10

Nyx followed up her doom-and-gloom warning with a bit of good news.

“For your unwavering determination to protect the Pilgrims and some very resourceful monster extermination technique, as well as your dedication to your continued magical development, I am promoting you, Leda Pierce, to the third level of the Legion. There’s just the small matter of surviving the ceremony, and then it will all be official.”

That ‘small matter’ was drinking the Nectar that would boost my magic to the third level—unless it killed me. My body took right to Nectar, so as long as I was ready, everything would be all right. And Nyx thought I was ready. I had to take comfort in that.

“You are ready,” Nero assured me when we were standing again outside of Nyx’s office. “The way you compelled those Pilgrims proves that. Don’t worry.” He glanced toward the door. “I have to go back in and speak with Nyx about my new mission.”

“Right.” I started walking. “So. Have fun.”

“Leda.”

I stopped and looked back at him.

“It’s always more fun with you,” he told me.

I winked, then continued walking. My destination: Demeter, the Legion canteen. They were just about to open their doors for dinner, and I was famished. The chocolate bar from Nero hadn’t been nearly big enough. And, unfortunately, a girl couldn’t live on chocolate alone.

I met up with Drake at the pasta counter. We carried our full trays over to the table where Ivy was already sitting with her boyfriend Captain Soren Diaz.

“So, Soren was just telling me that you guys had an exciting adventure on the Black Plains yesterday,” Ivy said as Drake and I slid into the chairs facing them. “Did you really fight a dinosaur?”

“I’m not sure if it was an actual dinosaur, but it did bear a striking resemblance to a tyrannosaurus rex. And there were four of them,” I added, impaling a tomato on my fork. I looked at Soren. “How did you know about that?”

“I was talking to Claudia and Basanti earlier, and they told me all about it.” He arched his dark brows at me, inviting me to speak. He probably wanted to hear all about how Nero had dove into the chasm after me.

I gave him monster details instead. By the time I’d told him about all the bizarre and terrifying monsters we’d encountered on the Black Plains, we’d all moved on to dessert. My time with my vanilla pudding was cut short, however, when Colonel Fireswift entered the canteen. The room fell silent, and everyone watched in surprise as he crossed the room to the head table and sat down in Nero’s chair. Well, that was ominous.

“The First Angel has put me in charge of this office until further notice.” His eyes flashed in triumph as they met mine. I’d never spoken a single word to the guy, and he already hated my guts. And now he was in charge. “Colonel Windstriker has been reassigned.” He spoke the words with a sense of finality, as though he never expected Nero to return.

Whispers rose from the crowd, and eyes turned in my direction. It seemed the events of last night’s adventure in the Lost City were common knowledge. And now they all thought it was my fault Nero was no longer here.

Colonel Fireswift lifted his hand into the air, and the whispers died out. “Things will be different here from now on. You’ll find that I am not as lenient as Colonel Windstriker.”

Jace slid into the seat beside me, looking positively ill. If Colonel Fireswift’s own son was afraid of him, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance.

“The First Angel wants you all to be ready,” Colonel Fireswift told us.

No one dared ask what it was we were getting ready for. The hard look on Colonel Fireswift’s face made it clear that frivolous questions would not be tolerated.

“Your updated schedules will be arriving shortly.”

Hundreds of phones buzzed simultaneously. I looked down at my schedule, which starting tomorrow was blocked off for the mission on the Black Plains. Drake’s was the same.

“He neglected to schedule in time for sleep,” Ivy said drily, showing us her phone screen.

“That isn’t a mistake,” Jace said.

For the first time, Ivy looked like she actually felt sorry for him.

* * *

I’d lost my appetite. Not that there was time to eat anyway. According to Colonel Fireswift’s sadistic schedule, I had training in Hall Five with Jace. And the Colonel himself would be overseeing this session.

