The Legion had long since determined that twenty-two was the optimal age for a soldier to join. At that point, the human body had the highest chance of surviving the gods’ Nectar and gaining magic.
“Nyx sent me away, but I was persistent. I refused to leave. Finally, I managed to convince her to let me stay. To train and work and serve the Legion before sipping the Nectar. So for four years, I cleaned and cooked and squeezed in any training whenever I could. They thought I would give up and go away, disgusted with these menial tasks. But I kept going. And the day I turned twenty-two, I took my first sip of the gods’ Nectar and became a soldier in the Legion of Angels.
“The Legion had grown a lot in the four years since I’d gone to them. The First Angel had two other angels already. One was Leon Ironfist. He taught me, trained me. He was like a big brother to me, in many ways so much like my own brother Evander. Leon was the reason I became an angel. He trained my body and mind. He made me ready. His betrayal was unexpected—and it cut deep.
“And so many of the Earth’s cities were rebuilt, but some things couldn’t be fixed.”
Like himself, he meant. He thought he couldn’t be fixed.
I finally truly understood why Damiel didn’t trust anyone. He’d thought of Leon Ironfist as a brother, as the one he owed everything to, the one who’d made him who he was—and then Leon had betrayed him.
“Not everyone is a traitor,” I told Damiel.
“Hasn’t our experience with Colonel Spellstorm taught you anything? You can’t trust anyone.” He cleared his throat and turned a flirtatious grin on me. “Well, except me. You can trust me. I’ll look out for you, Princess.”
Damiel’s hand brushed against my arm—a quiet, ruthless sensuality that ignited my senses.
“Stop it,” I snapped.
Every word was a lie. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to continue. I wanted to see what he’d do next.
“Stop what?” His smile was crooked and charming.
“Stop flirting with me. You’re using it to cover up your pain.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He touched my arm again, and it felt like a kiss of fire caressing my skin.
“You need to confront your feelings.”
“Gladly.” His brows arched and his gaze slid down the length of me.
“Not those feelings. I’m talking about your fear of betrayal.”
“How about we instead discuss your fear of commitment?”
We stopped moving. His hands closed around my arms, his skin hotter than the sun-scorched asphalt.
“Fear of commitment?” I asked.
“To me.”
“We’re married, Damiel. You can’t get much more committed than that.”
“Our marriage was an assignment, Cadence. The Legion ordered us to marry, so you did it. But I sense your heart isn’t really in it.”
“Is yours?” I countered. “Is your heart really in it?”
Chuckling, he leaned into me. “When I kissed you back in Darkstorm’s fortress, you liked it.”
“I…”
His lips were so close to mine, all I had to do was move in an inch closer. My head was spinning.
Damiel set his hands on my face. “I liked it. I liked the blush of your cheeks. The taste of your lips. The feel of your impatient hands on me, of your nails digging into my back, pulling me in.”
My heart rattled my ribcage.
“The pop of your heartbeat pulsing through you, into me.” He pulled me closer, and my chest slammed into his. “The blossom of blood rising beneath the surface of your skin.”
“Damiel, you’re changing the subject,” I said, my voice uneven, my breaths strained. “You’re trying to distract yourself and me from your pain, instead of facing it. You don’t have to distrust everyone. You can trust me. You can share with me.”
He kissed my neck softly. “I know.” He looked up, meeting my eyes.
I shivered. “You haven’t given up on everyone. I know you haven’t. That man at the wedding, Jiro Goodman. The one with the golden eyes. You trust him. I can see it in your eyes when you spoke to him.”
Damiel stopped caressing my neck. He stepped back from me. “You are entirely too observant.”
“I know,” I replied with a smile.
Damiel grunted and started walking down the road again. “Jiro and I joined the Legion at the same time. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“So you do still have friends.”
“One friend.”
“And you’re not in fact so jaded that you’ve completely given up on people,” I pressed on, ignoring his qualifier.
“You must never tell anyone that I’m not a cold-hearted bastard,” he told me.
“Don’t worry.” I winked at him. “I won’t tell anyone about your secret friend.”
“You’re a troublemaker.”
“Why do you think that?” I smiled. “Everyone else says I’m a perfect angel.”
He chuckled, the charming devil.
“Damiel, I’m glad we’re on this mission together, just the two of us,” I told him. “It’s giving me a chance to really get to know you.”
“You might not like what you find,” he warned me.
“I doubt that.”
“Ever the optimist.”
“One perk of immortality, coupled with an abundance of magic, is you can do anything you set your mind to.”
“I’m glad we’re on this mission together too,” he said seriously. “And that I’m getting to know you better.”
He opened his mouth again—and then he snapped it shut. Surprise flashed in his eyes.
We’d reached the top of a hill. From here, we could finally see the Hive’s fortress. Sparkling purple tendrils swirled around the stone tower, flowing up, up, up. Bright beams of magic shot out of the tower.
And that tower wasn’t alone.
Past it, far in the distance, other fortresses stood all across the flat expanse. I counted six, but something told me there were more. A lot more. I was strangely certain there were towers like these all across this world, each one shooting magic up into the sky.
Had the Hive already set their plan into motion to escape their world? Were Damiel and I already too late?
13
The Magical City of No Magic
I looked up at the magic swirling in the sky. “We need to figure out how the Hive plans to break the spell on them.” I pointed at the beam of light shooting out of the nearest fortress. “And we need to figure out what that is. I think that calls for some reconnaissance.”
“Stealth reconnaissance,” replied Damiel. “We need to be discreet. Here, we are outnumbered, and we’re strangers as well. People are suspicious of strangers. That’s a universal fact.”
“Don’t be so cynical.”
“It’s not cynicism. It’s experience.” He almost sounded tired saying it, as though these universal flaws weighed on him. “We must be cautious. No one will trust us, and I expect there are Hive patrols everywhere. The squad we saw earlier is surely not the only one.”