by Ella Summers
“Which you have too,” I pointed out.
“See?” He leaned in. “I’m evil and self-serving.” His words fell softly against my lips. “I am only sparing you because I don’t want to expose myself.”
I took a deep breath, and my chest brushed against his. “You exposed yourself during Nyx’s inquisition. To save me.”
“If I expose you, if you’re taken away, I won’t see you again,” he continued, his voice thick. Silver and gold fire flashed in his eyes. “So I’m doubly self-serving.” He moved in closer.
The rasp of his mouth against my neck sent shivers down my spine.
I leaned into him. “Damiel…”
His hand settled low on my back. “It would be wise if neither of us shared our Immortal origins with anyone,” he whispered into my ear.
I didn’t trust my hands, so I left them by my sides. “Keep secrets from the Legion?” I smirked at him. “You?”
“The Legion isn’t ready for this. We’re still raw from the wounds inflicted on us by Hellfire and his circle of defectors. Maybe someday the Legion will be able to hear about our magic without succumbing to paranoia and hate.”
“Luckily, there are no tests that can detect passive magic, or they would have long since detected ours during our regular magic screenings.”
“That is fortunate,” he agreed. “And our magic is all light, gifted to us by the gods. It covers up the dark powers born of our Immortal origin.”
Right. The Immortals had possessed both light and dark magic, as well as active and passive magic. That meant Damiel and I had dark magic in us too, in addition to light. But the Legion hadn’t detected it, which meant our gods-gifted light magic was covering it up.
The Legion didn’t have a clue that there was active or passive magic either. They didn’t realize the magical spectrum was not a simple line but instead a cross.
Damiel had thought of everything that could possibly endanger us. I was not surprised. As he’d told me before, being perpetually paranoid was what had kept him alive all this time.
“So we’re safe.”
“For now.”
We were standing so close that I could hardly breathe—but I just couldn’t stop talking.
“Well, it sounds like it’s all been tied up so neatly,” I said.
“As long as you don’t volunteer any information.”
“Why would I?”
“You are the perfect soldier.” His fingers followed my jawline.
My heart was hammering so hard in my chest that he must have felt it. After all, there wasn’t all that much space between us.
“No, I really am not perfect,” I spluttered. “Nor are you the heartless bastard everyone believes you to be. I guess people really are more than what they appear to be.”
“Maybe.”
“Ever the skeptic,” I chuckled.
“Being the skeptic is still my job, Cadence.”
“But maybe now you will try to see the good in people once in a while, not just the bad?” I said hopefully. “That’s why you pretend to be so bad, so cruel. You’re afraid that if someone sees the good in you, you become vulnerable. That they will betray you.”
“I see the good in you.” His eyes ensnared mine. “Everyone else is up for debate.”
I smiled. “It’s a start.”
He said nothing.
“Damiel?”
“Yes?”
“Are you…” I looked away, for the first time wishing he could read my mind without my projecting my thoughts to him. So he would know what I was too timid to say. “Are you going to kiss me?” I shyly met his eyes again, a flush scorching my cheeks.
He watched me. The silence stretched on. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer.
“Well? Are you?” I asked him.
He arched a single brow. “I am still deciding.”
“Oh.” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I was sure my shoulders slouched at least a little.
“You didn’t react particularly well the last time I kissed you. As I recall, you punched me.”
“You were injured, and you exploited that fact to lure me in close enough to kiss me.”
He shrugged. “You liked it.”
“That is…” Completely true. “…beside the point.”
“Is it? Then why are you asking me to kiss you now?”
He had me there.
“I am not asking you to kiss me. I’m asking if you’re going to kiss me.” I was arguing semantics, and we both knew it. “So I can ready my response.”
A smile hovered on his lips. “And what would that response be?” He closed the final few inches between us.
“Well, I—”
His mouth closed over mine. He kissed me softly once, short and sweet, then stepped back, just as quickly. My hands clutched his shoulders, trying to pull him in closer again, but he remained as unmoving as a mountain.
“A much better response than punching me.” Amusement flitted across his face.
“I can still punch you,” I grumbled.
He chuckled, dark and delicious, like cherries dipped in chocolate. “I must be going now. I have to change. Unless you want me to attend your Dragon ceremony in dirty, bloody, frayed clothes.”
My eyes panned down his body. His clothes were in a sorry state. And his hair was standing in all directions. I hadn’t noticed that before. I couldn’t imagine what had left me so distracted…
“Well, we can’t have the Master Interrogator looking everything short of completely orderly and respectable.” My laugh came out more breathless than I’d intended. Though short, Damiel’s kiss had definitely left me rattled.
“I will see you again shortly.” He bowed his head to me, then walked across my room and opened the door.
Allegra stood on the other side, her hand raised to knock. Her dark eyes went wide when she saw Damiel in my room. He slipped past her before she could recover from her shock. He was already long gone by the time she walked into my room and shut the door behind her.
“You forgot to salute Colonel Dragonsire,” I teased her.
“His clothes were wrinkled and his hair disheveled.” Allegra’s brows kissed her hairline.
“Being an angel can be perilous.”
