He wasn’t wrong about that. Learning that Nero’s father had killed hers had completely turned her against him. She wanted to see him suffer—and she didn’t care if she crashed down with him.
“Morrows? As in, Alec Morrows?” I asked Jace. “How did you convince him to give you Legion lessons?”
“I got him into Heaven.”
He meant the Legion club in New York, not the hall of the gods. Only Legion soldiers level five and above—and their guests—were allowed inside.
“And what did you two do there?” I asked him.
“Morrows got high on Nectar and made out with several women.”
“At the same time?”
“It varied.”
“And you?” I asked.
Colonel Fireswift watched us closely, even as he set down his card. It was a major, one almost as powerful as the one I’d played last round.
Jace’s eyes flickered to his father, then back again twice as fast. “I behaved with the dignity befitting a Legion soldier of my rank and blood.”
“Ah. Right.” I winked at him.
“Stop trying to get me into trouble, Leda.”
“Why? Half the fun is getting into trouble. The other half is getting away with it.”
No one could beat Colonel Fireswift’s card—until Nyx. She played the second strongest major in the deck.
“You can’t beat that,” Harker told me.
“Neither can you.”
“No.” He looked at his partner across the table. “But I was never going to win a partner game.”
He was right. And Isabelle’s blinding hatred for him was the culprit. The gods liked to make flowery speeches about shedding your personal feelings to do your duty, but that was easier said than done. Just look at how well the gods were following their own advice.
“I think you’ll find that I have a few more tricks up my sleeves,” I said, playing my card.
Jace’s eyes widened when he saw the Nectar bottle on the card face. “No way.”
“Yes, way.” I slid the card over Colonel Fireswift’s. “I think it’s time to level up this major, don’t you?”
For the first time ever, Colonel Fireswift looked at me as though he didn’t completely despise me. I claimed Aleris’s glasses, then tried to decide which of my cards I’d play in this final round.
Colonel Fireswift was giving me the signal to play a fairy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have one. I flicked my ponytail over my shoulder, indicating that. He repositioned two of the cards in his hand. That was the signal for vampire. I didn’t have one of those either. Colonel Fireswift’s lips drew into a hard line. It looked like he was already back to despising me.
“Your plan will never work.”
“It already has.”
I blinked at the other thirteen players sitting around the table. No one had said a word.
“You can’t hold me here forever.”
“I don’t have to hold you forever. I only need to hold you long enough.”
If the other players weren’t speaking, where were those voices coming from? Were Aleris’s glasses even now picking up memories stored in the other gods’ objects? But if these were memories projected by the magic glasses, then why wasn’t anyone else acting like they’d heard them?
“The Legion’s trials will soon begin. After they are over, it won’t matter anymore.”
The voice sounded distant. Distorted. And like it belonged to a god. A god had hunted down and imprisoned this person…this innocent person. She was innocent. I knew it. I could feel it, just as I could feel that she was a she. She was in trouble. And scared. I could feel my fear pumping through my veins as though it were my own fear. I had to help her. But how was I supposed to find her?
Harker nudged me. Apparently, it was my turn. I played my witch card. It wasn’t a fairy or a vampire like Colonel Fireswift wanted, but it was the closest I had to either. Colonel Fireswift’s scowl deepened. I supposed when this was all over, he wouldn’t be patting me on the back for a job well done after all.
Jace and Leila won the final round. Everyone’s eyes tracked Leila’s hands as they closed around Meda’s mirror. By now, there wasn’t a person here who didn’t know what was coming next.
We were all wrong. Aleris’s glasses didn’t spark the mirror’s magic and lift the memories imprinted there. No secrets came pouring out. Nothing happened at all.
“We will return to the gods’ hall,” Nyx declared, moving toward a stained glass window situated between two fireplaces. She stepped through a picture of seven gods posed regally on seven thrones.
“That was anticlimactic,” Leila commented beside me.
“Like waiting for an explosion that never happened,” I agreed.
“There’s something not right about this training.”
“Only one thing?” I laughed.
Leila and I passed through the stained glass window. The magic of the transporting mirror rippled through the glasses in my hand and hit the mirror in hers. As we materialized in the gods’ audience chamber, so did the mirror’s memories.
Meda sat on a plump cushion in front of an ivory vanity, arranging her hair into an elaborate collection of braids. She pinned them down with sparkling pins and feathered clips.
“I need more of the serum,” said the Goddess of Witchcraft and Technology, looking into the mirror held in her hand.
“I gave you twenty vials just last week.” The voice came from the mirror, but the glass showed no one but Meda.
“They go fast. There are a lot of monsters,” she replied, applying pink glittery gloss to her lips.
“And have your experiments yielded results?” asked the mystery voice beyond the mirror.
“I’ve combined your Life serum with other magical ingredients to create a potion of my own design. The monsters are responding to it. Their magic has grown stronger, and I’ve managed to gain control over half the tested beast species. With some further tweaking of the formula, I expect I’ll soon be able to control them all.”
