4

By the time we got back to the Legion, it was our dinner hour. In fact, dinner was nearly over. Nero dismissed Jace and Mina. As they hurried off to the canteen, Nero turned his cold eyes on me. Was he getting ready for a lecture? I’d behaved myself today. Well, except for maybe giving him an irked look when he’d told me to stay put outside of the Brick Palace…and I’d spoken without permission a few—ok, a bunch of times. I was so bad at this. I smiled at him anyway. There was no situation a smile couldn’t turn around, right?

Nero clearly disagreed with the sentiment. He met my smile with a disapproving slant to his mouth.

Well, excuse me for being nice. How horribly inappropriate of me.

“Take the residue sample to Dr. Harding in Lab One,” he said. “As you wait for the results, I want you to watch how she runs the tests. Have her explain everything she does to you. When it’s done, bring the results to me in my office.”

My stomach growled in protest—and I almost did too. The tests would take hours, and I was starving now. I thought the cruel and unusual punishment was saved for the Legion’s prisoners, not their soldiers.

Who are you kidding? my inner cynic said. They’ve been torturing you for months. And you’re just sitting back and taking it.

I nodded to Nero and rushed down the hall before my dark side got me into trouble. Mouthing off to him would feel good while it lasted, but that feeling would be short-lived. I was too tired and hungry to argue with an angel, and I certainly didn’t have the energy to spend the rest of the night enduring whatever punishment he came up with in response to my disobedience.

I ran up the stairs to the next floor, where all the labs were located. Maybe this wouldn’t take hours. If I hurried, I might be able to swing by the canteen and snag some leftovers before they cleared everything away. With that ray of hope beaming inside of my mind, I burst through the door into Lab One.

“Where’s the fire?” a woman in a lab coat asked, smirking at me. The name on her coat said Dr. Harding. Bingo.

“No fire.” I sashayed over to the table she was standing behind, dropping the plastic bag containing the residue onto it. “We found this residue at the Brick Palace.”

Her dark brows drew together. “The vampire house?”

“Yes, every vampire inside died by inhaling poison pumped through the cooling system.”

“Lovely way to die,” she said, frowning.

“We need to figure out what substance killed them.”

Dr. Harding picked up the bag and peered through the plastic window at the residue. “You didn’t bring me very much of it. And how about some bodies?”

I didn’t think she was trying to be morbid. She simply wanted to see how the people had died. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help her with that.

“A few minutes after we got to the Brick Palace, explosions went off all over the building,” I told her. “All the bodies burned up. The rest of the evidence too. We barely got out of there before we became the next victims.”

She sighed. “I’ll try to make do with what you brought me.” She opened the bag, but when I didn’t leave, her dark brown eyes darted up at me. “Why are you being a fly on the wall of my lab?”

Believe me, I wish I could leave. But I just said, “Nero ordered me to be a fly on the wall of your lab. I’m supposed to watch you and learn.”

“Nero, you say?” she asked, her mouth curling in a combination of amusement and surprise. “Well, if the good Colonel is making you stand here and watch, by all means come closer. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

I closed up next to her at the table. “What does that do?” I asked, pointing at the Magitech machine she’d just flipped open. It looked like a simple glass box, but I knew that couldn’t be all it was.

“It’s going to analyze the magic in this residue.”

She poured a pinch of the residue into a shallow bowl, then set the bowl into the machine. As soon as she closed the door, the whole thing lit up. She flipped on the glowing box, and it began to hum softly. A grid of red lights flickered rapidly all across the glassy surface. Slowly, light by light, the grid began to turn orange.

As it did its thing, I looked around the lab. My gaze snagged on a bowl of chocolate chip cookies sitting on the desk across the room, and my stomach let out a low, desperate roar.

“By all means, take as many as you want,” Dr. Harding said, smiling.

I wasn’t sure if she felt sorry for me or was just amused by me, but I found I didn’t care as long as I got those cookies.