An hour later, I had a broken arm and a bloody lip. My face was smeared with blood. My hair, which had started the training session in a ponytail, now fell across my shoulders. It was stained with my own blood too.

Based on my blurred vision and the persistent ringing in my ears—not to mention my complete inability to stand upright without swaying to the side—I was pretty sure I had a concussion. My body was a tapestry of fresh cuts and blossoming bruises. Colonel Fireswift believed in training with real weapons—and in fighting to kill. Jace wasn’t really trying to kill me, despite his father’s continued commands to do so.

The first five minutes of training had gone ok, up until Jace had knocked my sword from my hands, and I’d retaliated by throwing his metal thermos at his head. Colonel Fireswift had shot me with a telekinetic blast for my impudence and lack of proper decorum—and then promptly removed all such items from the room. Now it was just me, Jace, and the devil himself. Whose name was Colonel Fireswift.

“She’s barely standing. Knock her down now!” Colonel Fireswift snapped at Jace.

“There’s no honor in that,” his son replied.

“What has Windstriker been teaching you?” Colonel Fireswift demanded. “Honor is for fencing matches and ballet recitals. This is the Legion of Angels. We stand between humanity and its destruction, between good and evil. Soldiers of the Legion do not flinch, and they do not hesitate. We act, swiftly and mercilessly, to strike down the fiends. Before they strike down you.” He waved Jace aside. “I will show you how it’s done.”

Colonel Fireswift faced me, but his words were for his son. “The most dangerous monsters are not the beasts beyond the wall. They are the ones who look like us—supernaturals who serve demons, rogues who only serve themselves. Osiris Wardbreaker, what is he?”

“An angel,” Jace said.

A blast of telekinetic magic slammed into him, hammering him against the wall, holding him there.

“Try again.”

“A rogue.”

A knife rose from the floor and shot at Jace, piercing his wrist.

“A traitor.”

A second knife nailed his other wrist to the wall. Jace gritted his teeth but didn’t make a noise. My stomach turned as I began to realize this wasn’t the first time Colonel Fireswift had taught his son a lesson in this manner.

“My enemy.”

The third knife took Jace in the stomach.

“You’re getting there,” Colonel Fireswift said. “But you need to dig deeper. Why is Osiris Wardbreaker your enemy?”

“Because he betrayed the Legion.”

The fourth knife sank into Jace’s thigh.

“He is your enemy because he is you,” Colonel Fireswift told him. “He represents what you could become. That is the threat he and his rogue kind represent. Not the flashy magic they throw around, but that dirty little truth that we can all fall into darkness.”

He waved his hand, and the four knives lodged inside of Jace broke free and dropped to the ground. Jace dropped with them. He peeled himself off the floor, leaving bloody smudges on the smooth surface. I expected Colonel Fireswift to throw him a healing potion. Instead, he threw him a sword.

“You can prevent your fall into darkness by identifying your triggers—your weaknesses—and eliminating them.” The Colonel turned toward me again. “And you must do the same for your soldiers. We’ll start easy and work our way up. Soldier, why did you join the Legion?” he asked me.

Little did he know, he’d just kicked off his interrogation with the one question I could not truthfully answer. Colonel Fireswift could not find out about my brother. Ever.

“To keep the world safe from rogue supernaturals,” I answered, throwing him the line I’d written on my Legion application form.

A hard, cruel smile twisted his lips. “You’re lying.”

I felt my arm twist back of its own accord. No, not on its own. Somehow Colonel Fireswift was controlling the movements. A sharp surge of pain trailed that unwelcome realization. My body bent at the waist, and my shoulder popped out of its socket. I pressed my lips together and glared up at the sadistic angel.

“Why did you join the Legion of Angels?” he asked me again.

“I heard angels are hot. But it’s not true. Not about all of them,” I snarled viciously.

His eyes were as hard as blue diamonds. “Nero might have tolerated your insubordination, but as I said before, things are different now. And I don’t find your brazen remarks funny, nor do I consider your complete lack of class charming.”