Life. I’d seen the silver liquid in one of my visions of Cadence, Nero’s mother. Life was the serum the Guardians used to balance people’s magic, giving them control over the full spectrum of light and dark powers. Like Nectar and Venom, Life was given gradually over time, in increasingly more potent doses.
Meda was experimenting with Life to control the monsters that the gods and demons had lost control over centuries ago, the feral beasts that now reigned over larger parts of the world. Suddenly, the docile cat monster in the room of fireplaces made a lot of sense.
As far as I knew, only the Guardians had the knowledge and power to make the Life serum. Which meant the person on the other side of the mirror was a Guardian—and Meda was working with him.
I wasn’t the only one in the gods’ audience chamber who’d come to that conclusion.
“Treachery,” hissed Zarion. “You have allied yourself with the Guardians.”
“I have done no such thing,” Meda said with a flick of her hand.
Valora rose smoothly from her throne, her stance stiff. “Explain yourself, Meda.”
“I needed the Life serum for my experiments on monsters.”
“Experiments you did not clear with the gods’ council,” Aleris said, braiding his fingers together.
“Just to have Meda’s work tied up in committees for centuries?” Maya scoffed. “The demons are gaining ground. We need an advantage, a weapon against them. And we need it now. Meda’s work is that solution. With the monsters once more under our control, the demons will fall quickly.”
“But at what price?” Ronan shook his head. “You’re just trading the demon problem for the Guardian problem.”
Meda laughed. “I am not allying with them. I simply need their Life serum for my potion.”
Ronan arched a single dark brow. “Which they provided to you out of the goodness of their hearts?”
“They have not asked for anything in return. So I expect they plan to steal my
complete potion formula once I have perfected it.” A vicious smile curled her lips. “They will not succeed.”
“Once we’re done with the demons, we will send the monsters to take out the Guardians. Then we will rule the cosmos,” Maya said.
A deep frown furrowed Zarion’s brow. “There’s no point in wondering whether you knew of Meda’s scheme.”
“I stand with my sister.” Maya took Meda’s hand. “Always.”
The memory frozen in front of us rippled, melting into another scene.
Meda stood behind a table, a vial of silver liquid in her hand. The Life serum. She uncorked the vial and poured it into a small pot. Meda stirred the potion until it had absorbed the silver strands of Life. Then she filled a syringe with the potion and brought it into a curtained room.
Inside, someone lay chained to a medical bed. As Meda neared, he stirred, pushing against his restraints.
“Now, now, there’s no need for that,” Meda said. “I’m here with your medicine.”
“Medicine?” a dry, cracked voice said. It sounded familiar. “You mean poison.”
“Perfection takes time. You knew that when we set off down this path. Your discomfort will soon pass. And then you will not only be more powerful than any angel who has ever lived; you will be in the league of gods.”
“Very well. Proceed.”
Meda leaned over to inject him with the syringe, her movement revealing his face. It was Osiris Wardbreaker.
“It won’t be long now,” Meda said in a coaxing voice.
The archangel closed his eyes, his mouth hardening as the needle pierced his skin. His muscles went from tense, to quivering, to all-out spasming. He thrashed frantically on the table, roaring in agony. Curses poured out of his mouth. The chains bit into his skin. Thin streams of blood trickled down his body, dripping onto the white tiled floor.
“Still not right,” Meda muttered, making notes on her pad. “The magic boost is fighting the magic-balancing agent.” She coolly regarded the screaming archangel on the bed. “I’ll need to tweak the formula further.”
At her words, Osiris Wardbreaker heaved hard against the chains, snapping one of them. Meda wove a spell to replace the broken chain. He glared at her, red fire burning in his eyes.
The vision faded away, absorbing back into the mirror in Leila’s hand. Silence, as cold and foreboding as an imminent blizzard, hung over the gods’ hall. Meda hadn’t just experimented on monsters. She’d experimented on an angel. That was why Osiris Wardbreaker had gone mad. That was why he’d gone off on a killing spree that had ended with his death.
18
The Origin of Chaos
Maya dropped her sister’s hand. She’d grown oddly still. She wasn’t even breathing.
“I did not kill Osiris Wardbreaker, sister,” Meda said. “Damiel Dragonsire did.”
“You might not have killed him with your own two hands, but your obsession with balancing light and dark magic, your experiments to create a new breed of warrior, signed his death warrant,” Maya replied, her words clipped. “You made him lose his mind. And when an angel loses his mind, he must be put down.”
“I didn’t know about you two.” Meda reached out.
Maya shot her sister’s hand a scathing look. “I don’t believe you. Osiris insisted he would find a way for us to be together. You promised him that way. You told him he would be a god. You knew about us. And you exploited him.”
Anger piled on top of Maya’s heartbreak. It seemed that like angels, gods had those same pesky human emotions at their core.
“You cannot simply experiment on my angels, Meda,” Ronan told her, a fair share of anger smoldering in his eyes too.
“Or make deals with the so-called Guardians, those self-appointed usurpers,” Zarion snapped.
Self-appointed usurpers? What did Zarion mean by that? What was the history between the gods and the Guardians?