As many as I want? Why, I don’t mind if I do.

It turned out there were only two cookies in that bowl, and I took them both. Before the lights on the machine had turned yellow, those cookies were gone, and my stomach was begging for more food. A quick survey of the lab’s contents let me know that unless I wanted to sample the mysterious objects floating in jars on the bookshelves, then my stomach was out of luck until I could get out of here.

“Still hungry?” Dr. Harding asked.

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I don’t even know how many calories I’ve burned since then.”

“Ah, the early training days.” She said the words without a hint of nostalgia.

“You sound glad to be done with those days,” I told her.

“Oh, you have the wrong idea there, dear… What’s your name?”

“Leda Pierce.”

Her eyes widened.

“I take it you’ve heard of me,” I said drily.

“Oh, yes.” Her mouth twisted into a delighted smile. “I most certainly have.” But before I could ask her what she’d heard about me, she continued, “You’re never done with training, Leda. Once a quarter, we all have to complete another training course. The Legion wants each and every one of their soldiers to be able to kill anything in their path without problem or pause.”

“Even the scientists?”

“Even the scientists.”

“Dr. Harding—”

“Oh, no, you simply must call me Nerissa. After what you’ve done…” She was grinning.

“What did I do?”

“You traveled across the Black Plains to rescue Nero Windstriker.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. You rescued an angel, dear. That’s not something people around here forget.” She leaned her elbows on the table, balancing her chin on her hands. “So, how was it?”

“Black and cloudy. The Black Plains have been scorched for two hundred years. Every living thing is touched by that magic. Even the trees are black.”

“No, not the Black Plains.” She gave her hand a dismissive wave, as though there were nothing interesting about a plain of monsters. “How was it being out there with Colonel Windstriker?”

“Uh, well, it was dangerous. And he told me off for coming after him.”

Nerissa chuckled softly. “Of course he did. But he must have appreciated it anyway.”

“If you call appreciation two hours of extra running every evening for a month.”

“To an angel, dear, that’s merely foreplay.”

I was stunned to silence.

“You train with him every day,” she continued.

“Where did you hear that?”

She shrugged. “Everyone is talking about it.”

“But no one even knows who I am,” I protested.

“They do now,” she said brightly. “Once Colonel Windstriker made his intentions clear, you became famous here.”

“What intentions?” I said, almost afraid to ask.

“His intentions to make you his lover, of course.”

Yep, I should have listened to my inner voice. It was right. I really didn’t want to know.

“I…uh…” I stuttered stupidly.

She smiled at me.

“That’s not what’s happening,” I told her, my cheeks flushed. “Nero is not trying to make me his lover.”

“Of course not, dear. Angels don’t try to make someone their lover. They just do it. So, did you go after him on the Black Plains because you thought that would pique his interest, or was that just a happy coincidence?”

“This is not a happy coincidence,” I muttered, trying to keep the growl out of my voice.

“Ah, so it was intentional.” She nodded, obviously missing my emphasis. “I thought so. As far as plans to catch his attention go, that’s the boldest one I’ve heard.”

“Why in heaven would anyone want to catch Nero’s attention?” I demanded. “Especially when the only way to catch his attention is to do something that will incur his wrath?”

“Well, it worked for you,” she said.

“Nothing worked. I rescued him because it was the right thing to do, not so that he’d sleep with me.”

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t want to sleep with him.”

“I…” My heart let out a heavy thump, betraying me.

Since Nerissa had the same amplified hearing as I did, she heard it too. “I thought so,” she said, smiling knowingly. “Don’t worry. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

I looked around for an escape from this conversation, but there was none. The earth couldn’t even be bothered to open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole. Where was an impending apocalypse when you really needed one?

“But I think people know. Everyone is watching you,” she said. “You’re famous.”

Well, that was certainly the opposite of comforting. “Any chance my new-found fame can score me some more cookies?” I asked her, trying to divert the conversation away from this awful subject.