My other arm moved, reaching for the knife at my thigh. Before I knew what was happening, I’d stabbed myself in the stomach.

Colonel Fireswift caught my face roughly in his hand, his fingers locking around my jaw. “I will find out what you’re hiding.”

He squeezed down on my jaw like he was crushing a tin can in his hand. The bone groaned under the pressure, and pain shot up my nerves. Then, just as I thought my jaw would break, he let go, moving away from me. I felt my control over my own body return—and along with it, more pain.

“Jace.” He waved his son forward. “What is Leda Pierce?”

“Me.”

Colonel Fireswift nodded. “Now fight your inner darkness, ensuring that this will never be your fate.”

Jace moved forward, slashing with his sword. I stepped out of the way, putting some distance between us. I popped my dislocated shoulder back into place.

“Move faster. Overwhelm her. Don’t give her time to recover,” Colonel Fireswift called out.

“I’m sorry,” Jace mouthed to me silently, his back to his father. “Go left.”

He swung his sword. I went left, avoiding the blade. He snapped his arm around, slamming the hilt of his sword against my temple. The next thing I knew, Colonel Fireswift was standing over me, that familiar sneer twisting his mouth.

“It would seem you’re not so special after all. Nyx has overestimated you. You aren’t strong. You’re weak. Weak and unworthy. Pathetic,” he spat with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Go to the medical ward and get yourself cleaned up. I don’t want to see you, someone so unworthy of the gods’ gifts. You are a street urchin, a vagrant, a boor. Soldiers of the Legion represent the gods. You represent everything that is wrong with the world—the sin, the flaws, the rot.”

I got to my feet, not saying a word. There was no point to talking to someone like that. I’d thought I’d seen evil. I hadn’t seen anything at all until I’d met Colonel Fireswift. My head dizzy, blood dripping down my body, I stumbled down the halls, banging against the walls. Blackness pulsed in front of my eyes, my vision going in and out. I didn’t know how I made it to the medical ward in that state. Maybe it was muscle memory.

“Leda!” Ivy called out. She led me to a cot. “Drink this.”

I lifted the cold bottle to my mouth and drank. My vision slowly returned, and then I realized I wasn’t alone. The medical ward was overcrowded with patients.

“What is this all about?” I asked Ivy. “What happened to all of them. Missions?”

“No. We have our new leader to thank for this.”

“Colonel Fireswift?”

“He’s ordered the implementation of new methods for all training groups, effective immediately. And this is the result.” She waved her hands, indicating the blood and burns and limbs lost in training. “This is his so-called training. Torture is more like it, cruel and brutal torture. I hadn’t even imagined some of these injures until I saw them tonight. That man is a devil.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” I told her. “I don’t want him to put you through this.” I pulled out the knife still in my stomach.

Ivy pressed a bandage to the wound as I chugged back what felt like the hundredth healing potion in two days.

“Under Nero, training was tough and it brought us to the breaking point. But it was never about hurting people like this. It was never about destroying them totally. Or stripping us apart, unraveling us layer by layer, leaving nothing of ourselves,” I said. “This is what happens when someone who tortures enemy combatants is given power over the Legion’s own soldiers. He doesn’t care about them as people, about how much he has to hurt them to turn them into what he wants. They are tools to him, weapons.”

“Sooner or later, Colonel Fireswift’s training is going to kill someone,” Ivy declared, angry tears pooling in her eyes.

I wasn’t just angry. I was furious. “If I wasn’t sure I’d get my ass kicked, I would have marched up to Colonel Fireswift and given him a piece of my mind. But I have to do this carefully. I have to be smart.”

“How?”

“I need to talk to Nyx.”

“She’s already left,” Ivy told me.

