by Ella Summers
I rose from the bed, going to him. “Will there be dessert?”
“Yes.” He kissed my smiling lips. “And strawberry tarts,” he added, remembering my favorite dessert. “And after that, a sleepover,” he said against my lips.
He pulled on his shirt.
“Oh? That does sound tempting.” I slid into my pants.
“I’ve filled one of my closets with clothes for you.”
“When did you do that?”
“Before the wedding.”
“Oh, you anticipated our spending nights together, did you?”
“Yes. Many nights.”
“That’s not the story you were singing earlier,” I reminded him.
“Perhaps I foolishly hoped beyond all reason that the perfect Cadence Lightbringer…” His mouth brushed my neck. “…would find it in her heart to let in the terrible, disagreeable, eternally tormented, horridly unpleasant Damiel Dragonsire, Angel Fury of the Legion.” Each word popped off his lips, buzzing against my skin.
“I don’t know.” I chuckled. “This Dragonsire fellow sounds absolutely wretched.”
“He is,” Damiel agreed. “And did I mention eternally tormented?”
“Yes, you did. But I hope that your torment isn’t so eternal anymore.”
“If you agree to join me for dinner, that will significantly diminish my eternal torment.”
“I’m sure,” I laughed lightly.
He looked expectantly at me.
“Yes, I’ll come to dinner with you. How could I possibly refuse when you went through all the trouble to give me my own closet in your room?”
“Good.”
I grinned at him. “But I think I’ll do one better on you. I’ll fill one of my closets with clothes and weapons for you.”
His eyes lit up. “You certainly know the way to an angel’s heart.” He kissed me again.
I chuckled against his lips. Then I pulled back and grabbed his jacket off the floor. I walked over to my empty closet and hung the leather garment there.
With that done, I turned back around and looked at him. “See? It looks like it belongs there.”
He folded his arms around me. “I belong with you.”
I looped my arms over his shoulders. Smiling, I glanced at the closet with the single jacket. “It will look even better when it’s full of your things.”
“Princess, I would be pleased to oblige by allowing you to thoroughly disarm and disrobe me every night.”
“Allow?” I repeated.
“Naturally, I’d expect that you will allow me to disrobe you in return.”
“I think I can live with that,” I told him.
He hugged me to his body. “So can I.”
There was a knock on the door. I knew that knock. It belonged to General Silverstar.
It’s my father, I thought to Damiel.
We quickly put on the rest of our clothing.
The knock repeated, sharper, more impatient this time.
I took a deep breath, bracing myself for the inevitable confrontation with my father.
Do you want me to send him away? Damiel asked me.
No. I can’t avoid this. It’s better to get it out of the way quickly. He betrayed my trust. He sent spies to masquerade as my friends. He planned to marry me to another of his spies. He obviously has a plan for me, and I need to know what it is. I must confront him about his actions now.
Steeling myself for a rough conversation, I walked to the door and opened it.
My father strode into my room without waiting for an invitation. “You’ve been gone for…” He stopped when he spotted Damiel—and Damiel’s jacket hanging in my open closet. He turned his hard eyes on me. “I need to speak with you at once, Cadence.” His gaze flickered to Damiel, then back to me. “Alone.”
“He’s staying.”
My father’s gaze again shifted between me and Damiel. “I see you did not heed my warnings.”
He definitely didn’t look happy that I’d let Damiel into my life—and my heart.
“You warned her about me, Silverstar.” Accusation was woven through Damiel’s words.
My father’s face was as hard as granite. “Your reputation speaks for itself, Dragonsire.”
“So it does,” Damiel said. “But did you warn Cadence about me because of my reputation, or because I reside outside your sphere of control?”
My father’s jaw tightened. “I warned her about you because people who get sucked into your sphere of control generally end up dead.”
“What would you have me do to traitors?” Damiel said drily. “Congratulate them for a job well done and then send them on their merry way?”
“My daughter is not a traitor.”
“Of course not. And she has nothing to fear from me.”
“Damiel has my back, Dad.” I struggled to keep my voice steady, to not explode with emotion. “Which is more than I can say about you.”
And so I confronted my father with everything that I knew. How he’d been controlling my life. How he’d planted ‘friends’ around me to report back to him. And how he’d tried to marry me to one of his spies.
“It’s complicated,” he said when I’d finally unloaded everything on my chest.
“Well, then, it’s a good thing you raised me to be clever.”
“I am not spying on you, Cadence. I am trying to protect you.” He shook his head. “So the same thing that happened to your mother doesn’t happen to you.”