“If I give you some more, will you talk to Nero about my request for additional lab equipment?”

“I think you’ll have better luck talking to him yourself.”

“I already did. He called my request frivolous. But if his lover talked to him…”

“I am not his lover.”

“Give it a few weeks. Or days. Then you can bring forth my proposal. Bring it up when he’s in the throes of passion.” She grinned at me. “You’ll have better luck that way.”

I ground my teeth together. No cookies were worth this. The magic-analyzing machine took that moment to beep, thereby saving me from any further discussions with the doctor about Nero’s throes of passion.

“Ok, it’s finished,” Nerissa said, serious again. “Now let’s see what kind of magic we’re dealing with.”

* * *

On the plus side, as soon as the machine was done, Nerissa was so busy with the slew of other tests she wanted to perform on the residue that she didn’t have time to talk about me and Nero doing the horizontal tango. On the not-so-plus side, those tests took hours. By the time we were done, not only was the canteen closed, but all of the kitchen staff were done for the day too. There would be no late night munchies for me.

I headed for Nero’s office, hoping that my hunger wouldn’t make me snap at him. The least he could have done was let me swing by Demeter for some food before I’d headed to the lab. But no, soldiers of the Legion could go days without eating, so how about we test that?

By the time I made it to Nero’s office, I was bitter, angry, and famished—and I let the door know it. When he didn’t respond to my hard knocks, I tried again. Nothing. I pulled on the handle, but it was locked.

“Nero isn’t here.”

I turned around. Across the hall from Nero’s office, Captain Somerset stood in the doorway of her own office. It was a good thing she wasn’t telepathic because the curses that blared through my head would have made her ears bleed. My hands shook so hard that I nearly lost a grip on the folder in my hands. He’d made me sit through all of that while starving, and he couldn’t even be bothered to wait for my report? He’d probably gone off to satisfy his own late night munchies.

“Nero is in his apartment. Take that up to him,” she said, nodding at the folder in my hands.

“Can’t I just give it to you?” I asked. I was afraid that if I saw Nero right now, I wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue.

She chuckled and closed her door. Well, that was answer enough. Up to the angel’s lair it was.

The top-ranked Legion officers in New York had their apartments on the highest floor of the building. I spent the seemingly endless climb up the stairs trying to concentrate on what Nerissa had told me about the residue. She’d used a lot of weird science-y words I didn’t know the meaning of, so replaying what she’d said confused my brain. I’d take it. Better to meet Nero in a state of confusion than in a state of rage.

I knocked on his apartment door and waited. I considered the consequences of giving Nero a lecture about cruel and unusual punishment. I decided it was worth the risk—but the words evaporated from my tongue the moment he answered the door. He was wearing a pair of running pants. His complementary black tank top was cut low in the front and on the sides, showing off his arms and chest. Ok, I admit it. I stopped and stared. Gaped even. My eyes traced the damp sheen that coated his body, like he’d just been working out.

“Yes?”

I tore my eyes off of—well, everything—and settled my gaze on an empty patch of air over his right shoulder. Nerissa’s confident lilt, that promise that I’d be Nero’s lover, sang in my mind. I silenced that song by dropping a mountain of sheer stubbornness onto it.

“I have the lab report,” I said, my voice uneven. Damn it.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside to allow me to pass.

I did, my gaze flickering to the new addition to his apartment as he closed the door. He’d installed a salmon ladder just like the one in Captain Somerset’s obstacle course. Last week, I’d walked into the gym to find him tackling that obstacle. He’d done it topless too, much to the appreciation of his admiring female audience. Just thinking back on it still gave me goosebumps. His fierce fluidity. The way beads of sweat had slid between the ridges of his muscles. I slammed down a big barrier, blocking out those images.

