by Ella Summers
It was a part of me I rarely—if ever—got to explore. No, I had to play the part of the perfect soldier. Always and forever.
A loud, angry screech cut through the forest.
“The alarm,” I said.
So much for sneaking into the enemy camp undetected. The Dark Force must have placed wards that reacted to light magic. Our magic.
The Dark Force attacked. Our soldiers rushed forward to counter their charge. Captain Walker and I stayed behind.
“We need to concentrate our spells there.” I pointed at a tree that had been reshaped to resemble a cage. The branches were so tightly woven that only tiny slivers of light penetrated the thick exterior.
He squinted at it. “Is that Colonel Beastbreaker inside?”
“Yes. And see how he’s curled into a tight ball? Angels always make themselves big, not small.”
“The cage is hardly larger than he is,” Captain Walker pointed out.
“Yes, and he is doing everything he can to not touch the walls. I bet they’re charged with dark magic and it hurts like a sucker punch straight out of hell if his body makes contact with that magic.”
Captain Walker looked at me, and something resembling respect washed across his face. “You’re actually pretty smart.”
“Well, you don’t get promoted at the Legion just because you have an archangel for a father, you know.”
He looked like he genuinely did not know what to say to that. Thankfully, an enemy fireball aimed at his head saved him from any further discomfort. He rolled magic between his hands, creating a massive ice chunk that he hurled at the fireball. Ice met fire, light magic met dark, and both spells exploded into ashes-and-snowflakes confetti.
Three more elemental bombs were headed his way: one fireball, one ball of turbocharged lightning, and one psychic blast. I quickly dispatched two spells to counter the elemental attacks. My light-magic lightning swallowed the weaker dark-magic lightning. My ice bomb put the chill on the fireball. But the psychic punch I cast fizzled out when it met its counterpart. Crap. That meant my light magic was weaker than the dark magic of whoever had cast that spell. But who’d cast it?
I spotted Leon Hellfire in the distance, doing battle with three Legion soldiers at once. Double crap.
Leon Hellfire was a dark angel. He was the First Betrayer, the first angel who’d defected to the demons. And he’d taken a bunch of angels with him when he’d left. Leon Hellfire was the reason the Legion of Angels now existed in a state of complete paranoia. He was the reason the Legion even had Interrogators, soldiers who firmly believed that a traitor lived inside every single one of us—and that it was their divine duty to unroot it.
“Our magic isn’t having any effect on that cage,” Captain Walker told me over the din of the battle.
While most of our forces fought the Dark Force, he’d lined up a solid dozen soldiers in front of the cage. Though they were blasting that tree with every bit of magic they had, there wasn’t a scratch on it.
“Physical attacks didn’t yield any results, nor did fists or blades,” he continued. “Neither did elemental spells or potions. We’ve tried to shift it, compel it, curse it, and blast it with telekinetic energy.”
It sounded like he’d covered all his magic bases.
“The bark has an odd shimmer to it,” I said.
“It’s pitch black.”
“So is the magic fueling the spell that’s locked down the cage. And that dark magic is making the dark bark shimmer.”
“The dark spells are woven so deeply into the tree cage that it’s immune to light magic, or at least immune to the amount of light magic that we have at our disposal,” Captain Walker realized.
“Yes,” I said. “And that means we won’t open it with brute force.”
The Dark Force’s plan was rather ingenious. They’d designed the cage so that only a person of dark magic could open it—to prevent a rescue like the one we were trying to pull off right now.
“We must open that cage,” I told Captain Walker.
“It’s impossible.”
“A little bit of imagination can make the impossible possible,” I said brightly, scanning the forest for Leon Hellfire.
The dark angel was now battling five Legion soldiers—and he wasn’t having any trouble with them. Leon Hellfire was a very big problem, but right now, he might just be the solution to our other very big problem.
