“Some gods. Not all.” Again, he’d read my thoughts, as though my mental shield were made of tissue paper.
I cringed. If just one god knew about me, that was one too many. And he’d said ‘gods’. As in, plural, more than one.
“You’re overthinking this,” he told me.
But I wasn’t letting him throw me off course. “Which gods know about me?”
“Your father by now.”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “Anyone else?”
Athan smiled coyly. He clearly wasn’t going to answer that question.
My heart hammered in my chest. “Who is my father?”
“Patience.”
“Is about as much fun as a squirt of lemon juice in the eye,” I finished for him.
“Your magic is light and dark, perfectly balanced.”
Like Meda had achieved with some of the monsters—and had tried to achieve with an angel. Except I had been born this way.
“But though your light and dark magic are balanced, your magic powers are not in balance,” Athan continued. “You have strengths, powers that come more easily to you, inherited from your parents.”
Fairy magic was obviously not one of those powers. Otherwise, I’d not have failed to level up at the last ceremony.
“We’ll get around to your problem later,” Athan said.
Did that mean he knew why I had neither leveled up nor died?
“Of course I know,” he said. “It’s actually pretty obvious if you think about it.”
He really did have all the answers.
“If you live well enough for long enough, you learn a few things about the nature of the magical universe,” he said. “But back to your magical strengths. What is a good Interrogator in the most basic sense, at its core?”
“A bad person?” I suggested.
He sighed. “Conversations with your are exhausting, Leda Pierce.”
“That’s what all my friends tell me. And my enemies.” I grinned at him.
“What is a good Interrogator in the most basic sense, at its core?” he said again. “What magical ability do they tap into the most?”
“Siren’s Song.”
“Yes, the magic to compel people. It is the Interrogators’ most valuable tool, one they use to great effect.” Athan paused. “But their siren magic doesn’t hold a candle to yours. When you use the entire siren magical spectrum, light and dark, you have more power than someone who only taps into either light or dark, who can only ever use half of the power. Angels cannot compel you. Colonel Silvertongue tried and failed. By now, you’ve grown powerful enough that even gods and demons cannot compel you either.”
He might be right about that. Last month, Faris had tried to break my mind. I’d held out—barely. It had hurt like hell, but I hadn’t spilled my secrets to him.
“And what is a good warrior in the Legion’s Vanguard in the most basic sense, at its core?” Athan asked me.
I thought about that. Elite Warriors needed spells like the rest of us, but mostly they just needed raw strength and speed. They were the battering rams of the Legion, the soldiers on the front line who broke through the enemy’s defenses—and held ours.
“Vampire magic,” I said. “The Vanguard’s warriors need the physical strength, speed, and stamina of vampires.”
Athan nodded. “And so you have your answer.”
I frowned. “Answer to what?”
As soon as I said the words, I knew. I had the answer to my origin. I possessed both light and dark magic because I was the daughter of a god and a demon. And I possessed both the vampire and siren magical strengths because of which god was my father and which demon was my mother.
“Your vampire and siren magic, two powers so potent that they even broke through the magic-neutralizing effect of your light and dark magic,” Athan told me.
Uh, what? My light and dark magic had neutralized my magic, leaving me without any, at least until I’d joined the Legion of Angels and had my first sip of Nectar.
“What do you mean potent?” I said. “I didn’t have any magic before I joined the Legion.”
“But you did,” he countered. “You possessed the magical strengths of your father and your mother.”
Except I’d had neither vampire nor siren magic before joining the Legion.
“They were expressed in a very unusual way,” he told me.
The demon Sonja had said the same thing about my magic. But what did it mean? I couldn’t remember possessing any magic back then. Sure, I’d been slightly faster and stronger than regular humans, but so was anyone with a little supernatural blood in them. That tiny boost certainly hadn’t put me in the same league as supernaturals—or allowed me to fight them without trickery. That was why I’d relied on dirty fighting for all those years. I’d had to make up for my lack of magic in a supernatural world. I’d had to develop a way to level the playing field.
So what inherent siren magic and vampire magic was Athan referring to? I hadn’t been able to compel anyone. I’d managed to sweet-talk my marks as a bounty hunter, to lure them in, but not any better than any other woman with breasts could.
“I said the magic manifested in a very unusual way,” Athan reminded me. “So unusual that you wouldn’t even be able to identify it as vampire or siren magic. But that unique ability of yours was both powers intertwined. You never understood why it happened to you, a phenomenon you had neither seen nor heard of before.”
I finally realized what he was talking about, what Sonja had been referring to as well.
My hair. Sometimes, it glowed. In my pre-Legion days, the glow had mesmerized vampires, compelling them to bite me. My hair was the manifestation of siren and vampire magic in one, allowing me to mesmerize vampires—and only vampires. All that time, my hair had been the answer to my magic’s origin. The origin of Pandora. The origin of chaos.
“Magic always finds a way to be seen,” Athan commented.
I hardly heard him. My mind was racing ever faster, backtracking now, trying to sort through everything I’d just learned. And as my mind rewound through the long meandering conversation, it snagged on two things: vampire and siren magic. I’d gotten one of those powers from my father, a god. That meant my father was either Faris or Zarion.