Nero stood opposite me, hopefully completely unaware of my wicked fantasies. I pressed my thighs together and clutched the folder. He held out his hand. I took an immediate step forward, then froze, realizing that he wasn’t beckoning me forward. He just wanted the lab report. Blushing, I handed it to him.

Pull yourself together, I chided myself as Nero opened the folder and began to read. I considered leaving, but he hadn’t dismissed me yet, so I had a feeling I was expected to just stand there. While I waited, the hungry part of me wondered if the kitchen was unlocked. Maybe I could sneak some food from the pantry.

Nero looked up from the page. “What did you learn about the residue?”

I blinked, confused. “The report is right there.”

He stiffened. Oops. He must have thought I was talking back. Again.

“I just meant, I thought you wanted the official report,” I said quickly.

“I have Dr. Harding’s report. Now I want to hear yours.”

Great. “Dr. Harding found traces of Sunset Pollen and Snapdragon Venom in the residue. They are, uh, substances recently engineered by witches,” I said.

“Go on.”

I babbled for a minute, trying to talk my way through some of the stuff Nerissa had told me, but I didn’t really understand most of it, so I probably got half of the terms wrong. The ordeal was made even more difficult by the fact that Nero was watching me the whole time.

He continued to stare at me for a few silent seconds after I was done talking, then he said, “I will get you some books so you can read up on magic forensics. And chemistry. And magical science in general.”

“How big will this stack of books be?”

“Only as big as it needs to be,” he told me.

Knowing Nero, that meant a ten-foot stack of books. I hoped my roommates didn’t mind that I’d soon have to use their beds as bookshelves. I sighed.

Nero seemed to gather the gist of my thoughts. “You need this knowledge. You cannot advance further in the Legion without it.”

“I’m still working on the vampire skills. And you want to pile on witchy stuff now?”

“You wanted me to help you advance quickly, and this is how it works. Did you think this would be easy?”

No, not really. The Legion of Angels wasn’t known for its easygoing attitude. He was right. If I wanted to find my brother Zane, I had to work harder. And I had to work fast. Wherever my brother was now, he seemed safe, but it was only a matter of time before either the gods or the demons found him and exploited him for his power.

“With each level in the Legion, you need to improve your current skills and the new ones,” Nero continued on. “It’s a constant effort to better yourself.”

I glanced at the salmon ladder in his living room. My head panned up the many levels of metal. It was a good thing his ceiling was so high. It looked like he was striving too.

“It all sounds so exhausting,” I commented.

“It is.” He walked over to the bookcases that covered one wall. He pulled out a book in a single, crisp movement, as though he knew exactly where every book on his shelves was. “Start with this one while I prepare a list for you from the library.”

I glanced down at the front cover. It was a basic monotone blue background with the title written in white block letters. The Basics of Magical Chemistry, was it? There was nothing basic about it. The book weighed more than the weights Nero had been making me bench press. I’d hate to see the followup book.

“I’m too exhausted for mental gymnastics right now,” I told him. “I haven’t even eaten yet.”

“Then let’s take care of that.”

Smooth as a silk ribbon on the wind, he moved over to the dining room table, which I only now realized was set for dinner. Dinner for one. Nero placed a second plate and set of silverware across from the first. Oh gods, was Nerissa right? Was he trying to seduce me?

“I didn’t expect the lab analysis to take so long,” Nero said.

“Is this an apology?”

He shot me a hard look. Ok, apparently not. He probably thought apologies were for people too stupid to make the right choice the first time. Yeah, that would totally be Nero logic.

“I was working in my office. By the time I realized how late it was, the canteen was closed,” he said. “So I had the kitchen staff send some food up to me.” He lifted the lid from a very large platter, revealing a dinner that could have easily left four people stuffed. “They always send way too much,” he said in response to my gaping eyes. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn a hint of sheepishness flashed across his face. But it couldn’t be. That was an emotion unbefitting of an angel.