“Your clothes and hair aren’t in any better shape, Cadence. What was Damiel Dragonsire doing in your room in the middle of the night? What were you two up to?”
“We had an adventure.”
Allegra’s eyes lit up as a smirk curled her lips. “I can see that.” She looked me over, up and down, top to bottom.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Looking for love marks. Or did he have the decency to heal them?”
“There are no love marks.” Though my lips still tingled from his kiss; did that count? “It wasn’t that kind of adventure.”
She plopped down on my bed. “Do tell.”
I blushed at her implication that my adventure with Damiel had been sexual. It wasn’t like that, not at all. Our time together had been so much deeper than something solely physical.
Still, a part of me couldn’t help but linger on the touch of his hand on my face and the brush of his lips against mine.
I pushed those thoughts out of my head. When Damiel and I had connected to each other through the daggers, we’d shared moments far more intimate than anything Allegra was talking about. We’d seen into each other’s souls. And I wouldn’t soon forget the experience.
Allegra was watching my every move. “Gods, Cadence, I know Colonel Dragonsire is handsome—and he has that whole mysterious angel thing going on—but he is the Master Interrogator. You can’t have a crush on him.”
“Schoolgirls have crushes, not angels,” I said stiffly.
“Well, this angel does.” She pointed at me. “You have a big, fat crush on Damiel Dragonsire.”
“It’s not a crush. I’ve just come to see him in a new light.”
To see beneath the mask of the Master Interrogator. T
o his soul. That’s what the daggers had shown me.
“He isn’t the monster everyone thinks he is,” I added.
Allegra made loud smooching noises.
I rolled my eyes at her. “As I told you, it wasn’t that kind of adventure. We traveled to another world. It was an actual mission. I’ll tell you all about it while I get ready for my Dragon ceremony.”
24
The Sea Dragon
Storm Castle’s throne room looked very different than it had in Faith’s illusion. For starters, armed soldiers didn’t have their guns pointed at my head. And no one was screaming for my immediate execution. Instead, the Legion soldiers present here today watched me with respect, and maybe even a little awe, as I entered the room.
The four Dragon thrones waited on the other side of the very long chamber.
A male soldier dressed in a long green robe stood in front of the Earth Dragon’s throne. A metal pendant hung from his neck, its chain so long that it reached nearly to his bellybutton. The slender dagger he wore at his waist looked very different than the ones Damiel and I carried.
Before the Sky Dragon’s throne stood a female soldier wearing a purple and yellow robe. A gentle breeze rolled over the silky fabric. There was no physical source of this breeze. It was magical, and it seemed to solely affect her robe.
A glowing green tree was etched into the Earth Dragon’s throne, and a glowing gold lightning bolt into the Sea Dragon’s throne. However, the symbols on the other two thrones—the Fire Dragon throne’s flame and the Sea Dragon throne’s water drop—remained unlit. Nyx stood before the Sea Dragon’s throne right now.
Allegra touched my arm, then joined the ceremony’s audience. That left me alone, the center of attention in front of all these Legion soldiers, most of them unknown to me. As I walked toward Nyx, I spotted Damiel in the sea of strangers. I was about to smile at him, but then I saw my father in the crowd too. He was watching me.
Everyone was watching me, not just Damiel. Though when he looked at me, the rest of the world melted away. And it was just the two of us, just like it had been when we’d linked through the immortal daggers.
I had to remember that others were watching. So I kept my head high and my eyes forward, looking toward my future: the Sea Dragon throne. I’d learned to control my wings considerably better since my first day as an angel. The first time I’d met Damiel, I’d been so nervous around the Master Interrogator that they’d just burst out. Not today. Today, they were positioned elegantly behind me, high and wide, making me look larger than life. Just as an angel should be.
“Cadence Lightbringer,” Nyx said as I stopped in front of her.
Her eyes panned across my blue-and-white robes. While I’d changed into the ceremonial robes, I’d told Allegra about my trip to Nightingale with Damiel. She already knew about my unusual magic, so I didn’t leave that part out, not like I had in my official report. But I didn’t tell Allegra that Damiel had Immortal blood as well. That was not my secret to confess.
“Take a seat,” Nyx instructed me, gesturing toward the Sea Dragon throne.
I sat upon my new throne. A soldier handed Nyx a long chain, and she walked a tight circle around me, shackling me to my chair. As she wrapped the chain around me again and again, the links began to glow blue. The shining metal burned against my skin. The pain was almost unbearable, but I did not cry out. I was expected to endure in silence.
Coupled with the pain, I felt something else. Something as old as the Earth itself. I felt the raw, primal force of elemental power surging through the castle’s walls, pouring into the throne, down the chains, and finally into me. That ancient power was binding me to the castle and to the nearby Wetlands, where the Sea element reigned, where water and ice ruled. And through the power of water and ice, I was connected to the whole world, to the weather and magic of the Earth’s elements.
The sheer, unimaginable power of the Sea element shook my whole body, but I was so tightly chained to my throne that I didn’t move. The power rocked me until I could hear nothing else but the rattling in my ears. It was building up, moving ever faster, wilder.
And then it was all over.
