5

Bright and early the next morning, I took an extended shower, then headed down to the canteen. Thanks to my newly heightened metabolism, I wasn’t feeling the aftereffects of last night’s wine. Though I missed many of the things I’d had to give up when I joined the Legion, hangovers were most certainly not one of them.

I didn’t have a training session with Nero today, so for the first time in weeks, I had time for a long, leisurely breakfast with my friends. And I intended to make the best of it. I started off with two donuts, and I only got more ambitious from there.

“Are you really going to eat all of that?” Ivy asked, her brown eyes flickering to my fully-loaded food tray.

“Of course.” I sat down across from her. “Where’s Drake?”

“Captain Somerset summoned him away on a raid of some vampire hideout outside the city. You didn’t hear her because you were singing in the shower at the time.” Her brows lifted, inviting me to elucidate my bright spirits.

“I’m just happy I can have an actual breakfast this morning rather than the usual five-minute variety.”

“Oh, is that all? I thought it had something to do with your visit to the Colonel’s apartment last night.” Her lips spread into a knowing smile, and she winked at me, her long eyelashes kissing her cheekbones.

“That was about work,” I said, trying not to think about all the non-work things that had happened in his apartment.

“It must have been a lot of work. You were there for hours.”

“How can you possibly… Never mind, I’m not surprised. You always know everything that’s going on at the Legion.”

Ivy slid her knife through her melon, cutting off a piece. “So are you going to make me ask you what happened in his apartment?”

“I gave him the lab report on the residue sample from the Brick Palace.”

Ivy nodded. Of course she knew about the poisoning and bombing of the building I’d visited with Nero yesterday. It’s all anyone around here was talking about right now. They were calling it the New York Massacre.

“And then?” Ivy prompted when I didn’t continue.

I skewered a piece of pancake on my fork. “And then we ate a little.”

“Dinner?” Her eyes lit up. “You had dinner with Nero Windstriker?”

“It’s not like that. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the canteen was closed. He’d ordered up some food, and he let me have some. Probably so I wouldn’t try to eat him. I was so starving.”

“And did you?” Her lip twitched. “Eat him?”

“What?” My confusion melted away to embarrassment. “No! Of course not. There was no angel eating. Steak, potatoes, baby carrots.”

“Dessert?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m talking about food, Ivy. Not sex.”

She sighed. “Too bad.”

I didn’t share everything that had happened after dinner. That would just make things worse. Instead, I said, “I was talking to Nerissa Harding yesterday in the lab.”

“Oh, I love her. She’s so much fun. Though some people find her a bit…”

“Unfiltered?” I suggested.

“Yeah. She doesn’t hold back.”

“She wasn’t holding back last night either. She told me that…that everyone thinks Nero…well, that he’d broadcast his intentions to make me his lover.”

Milk shot out of Ivy’s nose. She grabbed a napkin, drying the mess. “Sorry, I was just picturing what your face must have looked like when she said that.”

“Is it true? Are people really saying that?”

“Yeah, they are. Sorry.” Ivy gave me a pitying look. She knew how much I hated being the center of attention. But I wasn’t a fan of pity either.

“Well, it doesn’t matter what they say because it’s not happening,” I told her, standing. “Come on. We’re going to be late for training.”

Ivy didn’t say anything more about it, and by the time we made it to Hall Four, we were deep in a conversation about Lieutenant Diaz, her latest admirer. Our cheerful chatter died down the moment we opened the door to find the obstacle course from hell waiting for us. Since Captain Somerset was away on a mission, her friend Sergeant Claudia Vance was in charge of training us today. Sergeant Vance had a tall, strong figure, but she’d somehow managed to keep her voluptuous curves beneath all that battle-hardened muscle. A long blonde braid hung over her shoulder like a whip, contrasting with her black workout suit. She looked like an ancient battle maiden in modern clothing.

By the end of the day, I’d decided that while she shared Captain Somerset’s tough style, neither of them had perfected their training torture techniques as well as Nero. I hoped that wasn’t a prerequisite skill to becoming an angel because I didn’t think I had it in me to be that cruel.

Drake joined me and Ivy in Demeter right as we were sitting down to dinner. As always, he was in a great mood. Nothing seemed to dampen his spirits, not even a day-long mission chasing vampires.

“So, how was your mission?” I asked him as he sat down with a tray piled high with meat—and little else.

“Famishing.” He grinned. “We were walking the whole day. The building was empty, but there was a secret door in the back that led into a tunnel system. Dark, stinky tunnels. Dead animals everywhere. Animal excrement everywhere. Animal hair everywhere.”

“Sounds appetizing,” Ivy said, pushing her tray away.

“Oh, it was disgusting all right. Water had flooded larger parts of the tunnels, and it wasn’t clean water either. I think it must have leaked off the sewage system.”

“Well, thank you for showering before you came to dinner,” Ivy said, then resumed eating her dinner.

I didn’t smell anything coming off of Drake except for the fresh scent of soap and a hint of spice from his cologne.

“Did you fight any vampires?” I asked him.

“No, but we did get to fight some giant sewer rats.”

“Exciting,” I said.

He grinned. “It really was. And in one of the tunnels, we found pieces of glass. They seemed to be from broken potion vials. There was an old campsite site next to the glass. Blood was splattered across the walls and ground, and in the center of it all, we found five dead vampires.”