My father had known Leon Hellfire. They’d both been part of the First Angel’s inner circle. Dad had spoken often of Leon Hellfire and what had driven him to defect to the demons’ army: his unrequited love for Nyx, the First Angel of the Legion.
That had happened a long time ago, but deep feelings didn’t disappear just like that. Perhaps Leon still loved her—or perhaps that love had turned to hate. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was he still felt something, whether love or hate, for Nyx.
As my father always said, strong feelings made people irrational and easy to manipulate. That was doubly true when it came to angels. They were so used to being level-headed that when emotions finally did hit, those rogue feelings overwhelmed them. Because angels weren’t used to taking their own feelings into account; they weren’t accustomed to reconciling them with their rational minds. That was a little secret I’d learned by watching my father all my life.
I wove a shifting spell tightly around myself. When I was done, I looked just like Nyx, the First Angel, leader of the Legion—right down to her trademark hair, which floated and billowed around her like she was underwater. Shifting magic was one of my strengths, but it had taken a lot of experimentation to get that little magic hair-floating trick just right. No, this wasn’t the first time I’d turned myself into Nyx. It was simply the first time I’d done it in the company of others.
Captain Walker’s gaze took in my new body—my bright blue eyes, my long black hair, my pale skin wrapped in black leather.
“You look just like the First Angel,” he said in disbelief.
“That’s the idea,” I said in Nyx’s voice.
“The idea is sheer madness. To impersonate the First Angel—it’s blasphemy!” he replied in a hissed whisper.
“And that’s why Leon Hellfire will believe the illusion.”
No spell was perfect. The knowledge that no Legion soldier would dare impersonate Nyx should convince Leon Hellfire’s mind to heed what every supernatural sense he had was telling him: that the First Angel was standing before him. But it was his desire to see Nyx that would convince his heart.
Doubt was the bane of shifting spells. Doubt made it easier for someone to see through the illusion. Belief, faith, desire—on the other hand—fortified a shifting spell. They sealed the deal, making an illusion virtually bullet-proof.
I moved around the battling soldiers, moving toward Leon with Nyx’s strong and balletic gait. Nyx’s hair swirled around me. And though I didn’t have any wings of my own, Nyx’s gold-dusted white wings seemed to unfold from my back.
Leon froze. He immediately disengaged from his fight with a group of Legion soldiers and moved toward me.
“Nyx,” his voice was both a silky caress and a hot flash of sharpened steel.
“Leon,” I replied coolly.
Fire burned in his eyes. His halo flashed brighter. His emotions were burning hot. He was buying my illusion.
When his soldiers began moving forward with him, he lifted his hand in the air, commanding them to hold position. “Stop. Nyx is mine. This fight is mine alone. And I will win it alone.”
That was his pride speaking. I sincerely hoped that pride really did come before the fall.
Leon didn’t waste time. He shot a putrid cloud at me. It was a curse, one of his favorite attacks. I knew his fighting style—and the style of many other angels and dark angels—because in my childhood years, my father had shown me video recordings of angels in battle. I’d analyzed their style, strengths, and weaknesses. Then my father had imitated the angels one by one and attacked me. If I’d ma
naged to develop a fighting style to successfully counter theirs, I’d made it through the exercise with fewer broken bones.
I remembered from my early years of training that Leon Hellfire tended to favor fairy magic, one of his strengths. In particular, he used a lot of curses.
I shifted the curse he’d aimed at me into a light, fluffy cloud of harmless butterflies. Nyx and I both counted shifting magic among our strengths, which made it easier to imitate her magic spells.
That was another exercise my father had used to train me: he had me mimic various angels’ moves and magic.
“It’s been a long time, Nyx, but you have not forgotten how I fight,” Leon said as I blasted apart one of his spells.
“I should hope not,” I replied in Nyx’s voice. “I taught you how to fight.”
“Yes.” Anger reverberated through that single syllable, but also love, deep and desperate.