Awesome. I didn’t have her number or any way to contact her. I did have Nero’s number. I wondered if he’d pass along a message for me, something along the lines of: ‘SOS, Colonel Fireswift is a sadistic son of a bitch. Please send a replacement, someone who doesn’t staple his own soldiers to the wall. Love, Leda’. Or something like that. I still had to iron out the exact wording.

I got off the cot, leaving it for the next patient. A line was forming, and it already extended into the hallway. I pushed past the curtain that led to the back room, where the Pilgrims were resting in their beds, recovering from their injuries.

“Hi,” I said, waving at them. “You’re all looking better already.”

“You’re not.” Valiant looked my torn and bloodstained athletic suit up and down, frowning. “What happened? Monsters?”

He had no idea just how right he was. Colonel Fireswift was more a monster than all the monsters combined that we’d faced during the pilgrimage. How ironic that he claimed his methods were designed to rid the world of monsters.

“Colonel Fireswift happened,” I said.

“Colonel Fireswift,” Valiant repeated, grimacing. Apparently, he wasn’t a fan either.

“We’ve heard the hooded bandit is the rogue angel Osiris Wardbreaker,” one of the Pilgrims said.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked him.

“Everyone is talking about it.”

So much for Nyx’s secrets.

“Valiant wants to go back to the Lost City to find the relics,” another Pilgrim said.

“After what happened to you? Really?” I asked Valiant, shocked. Though I really shouldn’t have been.

“We can’t go,” a Pilgrim said. “Colonel Fireswift is in charge of the mission now, and he’s not letting any of us out of this building. We had trackers put on us. He claims it’s for our protection.”

“Colonel Fireswift is an insufferable ass,” Valiant declared.

I had to fight not to laugh. It was not proper for a soldier of the Legion to laugh at an angel. I only said, “Colonel Fireswift is right. It is too dangerous out there for you.”

“The Legion is using my research to discover the Lost Relics and save them from a rogue angel. All without me,” Valiant grumbled. “I won’t even be there when my life’s work, my legacy, is realized. And all so Colonel Fireswift can steal the glory.”

I wasn’t sure he was wrong about that. Colonel Fireswift was a glory hog. He believed there was a finite amount to go around in the world, and he wanted to save it for him and his. But I still thought the Pilgrims were better off staying here. Protecting them had nearly gotten my team killed.

“You’re injured. And you don’t heal as fast as we do,” I reminded Valiant. “This isn’t about glory or who gets to make the great discovery. This is about keeping these powerful relics from those who would use them to hurt lots of people. You can help me save lives.”

“Of course, whatever you need,” a Pilgrim said.

“Is there anything you know about the Treasury that holds the relics? Anything that might help me?”

“Some say Sierra, the last angel known to wear them, died with the relics on her, but her body was never found,” Grace told me. “An old battle hymn tells of her bringing them into the treasury for safekeeping as the city crumbled to the ground. To save them for a day they would be needed again.”

“Needed again? That’s a pretty romantic view of an angel-killing weapon,” I commented.

“It’s epic poetry. That’s how they are. Romantic,” she said.

“How do you know the Treasury even survived the city’s destruction?” I asked.

“The Treasury is protected by magic, by great spells. These spells keep it from being crushed. And it keeps thieves out.”

“So if the Treasury is protected, how did you plan to get in? And if that protection spell is so powerful, aren’t the relics safer left there?”

Valiant looked horrified that I would even suggest such a thing. Academics had their idealistic heads stuck in the clouds.

“Another epic poem says the keepers of the Treasury left behind the clues to unlocking its wonders, so that someday a hero might reclaim these lost treasures.”

I lifted my eyebrows. Hero? There was that romantic angle again.

“A hero with a great mind. Someone with the intellect to puzzle it out,” Valiant said. “ ‘For in the midnight hour, the sun and moon will shine, and a new hero will rise, his mind unlocking the secrets within.’ ”

“That poem was the last piece to the puzzle,” Grace said. “Valiant and I found it last month.”