“Charming.”

“Oh, that’s not the best part,” he told me. “The blood wasn’t from the dead vampires. It was witch blood. It looks like there was a fight between witches and vampires, and the vampires lost.”

“How did they die?” I asked.

“They were poisoned, then burned. And get this: we found a powdery residue too. When we brought it to Dr. Harding, she told us it’s the same residue that you guys found yesterday at the Brick Palace.”

“Why did the witches kill the vampires?” Ivy asked.

Drake shrugged. “We don’t know.”

“That doesn’t bode well for the witches,” I said.

They gave me a curious look.

“The Legion believes it’s witches behind the mass poisoning yesterday, specifically the witches of the New York University of Witchcraft. We found two substances in the residue, both of which could only have come from the university. They are new experimental elements they’re developing.”

“Well, it looks like the witches are developing more than just new elements,” said Drake. “They’re developing a revolution.”

“Something wicked is brewing in New York,” Ivy agreed. Her gaze dropped to the book I’d opened beside my food tray. “The Basics of Magical Chemistry? Why are you reading that?”

“My personal trainer says I have to cram all of this knowledge into my head,” I told her.

“Your personal trainer? You mean Colonel Sexy Pants?”

I frowned. “He’s not so sexy when he slams your head against the wall. Repeatedly.”

“But whatever he’s doing with you, you’re getting better. I saw you take on Jace this morning. You were holding your own. No, more than that. You were kicking his ass.”

That was an exaggeration. I’d only beaten Jace because I didn’t have a problem using anything within reach as a weapon—and there had been a lot of things within reach in the gym.

“Nero says I still depend too much on my scrappy fighting. He says it’s not dignified.”

“But it is smart,” Drake said. “You’re resourceful, Leda. Learn all you can about dignified fighting from Colonel Windstriker, but keep your resourcefulness. Being a soldier of the Legion is about more than our bodies. It’s about our brains too. He knows that.”

“Yeah, he knows. Hence the homework.” I thumped the book. “I tried reading during our break this afternoon. After staring at all these formulas and swiggly symbols for like an hour, I can tell you I don’t feel very smart at all. I feel like the biggest moron on Earth. It’s giving me a headache, and I’m not even absorbing a fraction of the material.”

“How about a break to clear your head?” Ivy suggested.

“No time. I have to learn this.” A heavy sigh shook my chest as I glanced down at the book. “Somehow.”

“Just do your best and fudge the rest,” Ivy said.

“I don’t think that will work. Nero is going to give me a test. I know he is. There’s always a test with him.”

Like that ‘test’ last night in his apartment. He’d tried to prove I shouldn’t let my guard down in front of anyone by getting me drunk and then attacking me. Who even did something like that? Oh, a crazy angel, that’s who.

I’d always preferred to have faith in the humanity of people than write them off all as monsters, but Nero was right about one thing: trusting people had gotten me into a lot of trouble. Like what had happened with Harker. I’d trusted him, and he’d turned around and tried to sell me out to a god.

Nero was right about more things than I cared to admit to myself. I did have to study to get strong, to gain enough magic to help Zane. I stared down the fat book, silently promising it that I would conquer it.

“What you need is caffeine,” Ivy told me.

“What I need is to throw this gargantuan book at Nero Windstriker,” I muttered.

“I’m sure we can work additional weightlifting into your training.”

I glanced back to find Nero standing behind me. Of course he was. He was always right there to watch me when I put my foot in my mouth. I shot him a wide smirk, using it to cover my embarrassment at being overheard.

“Will I be throwing you or will you be throwing me?” I asked.

The look he gave me was dangerous and dark, devastating and delicious—all wrapped up into one deadly combination.

Ivy jumped to her feet. “Uh, we have to go…do some pushups together.” She grabbed Drake’s hand, pulling him along with her out of the canteen.

I watched with surprise as Nero sat down opposite me. I could almost hear the collective shock of several hundred soldiers of the Legion. Angels didn’t sit down here at this end of the room with the common foot soldiers. I was surprised the bench didn’t collapse under the weight of his profound holiness.

Nero didn’t seem to care that people were openly staring at us. He folded his hands together on the tabletop and watched me.

“Ok, what is it? Do I have something in my teeth?” I asked him.

His eyes flickered to the book. “You’ve learned the first four chapters.”

Well, learned was probably the wrong word. Made it through the first four chapters was more like it. I didn’t understand half of what I’d read. Not that I was going to let on about my inadequacy. I’d just reread the chapters again later. Surely, they had to make more sense the second time around.

So I just faked it. “I hope my progress is satisfactory.”

“That remains to be seen when I test you.”

“I knew there would be a test,” I grumbled.

He continued on. “I’m thinking essay questions. Ten of them. Two pages per question. And you’ll have to draw diagrams of course.”

“Essay questions…” I stopped, the brief flash of delight in his eyes giving him away. I laughed. “You’re messing with me.”

“I would never do such a thing,” he said seriously.

I grinned at him. “You would and you are.”

“I’m afraid you are mistaken, Pandora. But, unfortunately, your test will have to wait for another time.”

“Oh?” I asked, trying not to sound too excited.

“The First Angel would like an audience with you.”