but appear weak. He’d respect me even less than he already did, which meant he’d only abuse me more. On the other hand, if I talked back, I’d demonstrate strength but be guilty of insubordination. Talk about an impossible choice.
A sharp knock cut through the heavy silence before I could mark my doom one way or the other. I slipped past Colonel Fireswift and opened the door.
“Make way for Faris, God of Heaven’s Army, King of Sirens, Slayer of Demons,” the bald soldier declared, every title ringing off her tongue like a blade clashing against another.
The soldier drew back, and Faris glided silkily into our room, the base of his cloak slithering across the floor behind him. A breath of magic clicked the door shut. His gaze panned across the room.
“What a cozy chamber. So romantic,” he commented.
I nearly gagged. Faris and Colonel Fireswift were neck-in-neck in the race to each prove himself the universe’s biggest asshole.
“You will soon go to Aleris’s castle,” Faris told us. Thankfully, he made no further comments about the ‘romantic’ room. If he had, I might have vomited all over his fancy boots. “It is on the world Harmony.”
“How do we get to another world?” I asked.
“Heaven is a crossroads, a gateway to other worlds,” Faris explained. “From here, you can travel to our kingdoms and many other places.”
“A gateway. Those were the doors on the other side of the audience chamber. The mirrors are those gateways to other worlds,” I realized.
Faris’s gaze slid over Colonel Fireswift’s stockpile of weapons. “For this challenge, you are not permitted to bring weapons with you to Harmony. It is solely about magic. The team assigned to Aleris will join his castle guards to defend the glasses.”
Aleris’s team. That
meant Colonel Silvertongue and Andrin Spellsmiter.
“Aleris’s defenders will have use of both their magic and weapons to protect the glasses,” Faris continued. “You will be outnumbered and unarmed. But you have something the other teams do not.”
“A sense of humor in the face of certain doom?” I suggested, meeting Colonel Fireswift’s deadpan face.
“Time,” said Faris. “Five minutes time, to be exact. The gods drew numbers, and I pulled number one. Team two will arrive five minutes after you, then another team every five minutes after that until you’re all there.”
Five minutes wasn’t much time to a mortal, but a Legion soldier could move fast, so a lot could happen in five minutes. A lot of good or a lot of bad. I’d like to think that depended entirely on us, but I had a feeling the gods had stacked the odds decidedly against us. After all, easy games didn’t make for good entertainment.
“Now, return to the audience chamber,” Faris commanded us. “And whatever you do, don’t die. The gods have taken out bets on this little contest, and if I lose, I’ll be very annoyed.”
8
The Seer’s Opera Glasses
That’s all we really were to the gods: curiosities, amusements to pass the long centuries, pawns in their immortal game for power and dominance.
“If we are to win this, you must understand our opponents,” Colonel Fireswift told me as we stood alone in the now-empty audience chamber.
We were waiting in front of one of seven mirrors. A golden glow covered the bottom edge of the mirror’s frame. When that glow covered the entire frame, we would pass through the magic glass to enter Aleris’s domain.
“Desiree Silvertongue is a mistress of compulsion,” Colonel Fireswift said. “She can talk her way into or out of anything. She is very strong and fast, but her other magical skills aren’t very powerful for an angel. Her brother Kiros Spellsmiter is also an excellent physical fighter, even stronger than she is. His siren magic is almost on par with hers. But he has the same weaknesses as she does, a consequence of their family’s faulty breeding practices.”
Their breeding couldn’t be all that bad if both brother and sister had become angels. And if breeding were truly everything, then no one who didn’t come from a Legion legacy family could ever become an angel. Hard work and determination counted for a lot—much more than Colonel Fireswift’s magic equation allowed for.
“They pushed too hard for siren and vampire magic at the expense of the other magical traits.” Colonel Fireswift turned up his nose, like his family would never have made such a novice mistake. It seemed that, even amongst Legion legacy families, a hierarchy existed. And Colonel Fireswift considered himself right at the top of it.
“It’s the same story, the same weaknesses, in their offspring: Andrin Spellsmiter and Siri Silvertongue. Use distance attacks against them. Don’t let any of the four of them get close enough to grab you or compel you,” said Colonel Fireswift. “And we can play them off one another, using their family rivalry to keep them busy.”
There was no doubt that Colonel Fireswift was an incurable asshole, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t intelligent.
“Harker Sunstorm is strong but he’s a new angel. He’s still unsure of himself.” He gave me an assessing look. “We can use his indecision to our advantage.”
“Harker is my friend.”
Colonel Fireswift nodded. “Yes, we can use that to our advantage as well. Sunstorm concerns himself overly much with friendship.”
“Whereas you do not concern yourself with such things at all.”
“Of course not,” he said, as though that were the only answer, the only way. “If you were listening at all to Faris’s words, you would realize the gods are testing our ability to rise above human weaknesses, above the chains of friendship.”
“The chains of friendship?” As though friends trapped and weakened you.
“The gods do not concern themselves with anything as whimsical as friendship,” he replied. “And they expect the same discipline from us.”