“There’s supposed to be a picture on the wall of a building in the sunken city. When you reach it, you are at the door,” Valiant added.

“What kind of picture?” I asked.

“The text only tells us we’ll know it when we see it.”

Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all.

“Why are you helping me if you don’t want the Legion to do this without you?” I asked him.

“Because you’re different than soldiers like Colonel Fireswift. You aren’t seeking glory or your own advancement,” he said. “So if someone in the Legion has to find it, I want it to be you.”

The other Pilgrims nodded in agreement, offering their good luck wishes.

As I turned to leave, Valiant said, “The rogue angel who stole my notebook has all of this information and my notes. He knows what you know.” He set his hands over mine. “Be careful.”

I left the overcrowded medical ward, walking back toward my apartment. I needed to shower and change into something that wasn’t stained in my own blood.

“Leda.”

I looked back to find Jace hurrying down the hall after me. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. Colonel Fireswift must have healed him himself.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

He turned his eyes from my bloody clothes. “I’m sorry about my father.”

He sounded genuine—and he had helped me in the fight, while putting on a show for his father. At least I thought it had been a show.

“Have you visited the medical ward to see what the victims of Colonel Fireswift’s training look like?”

“I haven’t, but I can imagine. Angels are different from us,” he said, echoing Calli’s words. “Especially angels from the early years of the Legion. Times were different. Here, let me show you something.” He took my hand, leading me to Nero’s office. No, Colonel Fireswift’s office. It was his now.

No one was at home, but the door was unlocked. Colonel Fireswift must have believed no one was bold enough to go into his office uninvited. As we walked past the desk, I saw that Jace’s father had already made himself at home. Medals and plaques cataloging his triumphs and accomplishments hung on the walls, right beside the pictures of the Legion’s angels, past and present. I touched Nero’s picture, wishing he were here instead of his evil replacement.

“Look here,” Jace said, pointing at a large framed photo of Nyx surrounded by twelve other angels. “Nyx’s original angels. There’s Osiris Wardbreaker, the rogue we’re hunting down. A vicious angel.” He pointed at an angel who looked like Colonel Fireswift’s twin. “My grandfather.” He tapped a couple holding matching swords. “Those are Colonel Windstriker’s parents.”

The photos of the original angels and their descendants were positioned below this central picture. The photos of other angels not descended from the original angels were on another wall.

“Legacy is important at the Legion,” Jace said. “You remember how I told you Legion brats wear the name with pride? That’s even more true for those of us who come from one of the original families. We carry our history with us. Our knowledge. Our rich and beautiful traditions.” His gaze slid down to the photo of his father. “When Nyx trained the first angels, the world was a different place. It was a time when the gods and demons were at war. There were so few soldiers in the Legion and Nyx needed them to level up fast. She needed an army. Training was harsh and cruel, worse than even my father’s training.”

He looked at me. “Some of the original angels fell and became the first dark angels, back at a time when the Legion couldn’t afford to lose anyone. My grandfather was an original angel. He saw some of his friends turn against him and go to the other side. My grandfather made my father into his image, with all those same fears. My father is his father’s son, and he wants to make me in their image too. I’m not saying this to excuse him, Leda. I just want you to understand. Maybe it will help you survive the tyranny that I have for the past twenty years. Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Jace,” I said, and we parted ways, each of us turning down a different hallway, heading to our apartments.

We would be leaving early. In just a few hours, we would take the train to Purgatory so we could enter the Black Plains as the sun rose. I was exhausted—physically, mentally, and emotionally—but I was not going to bed covered in my own blood. I took a shower, and when I returned to my room, there was a book on my bed that hadn’t been there before.

It was called Angels. I opened the cover to find a sticky note stuck to the title page.

Survival training, the note read in Nero’s neat handwriting.

He must have given it to me so I could learn my enemy. I sent a silent thank-you out to Nero, wherever he was right now. I would need all the help I could get to survive Colonel Fireswift and his games.