So he still loved Nyx. And hated her. He wanted her and wanted to hurt her. Love and hate were a lot like light and dark magic. They were both very similar and yet completely different. Two sides of the same emotional coin, easily flipped.
I quickly pushed my latest philosophical musings aside. I had to focus on the battle. Leon was a trained warrior and a powerful dark angel—more powerful than I was for sure. My father’s training had made me a capable fighter, but eventually Leon would figure out that I was not Nyx. My illusion would fade and my shifting spell shatter to pieces.
I had to end this before that happened. I needed to really fire him up. To make him lose focus and just attack me blindly.
“You should not have come back to Earth,” I told him. “You should have known you are too weak to face me.”
“I am growing stronger every day. Soon, I will be more powerful than the gods.”
I turned slowly, positioning myself right in front of the cage holding Colonel Beastbreaker. “It won’t matter. It won’t change anything between us.”
“Of course it will,” he growled. “You respect power.”
“I will never love you.”
His whole body quaked with rage. Magic shot out of his hands, a continuous barrage of spells fueled by his fury. I rolled out of the way, and his magic collided with the cage, cracking it open like an egg.
The resulting shockwave threw me down, shredding my shifting spell. When I rose from the ground, I was myself again.
Leon glared at me, his fury turned to ice. “You are not Nyx.”
His gaze shifted behind me, to where Legion soldiers were helping the unconscious Colonel Beastbreaker crawl out of the remains of the cracked cage. Leon had just realized I’d tricked him in more than one way. Not only was I not really Nyx; I had used his own dark magic to open the tree prison and free his angel prisoner.
Leon waved his forces forward. ‘Nyx’ was gone, and he clearly had no interest in fighting me in single combat. The Dark Force charged. We were seriously outnumbered.
“Take our soldiers and bring Colonel Beastbreaker back through the tunnel,” I told Captain Walker. “Get everyone to safety.”
Captain Walker waved the soldiers toward the tunnel entrance, but he remained by my side. He added his own spells to mine as I blasted the Dark Force, covering our soldiers’ retreat.
“You must get away now, Captain,” I said. “Before it’s too late. I can’t hold back the Dark Force for long.”
“Together, we can hold them off longer.”
“Go.”
“General Silverstar will skin me alive if anything happens to you, Major.”
“I promise I’ll do worse than that to you if you don’t obey my commands,” I snapped. “I’ll report your misconduct in the tent. And I’ll report you for disobeying my orders right now.”
According to the Legion’s code of conduct, disobeying orders was a mortal sin. Even so, Captain Walker stood his ground.
“As you reminded me earlier, angels are essential to the Legion’s survival and success,” he said. “And everyone knows you’re next in line to become an angel. The Legion needs angels more than they need me.”
When he talked like that—when he was willing to stand up to me for the sake of the greater good—I couldn’t help but respect the guy. I’d already labeled him as a supremely arrogant ass, but it turned out he was actually a decent person.
That just went to show that you shouldn’t prejudge people before you got to know them—or at least fought to the bitter end with them. I liked to think I’d learned that lesson long ago, but it seemed I hadn’t. I’d been guilty of the same prejudice as Captain Walker when he’d labeled me as just some green, ditzy, lowly soldier from the moment I marched into his tent, dripping water and mud everywhere.
I glanced down at my buzzing watch. “Our soldiers have made it through the tunnel.” I met Captain Walker’s eyes. “Time to go. We’ll do it together.”
I blasted away the debris the Dark Force’s storm of spells had left at the tunnel entrance. Enemy spells chased us all the way there. Captain Walker was hit. He fell unconscious to the ground.
The Dark Force was already launching their next volley of spells. I jumped over Captain Walker, shielding his body. He’d already been hit hard. Another barrage of dark magic would surely have killed him.