He pulled a wine bottle and two glasses from the other side of the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Wine too? All that was missing were the candles and the mood music. The reasonable, rational part of me battled it out with the little tramp who wondered what it would be like to pour that wine all over Nero’s chest and then lick it up. I was frozen in place, caught between running toward him and fleeing the other way.

“Do I need to order you to sit down and eat?” he demanded with a hint of impatience as he sat.

The purely callous way that he said it allowed hunger to finally tip the scales. This wasn’t about seducing me. This was about feeding me so he could torture me again tomorrow. Expelling an internal sigh of relief, I took the seat across from his.

As soon as I was seated, the three candles on the table flickered to life, and the room lighting dimmed. My mind flashed back to the last time I’d been in his room with candles lit all around us—and to the blood exchange we’d done so that I could catch a glimpse of my brother by linking to Zane through Nero’s magic. Just the sight of Nero’s blood had turned me into a crazy nymphomaniac who made that little tramp inside of me—the one who’d wanted to lick wine off of Nero earlier—look like a saint. Thinking about Nero’s blood now sent a rush of heat through my entire body.

I crossed my ankles, folded my hands, and most certainly did not watch the shift of muscle in Nero’s arms as he poured the wine. I cleared my throat, trying to clear my mind of wicked intentions too. If those thoughts made their way to Nero, he might punish me. Or worse yet, he might play out my darkest desires. What was with the candles anyway? Was he trying to seduce me or test me? I drew in a deep breath to steady my nerves, but my own scent betrayed the need burning inside of me. But at least my fangs didn’t descend this time, which meant I was starting to get some control over them.

I winked at Nero. “I always knew you wanted to ask me out on a date,” I said, trying to cover my sudden mood shift with a joke.

“Is that what this is?” he said, his voice perfectly neutral.

“Uh…” I reached for the dinner rolls just to have something to do with my hands. Nero filled my glass with wine.

“Trying to get me drunk, angel?”

His face remained impassive. “That’s not hard.”

“It’s Nectar that gets me drunk. I can hold my liquor,” I boasted.

* * *

Two bottles of wine later, I was eating my words. I’d have been eating Nero’s words too if he’d only asked. But though he’d drunk one of those two bottles himself, he looked no different than usual. I, on the other hand, was so relaxed that I was practically melting into his sofa. We’d moved there after a dinner that had left me satisfyingly stuffed.

I’d just finished telling him the story of the time Zane and I had chased an escaped thief through the town’s sewage system. We’d caught him, but by then we’d stunk so badly that Calli wouldn’t let us enter the house until we stripped down in the front yard and she shot us with a high-pressure hose. She’d burned our clothes. As I finished the story, Nero’s mouth thinned into a hard line.

“Ok, so maybe that wasn’t the most appropriate story I could have told you, but I do have worse ones. It wasn’t the only time I had to go through the sewers,” I said. “But I guess an angel would never do something so uncouth.”

“You would be surprised at what uncouth things I’ve done in my life, both before and after I got my wings.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Do tell,” I said, leaning forward eagerly.

“Perhaps another time.”

“You’re such a tease.”

“I’ll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”

“Ok, I’ll play.” I grinned at him. “What have I got to lose? You already know my biggest secret. Ask away.”

He didn’t waste time. “Is there something between you and Zane?”

“Not blood, if that’s what you mean. I told you we’re not related.”

“I remember.” He looked into my eyes for a few long moments, as though he were trying to read something in them.

“Then what…” I snorted. “Oh, that. I don’t have the hots for him if that’s what you mean. He might not be my brother by blood, but he is my brother in my heart.”

Nero remained silent, his face etched in marble.

“Wow, that was a really silly thing to waste your question on,” I told him. “You must be miffed.”

“Alcohol makes you bold,” he said.

I arched my brows at him. “The question is, does it make you bold?”

“No, angels are immune to mundane alcohol. I just like the taste of wine.”