“I think the gods are more human than you realize.”
He scowled at me. “Keep your blasphemous thoughts to yourself. The gods are watching. Always watching.”
“Are they?” I countered. “Are we all so important that the gods do nothing else but watch us day in and day out? I ask you, Colonel: which is the greater sin: hubris or blasphemy?”
His scowl deepened. Ha! He didn’t have an answer to that. I used to do the same thing back home to the Pilgrims, the priests who spread the gods’ message. They happened to spread that message by cornering unsuspecting sinners on the street. When they’d cornered me, I’d twisted their logic into knots and then left them to untangle it.
A veteran angel, Colonel Fireswift was not so easily baffled. “Isabelle Battleborn is well-balanced, like her father,” he said, continuing his run-through of our opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. “She’s a good all-rounder, a product of well-implemented selective breeding. But she has been unhinged by Colonel Battleborn’s death. We can exploit that.”
I frowned at him. “You want to use Isabelle’s grief to beat her at a game?”
“I told you already. This isn’t just a game. Pay attention. I don’t enjoy repeating myself,” he snapped.
I wondered how many times he’d told that to his interrogation victims. On second thought, no, I really didn’t want to know.
“Don’t bother yourself with moral conundrums, Leda Pierce. Such superficial ponderation is best left to the meandering minds of philosophers.”
Don’t bother yourself with moral conundrums. That was Colonel Fireswift’s moral code in a nutshell.
“Isabelle Battleborn might look like an innocent young kitten, but she is a man-eating tiger inside,” he said. “As she should be. If we are to win these challenges, we must use any and every weakness to do so. Isabelle would do the same to us.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Being right is what this whole thing is all about,” he replied. “The right move. The right strategy to win this game. We must play to our strengths and their weaknesses. Only an idiot plays to their opponent’s strengths. Windstriker should have taught you that. He should have beaten the humanity out of you by now.”
And Colonel Fireswift did mean ‘beaten’ both figuratively and literally. Just as he had mercilessly trained his children. I’d once run into Jace after he’d been training with his father; I’d seen torture victims in better shape.
“Nero and I don’t have that kind of relationship,” I told Colonel Fireswift. “He does not feel the need to beat anything out of me.”
“If he cares about you, he won’t go easy on you. He will do everything in his power to make you strong enough to survive whatever may come.”
A shadow darkened Colonel Fireswift face. He was thinking back to his daughter. I could see it in his harrowed eyes. He was reliving her death. The angel in him thought he could have prevented her death by just training her harder, making her stronger, more resilient.
He was wrong. It would have only accelerated her demise. The weapons in that battle, those that had killed so many, had been born from hell. They’d eaten away at the Legion soldiers’ light magic. The more light magic someone had, the more resilient they were, the more they’d leveled up—the faster the poison had torn through their body, unraveling their magic until there was nothing left.
Damn it. I didn’t like Colonel Fireswift. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him and all that he’d lost.
I set my hand on his shoulder. “What happened to your daughter was not your fault.”
He shrugged off my hand, fury burning in his eyes. “I don’t need your pity.” Then he continued the strategy session, as though he found solace in this routine. “Leila Starborn is a powerful elemental, an accomplished healer, and her telepathic and psychic magics are strong. Her weaknesses are Shifter’s Shadow, Vampire’s Kiss, Siren’s Song, and Witch’s Cauldron.”
&nb
sp; I wondered if the Legion’s angels who trained together, working toward a common goal, knew they would someday be using their inside knowledge of their colleagues against them. Probably. They were angels, after all. The Legion’s doctrine instructed them to make themselves islands, beings beyond the complications of emotional entanglements.
Today was that someday, the day the floodgates had been blown wide open. The day they’d use all that they’d collected on their fellow angels over the centuries.
“As for the First Angel,” Colonel Fireswift pressed on, unhindered by moral complications. “Nyx trained with gods, is stronger than any angel, and she doesn’t have any magic weaknesses. Our best bet against her is to exploit her partner’s weaknesses. That’s Arius Demonslayer. He has been in the Legion longer than most of you, but not nearly long enough. He is currently stuck at a volatile stage, more experienced and powerful than his peers, but not yet an angel. His pride makes him reckless. He already thinks he’s won, that he will be the next angel. That he is above the rest of you. His overconfidence is his weakness. He doesn’t understand his own limits and failings. He takes risks he shouldn’t and that will be his downfall here.”
“You seem to know a lot about everyone here,” I said.
“That’s my job.”
“But what about your son? What about Jace? What are his weaknesses?” I braided my fingers together. “You might as well be thorough.”
Colonel Fireswift hesitated.
“Perhaps the chains of friendship hold power over you after all?” I suggested.
He bristled at my statement. “No, they most certainly do not,” he snapped. “Jace’s weakness is the desperate need to prove himself, to be worthy in my eyes. And also in yours.”
“Mine?”
“His friendship with you makes him too human. He has grown too concerned with the feelings of others. You have the same effect on Windstriker. It’s an agitating trait, but perhaps we can exploit it.”
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 7