“My mother?” A sudden rush of curiosity drowned out my anger’s fire. “Who was she? And what happened to her? She wasn’t really a witch, was she?”
“No, your mother was not a witch,” he confirmed. “She was an Immortal.”
“A descendent of the Immortals?”
“No. An actual, original Immortal,” he told me. “She was one of the last surviving ones. She came here to Earth to escape the hunters who were trying to kill her. I found her out on the plains of monsters one day, wounded, unconscious. I didn’t know what she was or what I was getting myself involved in. If I had, I might have left her there for the monsters. But by the time I realized all this, it was too late. I’d fallen so much in love with her that I would have done anything for her.”
My brows lifted. My father had never spoken much of my mother. And he’d certainly never expressed any deep feelings for her.
“What happened to her?” I asked him.
“She was being hunted across the known universe, so I didn’t tell anyone about her, not even my colleagues at the Legion of Angels. I couldn’t risk it. I thought that if no one knew about her, if no one saw her, she would be safe. So she and I made a home, in a sanctuary deep in the wilderness. Surrounded by monsters and yet safe from them.”
“The Silver Shore,” I realized.
“Yes. That was our secret sanctuary. The place I returned to whenever I could. You were born there. You and your mother were safe for a while.” His expression grew dark. “But eventually, the hunters found her. They can track Immortal magic. She had an amulet that masked her magic, one that could blend into her, become a part of her. It hid her from the hunters’ magic. I later learned that she hadn’t worn the amulet in months. That’s how they found her.”
His voice cracked. My father, who had always been as tough as a diamond and as strong as a mountain, was breaking.
Seeing his pain for the woman he had lost, for the mother I had lost—it brought tears to my eyes. “Why did she ever take off the amulet?”
“She had only one amulet. She must have known the hunters were getting close because one day she asked me to take you to the water so you could watch the birds you liked so much. I didn’t know she’d given you her amulet, that she’d blended it into your body to hide you from the hunters. And I didn’t know the hunters were close. When we returned from the shore, the house was in pieces. And your mother was dead.”
A tear slid down my cheek for the mother I couldn’t remember but who’d sacrificed her life to save me.<
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“I couldn’t move for hours,” my father said. “I just sat there, drowning in despair. It was just as well that I couldn’t find any trace of the hunters because I would have followed them in my blind rage. I would have hunted them down and made them pay for what they’d done. Finally, a soft cry brought me out of myself.
“It was you. You were awake and crying, calling out for your mother. She was gone, but you were still here. I had to protect you, to succeed where I’d failed with your mother.
“So I brought you with me to Berlin, to my territory. I didn’t tell anyone of your origin. I invented a lie that I’d had an affair with a witch and she’d had this child. I told the Legion she’d died in a clan war, so I’d brought you with me. I claimed I considered it a matter of honor to do so. The Legion applauded acts of honor.
“I raised you on my own, training you, grooming you to join the Legion, so you could protect yourself if the day ever came that the hunters came for you. But they never came. The amulet, which I discovered was still inside of you, masked your magic scent from them.
“I never spoke of any of this to anyone. I couldn’t risk that someone might find out that your mother was an Immortal and you were her daughter. The hunters would have returned. They could track rumors as well as magic.”
My father’s voice shook. His eyes were wet with tears. Pain rippled across his whole body. He was shaking.
I opened my arms and spread them around him. And as I sank into the hug, I finally truly appreciated him—and everything he’d done for me. All of it made sense now.
“You only ever tried to keep me safe,” I said, embracing my father tightly. “You surrounded me with people you controlled, people you trusted, so they would guard me from danger.”
“I handpicked your guards. I was positive that each and every one of them would have laid down their lives to protect you,” he replied. “I don’t trust outsiders. They can be controlled or influenced. Or have an agenda.” He glanced at Damiel. “As the Master Interrogator is known to have. You sniff out secrets, Dragonsire. You expose and punish. And you always follow the gods’ laws to the letter.”
“Damiel isn’t what you think him to be. He is more than the Master Interrogator,” I told my father. “We have been through much more than you could ever imagine.”
I recounted the events of my adventures with Damiel—well, except for the steamy bits.
When I was done, my father turned to Damiel. “You have Immortal blood as well.”
“Cadence and I share an Immortal Legacy,” replied Damiel. “But what that legacy is, we do not yet know.”
“You are trying to protect Cadence. But how far are you willing to go to do it?”