Magic brushed against my shoulder. I glanced back. Nero stood across the room, his back against the wall, his eyes beckoning me to him. I quietly slipped past Leila and Jace. They hardly seemed to notice. Nor did anyone else. Their eyes were all locked on the gods.
“The gods’ council is coming apart at the seams,” I whispered, leaning against the wall beside Nero. “Except for Aleris and Faris. They’re the only ones this training hasn’t exposed.”
“I noticed that as well.”
We’d already determined that Faris was behind this. But Aleris?
“Aleris must be Faris’s ally,” Nero said. “He has helped him expose the other gods’ secrets.”
“But why would Aleris ally himself with Faris?”
Nero shook his head. “I do not know. They are unlikely allies.”
“Let’s find out.”
I located Athan near the door and walked toward him, Nero by my side.
“Which god do you owe a favor?” I asked the Everlasting telepath.
He said nothing.
“It’s Aleris, isn’t it?”
It had to be Aleris. Faris needed a powerful telepath to tell him where the objects that contained the gods’ greatest secrets were kept. So he had enlisted Aleris’s help because an Everlasting telepath owed the God of Nature a favor. That was it. I was sure of it. Otherwise, Faris would have had no use for Aleris. He would have exposed the other gods’ secrets alone, Aleris’s included.
“You are very observant,” Athan noted. “But do you see everything that is going on here?”
“See what? What’s going on?”
His gaze dipped to the glasses poking out of my jacket. “Hold on to the Seer’s Opera Glasses. You will need them.”
“Need them for what? To expose the gods’ greatest dirty secrets? That’s what Faris and Aleris want, isn’t it? That’s why we had to get Aleris’s glasses first, why that was the first challenge. So we could use them to expose the other gods’ secrets. Aleris didn’t have his secrets blown right open. And neither will Faris, assuming we ever get to his artifact. Assuming the other gods haven’t exploded into civil war by then, effectively ending this training.”
I had it all figured out. Except…there was still something that didn’t make sense.
“I get why Faris would ally with Aleris. He needed your help, and you owe Aleris a favor,” I said to Athan. “But why would Aleris team up with Faris?”
“Aleris’s distaste for delinquency is well known,” Nero pointed out.
“In other words, he doesn’t like naughty behavior?”
“No, he most decidedly does not,” said Nero. “Zarion plays the self-righteous god of piety, but it’s Aleris who is really the strict, straight-and-narrow god. And he expects all the other gods to behave in the same manner.”
I frowned. “So he teams up with Faris, the biggest sinner of them all?”
“Aleris didn’t learn the other gods’ secrets on his own. He isn’t a plotter and schemer. He isn’t a sin scavenger hunter,” replied Nero. “Faris probably came to him with a list of the other gods’ sins, along with this fun little game they could play to expose them, to air them all out in the open. He naturally would have left his own deviations out of the conversation.”
“Interesting theory,” Athan commented.
I considered him closely. “You said I’ll need the glasses. Why?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Why are you even telling us anything?” I asked in exasperation.
“I have told you nothing.”
“You just implied.”
The telepath smiled.
“You are a telepath.” I bit my lip. “But you are also something else. You understand so much about the magical workings of the immortal artifacts.”
I recalled something he’d said about the immortal artifacts during our last conversation. He’d asked me why they were called immortal artifacts—and why they could store memories when other magical objects could not.
“The immortal artifacts hold immortal souls, don’t they?” I said. “The souls of the
original immortals. Immortals with a capital ‘I’. That’s why the immortal artifacts are so powerful.”
Athan dipped his chin in acknowledgement.
“Why would an Immortal agree to be put inside an artifact?” I asked.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
And I would keep asking them. “How does that even work, putting an Immortal’s soul into an artifact?”
“With great difficulty.”
“You can make immortal artifacts, can’t you?” I realized. “And you can manipulate the artifacts’ magic.”
“That art was lost long ago.”
“And yet here we are.”
He didn’t smile this time. “Your mind doesn’t work like theirs.” Athan said, his face reflective. His eyes panned across the room of gods, angels, and would-be angels.
“I am not like them,” I told him.
“Yes. And no. You are more human than they will ever be. And yet, at the same time, less human,” he said. “General Spellsmiter and Colonel Fireswift are both right about you. You would make a good Interrogator and a good warrior in the Vanguard.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with everything,” he said. “Have you ever wondered why that is?”
“Why what is?”
“Have you ever wondered why you would be a good Interrogator and a good Elite Warrior.”
“Because I’m just so talented?” I quipped impatiently.
“Because of your history.”
He meant my divine origin. My father was a god, my mother a demon. Which made me an abnormality that shouldn’t exist.
At least Athan hadn’t gone straight out and said it in heaven’s halls. He was speaking in code because anyone could be listening. Considering that he had no qualms about blowing up everyone else’s secrets, I supposed I should have been grateful he wasn’t announcing mine to everyone here.
“Exposing you to all the gods is not part of the deal,” he said, responding to my unspoken thoughts.
All the gods? Did that mean that one of the gods knew what I was?
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 17