But not me. I’d learned long ago, even before joining the Legion, that I had a strange resistance to magic. I could take a lot more hits than other people. My father had commanded me to keep this ability a secret because my magic resistance just wasn’t part of the laws of magic as we knew them—or, more importantly, as the gods knew them. Possessing a power the gods did not understand was generally considered a pretty bad idea. Not that I had chosen this power. It was just part of me.
On the plus side, I didn’t think anyone had actually seen me absorb those dark spells. Captain Walker was lying unconscious on the ground, and the massive piles of debris had shielded me from the Dark Force soldiers’ eyes. They hadn’t seen their spells hit me, so they shouldn’t be surprised that I was still conscious. Maybe they thought they’d missed.
But they hadn’t missed. They’d scored more than a few hits, and those spells still coursed through my body like a thunderstorm.
My skin tingling with dark magic echoes, I lifted Captain Walker over my shoulder and stepped into the tunnel. I wove a curtain of light magic across the opening to keep the Dark Force busy, then ran deeper into the tunnel. If I was fast enough, I’d get us to our forces before Leon Hellfire and his soldiers caught up with us. If not…well, then my assertion that no situation was hopeless would be tested when we were trapped inside a closed tunnel, surrounded by the forces of hell.
3
The Perfect Soldier
“Cadence, we should be going,” said my friend Allegra. “It’s only an hour until your promotion ceremony.”
It had been two days since the mission in the Black Forest. Two days since I’d rescued Colonel Beastbreaker. And for that success, the Legion was making me an angel. In one hour, I would drink the food of the gods, the magic Nectar that would level up my magic and make me an angel—or kill me.
Which way the ceremony went was entirely dependent on me. Was I strong enough to absorb the Nectar, the most magical, most poisonous substance known to man? Had I trained hard enough? Was I worthy of the gods’ next gift of magic?
I emptied my drink, then set the glass down on the bar counter. “Just one more cocktail,” I told Allegra.
“You’ve already had five, and it’s not even five o’clock in the afternoon,” replied Allegra.
Captain Allegra Prior and I had been friends since I’d joined the Legion. I’d met her on my third day, when I was still new and she was already a seasoned soldier. Over the years, she’d looked out for me in more ways than one.
The other Legion soldiers had always shunned me because of who my father was. They were afraid to hurt me in training, but they were also punished if they didn’t try hard enough, something they demonstrated by losing too easily to me.
; The sad reality of the situation was that any training with me was a lose-no-matter-what-you-did situation, and everyone knew it.
So people really didn’t like being around me. And because of that, they never truly got to know me. Except for Allegra. She didn’t care whose daughter I was. She only cared who I was.
Legion soldiers were regularly transferred and reassigned, but Allegra and I had always managed to stick together at the same Legion office. We’d been lucky.
Until now.
Whatever happened next, wherever my new promotion would take me, it would not be here. As an angel, I’d have my own territory to command. I would be leaving the city—and leaving my last friend behind. I’d already lost my only other friend a few months ago, when she’d been transferred to Storm Castle.
“Cadence.” Allegra watched me as I sipped on my sixth cocktail, a fruity pink concoction that tasted like dark cherry ice cream. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that the prospect of becoming an angel, of ascending to the Legion’s top tier of soldiers, has got you depressed.”
“I’m not depressed.”
Her dark brows peaked. “Then why are we here?”
“To celebrate, of course.”
As I drank my fruit cocktail, my eyes drank in our surroundings. The floors were polished cherry wood and the ceiling adorned with paintings and hundreds of tiny hanging lights. The furniture was oak and the countertops marble. A mixed but upscale collection of supernaturals—including vampires, shifters, and witches—frequented this bar.
“There’s a Legion bar less than a block away,” Allegra pointed out.
That Legion bar was called Halo. It was an exclusive establishment, barring entry to all but officers in the Legion of Angels. I’d visited Halo many times before, when Allegra and I had needed to blow off some steam after a grueling mission. But I didn’t want to go there right now. Not today. It just didn’t feel right.