I chuckled, rubbing my hands together with glee. “Now to come up with a really good question.”

“You already used your question,” he informed me coolly.

“When did I…” I frowned. “You mean when I asked you if alcohol made you bold? That doesn’t count. I didn’t mean for that to be my question.”

“Whether you meant it or not, you asked it. And rules are rules.”

“But—”

“That was a really silly thing to waste your question on,” he cut in. “You must be miffed.”

I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him. “Suddenly, this game isn’t fun anymore. You play mean.”

“The game has always been the same,” he said. “You’re just now beginning to understand the rules.”

What did that even mean? I was too drunk to try to figure it out.

“The Legion is about pushing yourself beyond your limits,” he told me. “And when your limits grow, you push against those too. Again and again. That is the secret to gaining the gods’ gifts, the secret to leveling up your magic.”

“So, basically, you’re telling me the gods reward the stubborn and the restless.”

A small smile twisted his lips. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”

“I know how much you love to teach by example.” I glanced at the salmon ladder. “Care to use your new toy to offer a demonstration of this stubborn, restless quality the Legion needs in its soldiers?” I tried to keep a straight face. Since I was smashed, I probably failed.

“Ladies first,” he said with perfect politeness.

“Uh, no. I think I’ve had too much to drink for that. The bar would slip right off the edge.” My hand flew to my forehead. “Then hit me in the head.”

“That would be a valuable lesson. You must be ready to fight anywhere, anytime.”

“If vampires storm the room, I’m sure you can hold them off while I nap,” I said, brushing a strand of hair from his face.

He caught my hand, magic rippling across our connection. “You let your guard down too easily.”

“And you don’t let it down easily enough,” I shot back.

In a flash, he had my arms pinned to the sofa. He leaned in to whisper against my ear, “You must be ready for battle at any time.”

“Not against you, you crazy angel. You’re on my side.” The hot kiss of his breath felt too good, so good that even I in my inebriated state knew I was in trouble if I didn’t get free of him. I pushed against his hold, but he was too strong. “Let me go.” I tried to kick him. He trapped my leg easily.

“You must always be ready,” he said. “A threat can come from anywhere, even from the place you least expect it. Stay alert. Don’t trust anyone.”

“Even you?” I asked, shoving against his unbreakable hold.

A dark look shone in his eyes. “Especially me.”

I wasn’t making any more progress in freeing myself than I had this morning when he’d trapped me during our one-on-one training session. My arms and legs were pinned, and he was too far away for me to head-butt him. This called for drastic measures. I turned my neck and bit down on my own shoulder. As my blood rose to the surface, Nero’s eyes widened, a blue-silver sheen sliding over them, masking his natural emerald color. That moment of distraction cost him. I pushed him off of me and retreated to the other side of the living room. Adrenaline kicked in, shooting my heightened metabolism into high gear. The haze of alcohol began to clear from my mind.

Nero shook his hands, as though freeing himself from the mesmerizing effect of my blood. “That was a dirty trick.”

“Says he who got me drunk and then attacked me to prove a point. Why does everything with you have to be a test?”

“Tests help you push yourself to new limits.”

He moved in so quickly that one moment he was standing by the sofa, and the next he was right in front of me. He swung a punch at me, but he was slower than usual, and I evaded it.

“Let me heal your neck. It’s distracting,” he told me. Well, that explained his slowness.

I dipped my finger in the stream of blood dripping down my neck. “You must always stay alert, no matter what distractions are around you.” Smirking, I held out my finger.

“I’m very alert right now.” His eyes followed the stream of my blood down to my collarbone. Raw need burned in his eyes. He wanted my blood every bit as much as I wanted his, and I was going to use that to my advantage.

Or not. He might have been slower than usual, but he was still too fast. He caught my hand as I attacked, twisting my arm behind me. I tried to power out of his hold, but my back slammed into his chest.

“Well, this is nice,” I commented.

