“It’s his job. I don’t believe it’s his true nature,” I defended Damiel.
But my father was adamant. “Not everyone is good, Cadence. If only I could have saved you from the fate of marrying Dragonsire. But the First Angel refused to see reason in this matter.”
“You talked to Nyx. You tried to convince her to call off this marriage,” I realized.
“Of course. But the First Angel was adamant that you and Dragonsire marry.”
I wasn’t surprised. Nyx wouldn’t call of the marriage when she had two magically-compatible angels. That was a fluke that might never repeat. The First Angel wouldn’t waste this opportunity. On the contrary, she was probably already trying to figure out how to repeat the magical miracle.
“Beware of Dragonsire,” he said.
Then my father left my room, the echoes of his warning words lingering in the air like a bell over a sleepy, snowy village before dawn.
I grabbed my sword, then backtracked through the halls to Damiel’s chamber. I lifted my hand, but before I could knock, the door opened. Damiel was clear across the room, beside an open weapons chest, so he must have used his magic to open it.
I stepped into the doorway. His room was a chamber worthy of an angel, with all the trimmings—gold, red, and green.
“Your room is more extravagant than mine,” I commented.
“Well, I do outrank you.”
“For now.”
Magic flickered in his eyes. His lips spread into a smile. “I accept.”
“Accept what?”
“Your challenge. Let’s see if you can get yourself promoted before I do.”
“What does the winner get?”
He chuckled, the sound a deep rumble in his throat. “A favor of his or her choosing from the losing party.”
I nodded. “Very well. I accept.”
The Master Interrogator owing me a favor—that was a valuable prize. And I had every intention of winning it.
Damiel strapped another knife on his arm. Suddenly, I felt terribly underdressed. His personal weapons armament was far more extensive than my own.
I took a second look at the weapons on his body. Some of them didn’t look particularly suitable for battle.
They are Interrogator tools. They aren’t used to wage honorable war. They are for torturing people, my mind told me. Right now, the voice of my mind sounded just like my father’s.
Damiel met my eyes. “Come inside.”
I remained by the door, not venturing further inside his chamber.
Like you’re afraid to venture deeper into your relationship with him, my mind said helpfully, this time in a voice that sounded like Allegra’s.
“How has your investigation progressed so far?” I asked Damiel, trying to ignore all the voices in my head. “What have you discovered?”
“The demons have been gathering their forces off world,” he told me. “They are preparing to break the curse that keeps them from Earth, then they will invade with great numbers and mighty force.”
Wow.
“How do you know this?” I asked him.
He looked at me, his expression hard, guarded. “You know how.”
I glanced at the Interrogator tools he was packing. “You tortured people.”
“I questioned them,” he amended. “Thoroughly.”
“Who?”
His brows drew together. He didn’t speak.
“Which people did you torture?” I clarified.
For a moment, he looked like he wasn’t going to answer me at all—until he did. “There are traitors among us.”
“You tortured Legion soldiers.”
“A few.”
“Were they guilty?”
He folded his arms stubbornly across his chest. “Some of them.”
“And some were not.”
“Some were not,” he allowed.
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“It is my responsibility to protect this world and all the people in it from traitors and spies. I don’t have the luxury of feeling bothered. I questioned people whose actions were suspicious. Some were traitors; others were not.”
Those ‘others’ were simply caught in the crossfire of his investigation.
My father was right. Damiel didn’t trust other people. For some reason, he’d decided I was good, a rare person he could trust.
But do you trust him? my mind asked in Allegra’s voice.
I thought about it. Finally, I decided that, yes, I trusted Damiel. I trusted that he wouldn’t betray me.
Even so, I wasn’t sure I could form an attachment to someone who tortured people, whose investigations caught a lot of innocents in its net. And those injured innocents didn’t bother him. That worried me most of all.
I’d thought of this mission as an opportunity to get to know Damiel, but maybe I shouldn’t get to know him at all. Maybe I shouldn’t get close to him. Like Allegra had said, I was attracted to him. There was definite chemistry between us. Heat.
But Damiel Dragonsire wasn’t the sort of person that I should bind myself to.
“Something is bothering you,” Damiel commented.
Yes, I was divided.
My father had always looked out for me, trained me. He’d made me who I was today. I should follow his advice.
On the other hand, I had seen Damiel’s soul, and I couldn’t believe it was bad. He was a good person under all the Interrogator trappings.
“I’m fine,” I said.
I didn’t share my thoughts with Damiel—and I was really glad that he could no longer read my mind if I chose to keep him out. I didn’t want him to know I was worried. I didn’t even know my own mind anymore.
“Let’s go stop a demon incursion,” Damiel declared.
“Where are we going?”
“To Florence,” he said and strapped on a sword even larger than my father’s.
3
The Wheel of Treachery
I used the Diamond Tear to bring me and Damiel across the Earth, from coastal Pacific Los Angeles, to the old Tuscan city of Florence. In addition to transporting us between worlds, the immortal dagger could open gateways to different places on the same planet.
We arrived in Florence, at the center point of a stone bridge. Below, the river water lapped against the support columns that held up the bridge.
Up here, on either side of us, extending to both riverbanks, were grand murals, an ode to the gods. My father had taught me that shops once stood where the murals now were, but like many vestiges of old Earth, they’d been demolished when the monster hordes swept across our world. Miraculously, the bridge itself had survived.
Once the monsters had been expelled from Florence, the Pilgrims, the voice of the gods, had commissioned grand, godly murals to be painted on the bridge’s newly-built walls. There was glitter in the paint. The pictures sparkled in the sun’s warm morning rays. In fact, right now Florence—and all its orange-toned buildings—glowed golden.
Damiel looked across the city. “You’ve mastered the dagger’s powers quickly.”
“I’ve had a lot of spare time recently.”
Two days ago, on the day I’d become the Sea Dragon and took command of Storm Castle, Nyx had declared Damiel and I were to be married—and then she’d immediately whisked us off to her Los Angeles office.