19
War by Proxy
My godly father was either Faris or Zarion. Yuck.
Zarion, God of the Faith, God of Vampires, had killed his mortal lover and tried to kill their unborn child. He was very holy in words but not in actions. Zarion had already broken the rules by conceiving a child with a mortal. Chances were that he’d strayed from his holy path more than once.
And then there was Zarion’s brother Faris, the God of Heaven’s Army. Within a few weeks of my joining the Legion, Faris had tried to have me killed. He’d instructed Harker to give me pure Nectar that would level up my magic just long enough to find my telepathic brother—and then I’d die an excruciating death.
Also, Faris was manipulating this training and everyone here, weakening the other gods’ alliances to fuel his rise to the top. He didn’t care how many innocents were caught in the crossfire, or how many friendships he shattered along the way.
Both gods had the personality of a spiked mace coated in poison. It was just a matter of picking your poison. Except I couldn’t pick anything. My past was already set in stone.
Athan’s immortal eyes met mine once more, then he turned and walked away. Though I’d just learned a lot about myself, I dreaded ever talking to him again, fearing what other terrible bombshells from my past I would pick up along the trail of our conversation. I had a sinking feeling I would be talking to him again soon. This wasn’t the end. Not by a long shot.
Athan knew about me. He knew my origin and my secrets. In fact, he knew more about me than I knew about myself. Ignorance might very well be bliss, but I had to know about my past. My secrets put me in danger, especially when others knew secrets I didn’t even know that I had. If I didn’t know about them, I
couldn’t prepare. I wouldn’t be ready.
Ready for what, Leda? I asked myself.
I shuddered to consider the possibilities—the hazards that lay before me, the landmines that lay buried in my past, ready for me to stumble upon them.
Why was Faris keeping me close right now? Had he put me on his team because he believed I was his daughter? Or because he knew that Zarion was my father and keeping me close might offer him an opportunity to expose his brother—and me in the process. Just as he’d exposed his brother’s other child.
Was that why he’d instructed Colonel Fireswift to hold on to the glasses? Could the glasses expose my secret? If so, it was only a matter of time. Faris had told Colonel Fireswift that he still needed me. I’d thought he only needed me to find Zane, but what if he had more plans for me? What if my very existence was the key to unraveling what was left of Zarion’s support in the gods’ council.
I clenched my fists, trying to quiet my muscle tremors. I couldn’t process what I’d just learned. I just couldn’t.
After I’d escaped Sonja’s fortress, I’d decided I had to uncover my origin’s full story, to find out who my parents were. I’d never expected joyous family reunions. I just had to know. Perhaps, that hadn’t been the best idea. No good ever came from digging into the past. It was like kicking a nest of hornets. That’s what my foster mother Calli had always said.
Brushing off those metaphorical hornets, I pushed all thoughts of my past to the sidelines. I had to focus on something else. I had to keep my mind off the terrible truth that either Zarion or Faris was my father. They both despised me. Zarion wanted me dead. And Faris was even worse. He wanted to use me as a tool, then discard me like trash on the side of the highway.
I tried to think about the upcoming challenges, but they all seemed to lead back to me. To exposing me.
No, I needed something else. I needed a mission, a purpose, something that had nothing to do with my own past. And I knew just the thing.
“I’ve been having nightmares,” I told Nero.
“That’s understandable.” His hand took mine, his thumb tracing soothing circles into the underside of my wrist. “You’re under a lot of stress.”
“In those nightmares, a woman is running away. Soldiers are chasing her. They catch her and imprison her.”
“Your mind is trying to process everything that’s happening to you.”
“I don’t think they’re dreams,” I said. “I think they’re memories. The woman is being held by one of the gods.”
“Which god?” he asked me.
“I don’t know. I never saw the god’s face. During the final round of the Legion card game in our last challenge, I heard her speaking to the god who holds her prisoner.”
“So that’s why you were so distracted at the end.”
“Yes.”
“What could you tell from the god’s voice?”
“Very little,” I said. “The god’s voice was distorted, magnified like they do when they’re trying to intimidate us. It was working. The woman was very frightened.”
“Who is this woman?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see her face. I couldn’t see much of anything. The memories were shrouded in shadows. I know one thing: the memory is recent. The god mentioned the Legion trials would soon begin.”
“You want to rescue this woman.”
“She is suffering.”
“The gods hold many prisoners,” he told me. “They are all suffering.”
“I know. But this one is different. I know she is.”
“Where is she being held?”
“I don’t know.”
His face was hard.
“You think I’m crazy to want to rescue her.”
“Of course you’re crazy. That’s one of your finest qualities,” he said, his laugh a deep purr. He set his hands on my shoulders. “But we should put the rescue mission on hold until we have a bit more to go on.”
Nero was right. Admitting that didn’t help to quell my burning urge to rescue the woman and put an end to her suffering. When I’d experienced those memories, it had felt as though I were living through them myself. I might not have seen much, but I’d felt everything: her fear, her panic, her despair.
