by Ella Summers
His expression grew serious, guarded. “Are you sure you want to get to know me better? Most people wouldn’t.”
“I am not most people.”
Damiel considered me closely. “No,” he agreed. “You really aren’t.”
We’d reached the door to his room.
“Dress for warm weather. We’ll leave shortly,” he said, then went inside.
I continued down the hallway toward my own room. It was in a separate wing of the building. It was common practice to place angels in guest rooms as far apart as possible; it minimized duels—and the resulting collateral damage.
When I got to my room, Allegra was standing outside the door.
“So, you’re going off with Colonel Dragonsire,” she said.
“I suppose everyone is talking about it.” I opened my door, and we went inside.
“Of course,” she said as the door closed behind us. “You’re the Legion’s one and only angel-angel couple.” Her lips curled up into a sly smile. “I hope the honeymoon is romantic.”
I stepped out of my wedding gown. “It’s not a honeymoon. It’s a mission.”
“Who says it can’t be both?”
“You don’t say that, that’s for sure.”
“Cadence, sometimes I worry that you don’t want to have any fun at all.”
“You have more than enough fun for the both of us.”
She chuckled. “True.”
“It will be horrid,” I muttered.
“What?”
“The honeymoon. A horrid, honeymoon battlefront.”
“Battle against what? Monsters? Or the groom?”
I snorted, then turned away to consider the clothes hanging in my closet. Damiel had hinted that my sea elemental magic would be crucial on this mission, but I had no idea where we were going. He’d also told me to dress for warm weather, though. The Legion’s warm weather uniform consisted of a tank top and a pair of shorts. I grabbed one of those sets now.
“Colonel Dragonsire might interpret that clothing choice as an invitation,” Allegra teased me.
I looked down at the shorts—or more like hot pants. They were nearly as short and tight as my underwear.
“And if I wore full-metal armor? How would he interpret that?” I asked her.
“As a challenge?” she suggested with raised brows.
“I’m not going to spend hours trying to analyze every possible way he could interpret every possible outfit. I’m wearing this because it will be hot.”
Allegra’s gaze panned down my body. “It sure will be.”
I glowered at her. “You’re not helping.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to help?”
I met her delighted eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if life would be simpler without friends.”
“Oh, undoubtedly, but it would also be mighty boring.”
I sighed.
In an instant, any and all hints of mischief faded from her face. She looked like a completely different person than she had just a moment ago.
“All jokes aside, how are you really feeling about spending all this time with Damiel Dragonsire?” she asked me.
“I’m a bit overwhelmed,” I admitted. “It’s all happening fast.”
“But this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I wanted to talk to him. To get to know him. Maybe have dinner with him.” I shook my head. “Not jump right into marriage.”
“Marriage is just another assignment.” Her dark brows peaked. “And, hopefully, not an entirely unpleasant one.”
She was referring to the sex, to our duty to make future baby angels.
“I am still a new angel. I won’t be fertile for years,” I reminded her.
“That should give you plenty of time to practice.”
My embarrassment burst out of my mouth in a laugh.
Female angels were notoriously infertile. Pregnancy was only possible every few years. When an angel had the Fever, a time where her magic built up as her body became fertile, it was supposed to wreak all kinds of havoc on any and all nearby Legion soldiers, male and female alike.
But even when a female angel was fertile, the chance of conception was very low.
“Come on, Cadence.” Allegra sat down on my bed. “How do you really feel about going on another mission with Colonel Dragonsire?”
“Fine, I guess.”
She smiled—but didn’t tease me further about my crush on Damiel Dragonsire. “What is the mission?”
“Well, I guess it must be connected to the big smoking head that appeared in the middle of the ballroom.”
She rolled her eyes. “Very vague, Cadence.”
“That’s all I know.”
A single sharp, loud knock sounded on my door. I knew General Silverstar’s knock when I heard it. As soon as I opened the door, he strode inside.
My father had a stern face and severe cheekbones. His eyes were as green as a forest after a rainfall, his hair dark and cropped in a short, no-nonsense cut.
He was dressed entirely in black battle leather, just as Damiel had worn at our wedding. On his back, my father wore a large, two-handed sword. I’d always wondered how the enormous weapon didn’t get in the way when my father summoned forth his wings. Somehow, it never did. Probably magic.
My father the archangel gave his hand a crisp flick and turned his cold eyes on Allegra. “You’re dismissed, Captain,” he told her.
Allegra left, and then it was just my father and I. I began arming myself for my mission.
“Be careful, Cadence.”
He wasn’t worried I’d cut my fingers on my knives; I’d been wielding knives since I was old enough for him to put one in my hand. No, he must have been worried about the smoky threat that had interrupted the wedding.
“Colonel Dragonsire cannot be trusted,” he continued.
So this wasn’t about the demons’ threat. It was about Damiel.
“Don’t trust him. Don’t let him get close.”
“I married Damiel on the Legion’s orders,” I replied. “I am already close to him. We are already linked.”
“Yes, you are married to Dragonsire. That means nothing,” my father replied. “Do not let him into your heart. Do not confide in him. The Master Interrogator has hunted down, interrogated, and killed many Legion soldiers. He sows distrust. He sees bad everywhere. It’s in his nature.”
“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 promot
ed 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.
“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.”