“Whatever it takes,” replied Damiel. “I love her.”
Damiel and my father locked stares for a long few moments that seemed to stretch on to eternity. But at least they weren’t locking horns.
“Let’s start over,” I suggested, setting a hand on each of them.
“What do you suggest?” my father asked.
“A meal,” I said. “Just the three of us. It’s about time we finally sat down and truly got to know one another, leaving all machinations and power games at the door. Can you both do that?”
“Very well,” my father said.
Damiel nodded. “Agreed.”
“So it’s settled then. Breakfast. Right here, right now.” I winked at them. “On neutral territory.”
If we met in either my father’s territory or in Damiel’s, that would put one of the two angels at a distinct advantage. And that would only lead to all kinds of fights to the death, which we really wanted to avoid.
“A wise precaution,” Damiel told me.
“Of course it is, Dragonsire. I raised my daughter to be smart.”
Oh, dear. They were already going at it. So much for a truce.
I gestured for them to join me at the table in my private dining room. The Storm Castle staff had already set the table for breakfast. There was even a plate of strawberry tarts. I was willing to wager all the immortal daggers in my possession that Damiel had sent that order to the kitchen.
My father’s eyes slid over the plate of tarts—then snapped up to me. “Cadence, why are there bite marks on your throat?”
Damn it, Damiel! He hadn’t removed them. Again.
I stared at Damiel from across the table. He favored me with a very slight lift of his brows. Someone was certainly very proud of himself.
I shifted my gaze to my father. He was clenching his fork like it was a weapon.
“Please pass the rolls, General,” Damiel said serenely.
My father glared at him. “Dragonsire, are you planning to make a habit out of biting my daughter?”
“I already have.”
Oh, for the love of everything that was holy!
I quickly passed the bowl of rolls to Damiel—before my father threw it at his head.
As Damiel lifted a roll from the bowl, he glanced casually at my father’s hand. “A fork is not a weapon worthy of an angel, Silverstar.”
I nearly spilled the tea I was pouring into my father’s cup.
“Yes, you know all about dignity, Interrogator,” he snapped back at Damiel.
“You’re one to speak. I know about your serious breach of protocol at the Battle of Vienna.”
“Are you investigating me?” my father demanded, incredulous.
Damiel’s brows arched. “Should I be?”
“Don’t threaten me, Dragonsire.”
I sighed. “We’re supposed to be starting over,” I reminded them. “We’re supposed to be getting along.”
“We are getting along, Princess,” replied Damiel. “No blood has been spilled.”
My father nodded. “Nor spells exchanged.”
Sighing once more, I grabbed a strawberry tart from the silver platter. This was going to be a long breakfast! And a very long immortal life.
Author’s Note
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If you enjoyed Angel Fury, I’d really appreciate if you could spread the word. One of the best ways of doing that is by leaving a review wherever you purchased this book. Thank you for your invaluable support!
Angel Fever, the third book in the Immortal Legacy series, will be coming soon. For additional reading in the same magical universe, check out my Legion of Angels series.
Books by Ella Summers
Immortal Legacy
Angel Fire
Angel Fury
Angel Fever [2020]
Legion of Angels
Vampire’s Kiss
Witch’s Cauldron
Siren’s Song
Dragon’s Storm
Shifter’s Shadow
Psychic’s Spell
Fairy’s Touch
Angel’s Flight
Book 9 [2020]
Dragon Born Serafina
Mercenary Magic
Magic Games
Magic Nights
Rival Magic
Dragon Born Shadow World
(Magic Eclipse, Midnight Magic, Magic Storm)
The Complete Trilogy
Dragon Born Alexandria
Magic Edge
Blood Magic
Magic Kingdom
Shadow Magic [2020]
Dragon Born Awakening
Fairy Magic
Spirit Magic
Magic Immortal
Sorcery & Science
Sorcery & Science (Prequel)
Vampires & Vigilantes
Book 2 [2020]
And more books coming soon…
About the Author
Ella Summers has been writing stories for as long as she could read; she's been coming up with tall tales even longer than that. One of her early year masterpieces was a story about a pigtailed p
rincess and her dragon sidekick. Nowadays, she still writes fantasy. She likes books with lots of action, adventure, and romance. When she is not busy writing or spending time with her two young children, she makes the world safe by fighting robots.
Ella is the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and International Bestselling Author of the paranormal and fantasy series Legion of Angels, Immortal Legacy, Dragon Born, and Sorcery & Science.
Connect with Ella at
www.ellasummers.com