“Ok, we’ll wait,” I agreed. It wouldn’t do to go blindly breaking into all the gods’ castles, looking for the woman.
The irony was, that was exactly what we were expected to do in this training: break into all the gods’ castles.
I looked across the audience chamber of bickering gods. It was hardly the scene of tranquility everyone imagined the gods’ haven to be.
“So what now?” I asked Nero.
“The next challenge starts in the morning. Get changed and meet me in the gym in half an hour.”
“For what?”
His green eyes sparkled. “Training.”
“You aren’t in charge of the Crystal Falls training anymore,” I teased him, smirking.
“This isn’t the Crystal Falls training, Leda. It has become something else entirely.”
“The gods’ battleground,” I said. “Their war by proxy.”
“Yes. The gods’ alliances come and go with the tide and the shifting wind. When they leave, when they return to their castles, we remain in the wreckage of their immortal spats. And we have to keep on living. We have to survive in a world that they have left worse for wear. In order to do that, to survive, we need to train and we need to grow. We need to be ready for whatever comes next. Because if we don’t grow stronger, we just might not survive their next altercation.”
My brows peaked. “Train hard and train long?”
“Always,” Nero said with a crisp nod.
Well, I’d been searching for something to take my mind off the million things plaguing me. Who was my father? What would the other gods do when they found out what I was? What would the next challenge be? Whose secrets would be exposed next? Which godly alliances would splinter? What was the significance of the woman one of the gods was holding prisoner? And how much longer could I hide that I had neither leveled up nor died? Colonel Fireswift was watching my every move. He might already suspect.
“Ok, let’s do it,” I told Nero, washing all those worries from my mind. “Let’s train.” I winked at him. “But I won’t go easy on you.”
A savage smile broke through his civilized facade. “Good. Only a fool holds back when battling an angel. And I never took you for a fool, Leda Pierce.”
“Just a troublemaker.” I looped my arms over his shoulders.
“Always and forever,” he said against my mouth.
His words fell heavy against my lips—with the weight of finality. Of the eternity that lay before us.
Or did it? A flash of fresh panic pulsed through me. Nyx had said she would be testing my magic when this training was over. The Legion would use those magic tests to try to pair me off with another soldier. That was what they did. What if it was not Nero? I couldn’t stand the thought.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing. My magic was so weird that it was unlikely anyone was magically compatible with me.
I pushed those worries down with all the other turmoil bubbling in my stomach, all those things I was ignoring because there was not a damn thing I could do about any of them right now.
A second emotion pulsed through my veins. Hope, sparked by the fact that Nero was by my side. We’d faced dark angels and demons. We’d survived immortal plots. And we’d done it all together. So we would get through all of this together too.
There was something linking us, something bigger than all of this: love. And destiny. I truly did believe that Nero and I were destined to be together, the wars of gods and demons be damned.
I moved in to kiss Nero, but an arm caught me, pulling me back. My gaze slid sideways to Colonel Fireswift.
“Consorting with the enemy,” he growled as his hand clamped down harder on my arm, leading me across the room. “Have you no shame?”
“The en
emy?” I laughed. “You are my enemy more than Nero is.”
You could have bounced diamonds off Colonel Fireswift’s hard face. “Not right now.”
Nero started moving toward us, rage burning in the inferno of his eyes. If I didn’t stop him now, he was going to kill Colonel Fireswift. And then the gods would kill him.
I met Nero’s eyes, shaking my head once. Then I freed myself from Colonel Fireswift’s grip.
I’m all right, I broadcast to Nero.
He stopped walking toward us. If he hurts you again, he won’t be all right.
You can’t kill another angel. The gods forbid it.
The gods won’t ever know. There won’t be anything left of Fireswift to find.
A shiver trickled down my spine. I wasn’t sure if it was born from horror or delight. And that scared me more than anything.
“You are taking this entirely too seriously,” I told Colonel Fireswift. “It’s a game. And right now, the gods are too busy fighting themselves to smite us.”
“This is nothing but a minor skirmish,” he replied. “It will soon be resolved. The gods have been switching alliances for millennia. They will not allow their mutual dislike to override their judgment.”
“It’s still a game.”
“The games of gods play out upon the backbones of mortals. They have dire stakes beyond mere life or death. You either play by their rules, or you face the consequences.” His cold eyes snapped to Nero, then back to me. “As Windstriker very well knows. And so should you by now. When you break the rules, you might be able to dodge it for a short while, but the gods’ justice always catches up to you in the end.”
The doors to the audience chamber flew open, heralding in a wave of godly soldiers. Buried inside their perfect rows, shackled at the wrists and ankles, walked Damiel and Stash. The sight of them captured and chained up like this threw ice-cold fear on the fire of hope burning inside of me. My optimistic insistence that everything would work out—that it just had to work out—petered out, like air bursting out of a punctured tire.
“It seems today is that day of reckoning for your lover’s father,” Colonel Fireswift said, glancing at Nero. Then his gaze locked on to me, like a hawk spotting his prey. “And for your friend.”
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 18