The rattling stopped, replaced by the quiet, peaceful sound of the sea. I felt gentle waves in a tranquil ocean. I tasted the sea air. I listened to a quiet night after a snowfall—silent, peaceful, frozen. I smelled the fresh trickle of spring’s melted snow over flowering rocks in a riverbed. I watched the slow movement of glaciers, imperceptible to others, but not to my magic.
I could feel it all—the power of water, of ice, of the sea—connected to me through this magic castle.
The chains binding me vanished, dissolving into a cool mist.
“Rise, Cadence Lightbringer,” Nyx said to me. “Angel of the Elemental Expanse, Sea Dragon of Storm Castle, Mistress of the Wetlands, Queen of Water and Ice.”
I rose to my feet. The audience applauded in a very orderly and Legion-like manner, carefully calculated to be not too wild yet loud enough to show respect. Musical notes trailed their fading applause. A string quartet had begun to play. The doors opened, and servers in black suits carried in drinks and appetizers.
A few soldiers offered me their congratulations, but as soon as my father started moving toward me, they bowed out to make way for him.
“General Silverstar,” I said.
My father firmly believed in upholding Legion decorum in public. In private, I sometimes got him to relax a little. Sometimes.
“Your performance in the Dragon ceremony was acceptable,” he told me.
Acceptable. Those were high words of praise from him. People said General Silverstar didn’t have feelings, but then none of them had ever rated as ‘acceptable’ in his books. He really did have a soft spot for his daughter, much as he denied it.
“Your face could have betrayed less emotion,” he added.
I swallowed a sigh. So much for that soft spot.
I grabbed a glass and a plate of appetizers from a passing server. After my adventure on Nightingale, I was famished. My father looked at my food as I ate. I was trying to gobble it down quickly without actually looking like I was gobbling it down. Gobbling was not very angelic.
I offered him a breaded mozzarella stick. He waved the stick away, so I ate it instead.
“Cadence,” he said, very quietly. “Colonel Dragonsire was watching you during the ceremony.”
Cadence, was it? Well, then, if we were dropping formality…
“Everyone was watching me,” I whispered back. “I was kind of the center of attention, Daddy.”
The vein between his eyes rippled oh-so-slightly. You’d have to have supernatural vision to pick it up. And you’d have to be the General’s daughter to decipher it. He was impressed that I’d had the guts to call him ‘Daddy’ in a room full of Legion soldiers.
“Nyx told me of your mission with Colonel Dragonsire to Nightingale,” he said seriously, his momentary flicker of emotion already gone. “Had I known that the First Angel was going to send him there with you, I would have persuaded her to send me in his place.”
“Well, it worked out all right in the end.”
“This time. But I will see to it that you don’t find yourself on any more missions with Colonel Dragonsire.”
I set my empty plate and glass on another passing server’s tray. “He’s not as bad as people think, you know.”
“You two had an adventure together. Two adventures actually, and both in a very short time.” My father’s face was serious, his tone instructive, just like when he’d lectured me as a child. “You fought together in battles, surviving great danger and many perils. Such an experience can create a false sense of camaraderie. Of trust. But take care not to allow that to affect your judgement. Colonel Dragonsire is not your friend, and he cannot be trusted. The Master Interrogator is a dangerous angel, and his business is uncovering secrets.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “He’s not bad. Really. I can trust him. I have seen
him for who he really is. I’ve seen into his soul.”
“Don’t be naive, Cadence. Colonel Dragonsire is a dangerous angel, and you must distance yourself from him. Thankfully, Storm Castle is remote and has few soldiers compared to the Legion’s other territories. Dragonsire will have little reason to come here, or to start digging into your life. And he’ll soon have his hands full elsewhere.”
“Full elsewhere? What do you know?” I asked. “Where is he going?”
“I am not at liberty to share that information with you. Suffice it to say that this business will take him far from you—and the sooner, the better.”
“It appears that you are the one I can’t trust, Dad. You’re the one keeping secrets from me, not Damiel.”
“Damiel?” my father repeated, his nostrils flaring.
He was shocked that I was already on a first-name basis with Damiel. And worried. Really worried. Anyone could have read those emotions off of him.
“I’m going to chase down some more food,” I said, turning and walking away from my father before I snapped at him for trying to micromanage my life.
I grabbed some food from a server. The other soldiers were still watching me, at least the ones who hadn’t yet offered me congratulations as the Legion expected them to do. So many people, most of them strangers. I didn’t feel like talking to any of them right now.
So I went to stand in front of the big window at the end of the throne room. No one would come bother an angel who was reflecting in silence. They wouldn’t dare. Well, no one except maybe Nyx or my father.
“Escaping?”
Or Damiel. He dared a lot of things.
I glanced at him as he stopped beside me, then I stared back across the Elemental Expanse, drinking in the wild, feral, ancient beauty of the elements. I could feel the castle’s magic channeling the elements. And I could feel the power of the Sea Dragon flowing through me.
“I am in tune to so much now,” I told Damiel. “I can sense the powers of water and ice at work all across the Earth. Deep beneath the sea. In the streams and rivers of land. In the rain drenching the prairie. In the snows falling on the mountains.