He didn’t dignify my flippancy with a response. Instead, he wrapped one arm more tightly around me, even as he traced his finger down my neck to my shoulder. His hand settled there, and a gentle warmth spread across my body, healing my wound. Then his mouth lowered to my neck, and he let out a slow breath.

A shudder rippled down my spine. My body jerked as his breath melted into my skin, drowning me in a rush of savage longing. I could feel my blood awakening with fire, rising up to him. His mouth dipped lower, and his tongue flicked out to lick the blood from my neck.

“Bite me,” I said, my voice somewhere between a rasp and a moan.

“I just healed you,” Nero said, but he slid my ponytail off my shoulder, clearing my neck.

I tilted my head to give him easy access to my throat. His mouth closed over my throbbing vein, but his fangs didn’t descend. He sucked hard, drinking in the blood still wet on my skin. A wave of fevered desire tore through me, consuming me from the inside out.

“Please,” I shuddered, reaching back to pull him closer to me.

I could sense every muscle in his body tensing as he teetered on the edge of losing control. “I shouldn’t.” His hand stroked down my arm, his touch feather-light.

A knock sounded on the door, and Nero dropped his hands from me, pulling back. With the heat of his body gone, I was left cold and shivering. I turned around to face him. His eyes were panning across the apartment at the mess we’d made during our short fight.

“Go to the other room,” he said so quietly I could hardly hear him. He pointed at a closed door off to the side of the living room.

“Who is it?” I asked in the same volume.

“The First Angel.”

Those three words froze what little heat still lingered inside of me. I didn’t think the First Angel would be happy to find me in Nero’s apartment—or to learn what we’d been doing here.

Nero walked toward the front door, the furniture settling back into place behind him. His perfect control over his psychic magic was both amazing and terrifying. It was one thing to blast someone across the room with raw power, and Nero certainly had raw power to spare. But the subtle control of silently moving the furniture around was quite another thing. I paused in the doorway to watch him for a moment, then I ducked into the room. My curiosity got the better of me, so I kept the door cracked open just enough to see.

Why had the First Angel come to see Nero here so late in the night? A knot formed in my stomach. I hoped she wasn’t looking for a little nocturnal angel-on-angel fun. Nero opened the door to his apartment, bowing, and Nyx glided past him with all the beauty and grace of an angel.

“I’ve read Dr. Harding’s report on the residue,” she said straight away, all business. “Sunset Pollen and Snapdragon Venom.” Her blue eyes pulsed once. “Both substances were recently developed by the witches of the New York University of Witchcraft. They are still highly experimental, and thus the witches do not allow them off the university’s grounds. My advisers want me to arrest every single person in the school.”

“Impractical,” Nero decided after half a second. “That is over two thousand people. There is no way we could secure them all. As soon as we started rounding up witches, both the innocent and the guilty alike would flee. That’s just human nature.”

Nyx’s mouth twitched. “It is indeed. Colonel Fireswift proposes we arrange an assembly for all students and faculty, then capture everyone at once.”

“With all due respect to Colonel Fireswift, that is an idiotic plan. The students and faculty make up most of the school’s numbers, but not all. There are gardeners, janitors, and all manner of other staff. How does he propose we invite them too without arousing suspicion?”

“He doesn’t. Colonel Fireswift does not believe any of them could possibly be responsible.”

“That’s where he’s wrong. You might need to be a witch to create potions and magic bombs, but you don’t need a sliver of supernatural blood in you to use many of them.”

“I agree with you, Nero. In our arrogance, we angels often forget that it doesn’t require great power to be capable of great evil.” Nyx sighed. “Besides, even if we caught the guilty party, I’m not sure we’d know it. I haven’t yet been able to get anything out of the last witches we captured. The demons put magic safeguards on them. They don’t break under torture. We’re still looking for a way to shatter that spell.”

“You believe the demons are pulling the strings this time too?” Nero asked her.

