“For two days, while everyone in the Los Angeles Legion office was busy with wedding preparations, I was practicing with the Diamond Tear,” I said. “Again and again, I used the dagger’s magic to teleport myself between different spots in my room.”
“In that case, I’m glad Nyx locked you in your room for two days.” Damiel winked at me.
I rolled my eyes. “Very funny.”
“I thought so.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re very impressed with yourself.”
Chuckling, he began walking. We crossed the bridge to the other side. It might have been early in the day, but the city was already awake. A constant chatter hummed in the air. Florence boasted of more witch covens than even New York, a metropolis many times its size, and witches rose with the dawn. Shops selling potions, herbs, and technological nicknacks were open. Carts displaying talismans and charms were waiting along the side of the road.
The scent of freshly-baked bread wafted out from cafes and bakeries. The smoky, earthy fragrance in the air told me that the bread had been baked in traditional wood ovens, not nuked with Magitech. Whereas witches were renown as the masters of potions and technology, here in Florence they were decidedly more old school. In the shops here, you were more likely to find a hand-mixed cure for insomnia rather than a mass-produced, one-size-fits-all mega concoction. You could buy a handmade, one-of-a-kind wall clock with intricate gears, rather than those generic, Magitech-powered blinking sticks that kids like to wave around at circuses and birthday parties.
“You have been to Florence before,” Damiel said as we walked.
“Yes. Growing up, my father brought me here several times.” I glanced at him. “But the Legion never sent me here on a mission. Florence is part of South Europe.”
“And until you became the Sea Dragon of Storm Castle last week, you’d always been under General Silverstar’s command, and his territory is North Europe.”
“Yes.”
“Things are changing.”
That cryptic comment was all that Damiel said, and I didn’t press him for answers. Getting answers out of an angel was like trying to convince a mountain to move out of your way.
Only a week had passed since I’d met Damiel and embarked on my first mission with him, but everything felt different this time around. Back then, I’d just gotten my wings and not yet figured out how to fly, so we’d taken an airship to cross the Sienna Sea. This time, we used an immortal dagger to transport ourselves across the Earth in an instant.
But the travel time wasn’t the only thing different. Now, I was an established angel—an angel with experience, with my own territory, and all the fancy titles to go with it.
Oh, and Damiel and I were married now. That was the biggest change of them all.
And yet, despite all that had changed in the last week, things were actually not all that different. I was still just as worried about Damiel as I had been then.
I was no longer scared that he’d expose my secrets. No, I was worried about something far more dangerous: my feelings for him. Because, yes, I did have feelings for him. I could admit that to myself. Kind of.
I just hadn’t figured out what those feelings were.
Damiel was on a dangerous path. He was completely paranoid. He saw traitors everywhere. He spent his waking hours hunting down and brutally interrogating those suspected traitors. Worse yet, he seemed to…enjoy his work far too much.
I’d felt his soul, so I knew that he was more than this, better than this. He had become the Legion’s Master Interrogator with the best of intentions—to make sure the Legion would never again see such a mass betrayal as in its early years. And now this job was slowly transforming him into that cold, cruel person. It was destroying him.
He should give it up, quit the Interrogators, before the job warped him beyond repair. Before nothing remained of who he really was. Before all humor and fun and all lust for life had left him. Before he didn’t just pretend to be cold and hard; before that person, the Master Interrogator facade, became the new Damiel Dragonsire.
But he would never leave his job. His sense of duty and honor wouldn’t allow it. And so he suffered, so others could be safe. He shouldered the burden of the Master Interrogator, so no one else had to do this horrible, inhuman job.
“You’re lost in thought,” Damiel commented.
“I was just wondering what we’re doing here,” I lied.
The truth hurt too much. I hated watching Damiel’s descent into darkness.
“We are here to hunt down a traitor.”
He looked at the tall building before us. Its walls were white; they sparkled like diamonds in the sunlight. Two building wings, shaped like angel wings, curved out from the main structure. A halo-like ring rotated on a track built onto the roof.
This monument to angelic supremacy certainly stood out amongst the city’s more modest surrounding buildings.
“You think the traitor is in that office?” I asked Damiel, my eyes panning up the white walls.
Every Legion office looked different, and yet there was a majestic essence that connected them all.
“I don’t think,” he replied. “I know.”
Of course. How silly of me to question the infallible Master Interrogator.
“So who is the traitor?”
“Colonel Spellstorm,” he told me.
“An angel? You’re telling me that an angel is the traitor?”
“Yes, an angel and the commander of this territory,” he said. “Of course, there’s a small chance that Colonel Spellstorm is not the traitor, but instead a soldier in his inner circle, someone high up in his hierarchy, is the culprit. That’s what we’re here to find out.”
“The voice in the smoke.”
“What about it?”
“We assumed it was a message from the demons.”
“It sure sounded like a threat,” he pointed out.
“Maybe it was a warning. What if the message wasn’t from the demons at all? Someone might be warning us that the demons are about to strike.”
“Or it really is the demons, and they are leading us into a trap. I have considered all possibilities,” he said in a tone most people would describe as arrogant.
And it was—somewhat. But I’d gotten a feel for the different shades of Damiel Dragonsire, and his words were more practical than arrogant. Or at least only fifty percent arrogant.
“Coming here isn’t without risk,” he told me. “But it’s necessary if we are to get to the bottom of this.”
Then he pushed the winged doors of the diamond-white angel building open.
We passed briefly through a small entry room. Above, the stained glass sky light—a sun with swirly rays—shone golden light down upon us. Beyond the entry, a grandiose main hall awaited.
The floor was white marble, speckled with gold. Groups of large, thick columns were bundled together like flower stems in a bouquet. Each column bouquet merged with other bouquets, forming high archways on either side of the wide aisle. It felt like we were standing inside an old-style cathedral.
Past the column archways, stained glass windows covered the walls on either side of the room. Each window depicted a scene where angels fought back monsters and dark shadow threats.
At long last, at the very end of the very long aisle, stood a large wooden table. Keeping to the cathedral motif, it bore a striking resemblance to an altar.