“I cannot ignore the possibility. Why would anyone but a demon want to kill a building full of vampires?”

Nero’s eyes flashed with understanding. “You think it was a sacrifice.”

“We won’t know until we figure out who’s behind this. That residue is our only clue, and it’s pointing at the New York University of Witchcraft. I need you to find a way to investigate how those two substances made it out of the school’s labs. But do it carefully. Otherwise, the guilty party will flee, and if the demons give them sanctuary in hell, we won’t know it. We might never get to the bottom of this. Covert is the key word here.”

That key word was the complete opposite of the standard Legion solution to their problems: charging in swords drawn, guns blazing, blasting down doors.

“I will prepare a mission plan,” Nero said.

Nyx nodded. She was turning to leave when she looked down, her eyes focusing on a tiny drop of blood on the white marble floor. She paused and looked around. The furniture was all in order, but two empty bottles of wine still sat on the dining room table.

“Late night drink, Colonel?” she asked, her perfectly-sculpted dark brows lifting.

Nero’s face was as hard as his marble floor. “Something to unwind before bed.”

Nyx continued to stare at the bottles for a moment, then she turned, stepping over the drop of blood on her way to the door. “I expect your mission plan first thing in the morning,” she told him before she left.

Nero locked the door behind her. I stayed where I was, just in case Nyx was still nearby. Nero must have been thinking the same thing. He crossed the living room with silent steps, then slowly peeled back the door I’d been hiding behind the whole time.

“You were eavesdropping,” he whispered, noting how close I was to the door.

I shrugged and smiled, and as I turned around, I realized where I was.

“You hid me in your bedroom?” I hissed under my breath. “Why don’t you just stuff me under your bed like a dirty magazine?”

“I would have, but I didn’t think you’d go quietly.”

Anger surged through me until I caught that tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Are you mocking me?” I demanded.

“Of course not.”

I clenched my jaw. “You are mocking me.”

“Leda, it was either my bedroom or the bathroom.”

My gaze flickered to the bed, and I suddenly remembered what we’d been doing before Nyx had knocked on the door. “I have to go,” I said, turning to hide my burning face. “I need to get to bed if I’m going to be able to get up for our training session in a few hours.”

“We’ll have to skip tomorrow’s training. I have a report to get ready for Nyx.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more, like he was also thinking about what we’d been doing earlier. But maybe I was just projecting. I nodded and hurried past him, leaving the apartment before I could succumb to temptation. I didn’t slow down until I reached the stairwell.

Nero’s an angel, I thought as I descended the stairs. Can I trust him?

Oddly enough, the first answer that sprang into my mind was a resounding yes. He knew about Zane’s magic, a magic the gods we served would exploit for their own gain without any thought for Zane’s well-being, but he hadn’t told anyone. He hadn’t betrayed my trust. And he never would. Somehow, I was sure of it. I could trust him, at least when it came to helping me save Zane.

But I couldn’t trust him with my heart. Captain Somerset had told me about the many immortal hearts Nero had broken in his many immortal years. And if Nerissa was right, I was next in line. But it didn’t have to be that way. I could stop this now, before it began. I didn’t have time for a broken heart. I’d already suffered through enough heartache in my past. Nero was helping me, but I wasn’t under any delusions. He was an angel, and angels didn’t think like other people. They didn’t see others in the same way. Some key part of humanity was missing from them.

This was only a physical attraction between me and Nero—that and nothing else. He wanted me, I wanted him. We’d have world-shattering sex. Maybe it would last a few happy weeks, or maybe even months. I’d probably fall for him. I kept my heart guarded, but Nero was the sort of man who could break through those guards. And once I fell, I’d fall hard. Eventually, though, he would grow bored of my humanity, and then that would be that. He’d leave me to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart.

No, I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t be broken when I needed to help Zane. So I had to stay detached from that fiercely beautiful angel. I had to resist him, no matter how much I didn’t want to.