“You’re Nero’s father. How are we in my mind?” I asked him.

“I am connected to you through Nero. Whether he likes it or not, he is my son, and that too is a bond forged in magic.”

“But why my mind instead of Nero’s?”

“I chose your mind because right now your powers are cut off; your connection to the gods is severed. They cannot see or hear us here. We can speak freely,” said Damiel. “I’m sure you’ve realized by now that the gods’ potion does not affect the magic of your bond.”

Yeah, I had noticed that. And wondered about it.

“Such bonds are forged with a different kind of magic. It is an ancient magic that does not come from the gods’ Nectar—or from the demons’ Venom.”

“Damiel, this is all very fascinating, but I doubt you came here to talk about ancient magic. Do you know what is happening here?”

He smiled at me. “Straight to the point as always. Yes, I am aware of your situation.”

“Can you help us?” I asked.

“We are not cheating,” Nero told me.

I sighed. “Nero, when the world is at stake, you are allowed to cheat.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“We will find a way ourselves.”

Gods, the man was stubborn.

“We don’t have much time,” I told him. “The barriers will fail, and the monsters will flood every city on the continent. We cannot allow all of those people to die. Our friends. Our family.”

Nero looked at me. “We will find a way. We always do.”

“Don’t waste your breath, dear,” Damiel said to me. “Nero is too stubborn to accept my help.”

“Your help always comes at a price.” Nero folded his arms across his chest. “You always have an agenda.”

Damiel smiled. “Perhaps. But let’s not fool ourselves, Nero. So do you. You are your father’s son.”

Nero clenched his teeth.

“I’m glad you and Leda have bonded,” said Damiel. “She is a good influence on you.”

The bond. That was it!

“Right now, neither of us has much magic, but our bond is magical,” I said.

Damiel nodded. “Bonds between souls require a spark of light or dark magic to ignite. But the bond itself is woven with an ancient magic that the gods’ potion cannot smother.” He looked between me and Nero and said, “Yours is a particularly strong bond.”

“If we used the magic from our bond, would that be enough magic to start the generators and save everyone?” I asked.

“Indeed it would,” said Damiel.

“Leda…” Nero’s face was hard, but his eyes were as turbulent as a storm at sea.

Guilt crashed and turned inside of me. I’d hurt his feelings. He thought I was throwing away our connection.

“We could make it again, our bond, when we have our magic back,” I said quickly.

“Interesting,” Damiel commented.

“Enough,” Nero growled at Damiel. He looked at me, his tone a tad softer, “You too, Pandora.”

Despair ripped across our bond. Nero tried to hold it back, but it was like a tsunami slamming against the barriers of his mind—and his heart. This was my fault. I shouldn’t have suggested it. Our bond meant something to him. It meant something to me too. But if we could remake the bond, would it be worth sacrificing it for a short time to save millions of lives? I’d thought so when I’d suggested it, but now I just didn’t know. I reached for Nero, trying to comfort him.

Nero recoiled from my touch. “This is what they want.” He glared at Damiel. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Nero’s gaze shifted to me. “This is why she’s here.”

“Yes,” Damiel said again.

The floodgates of our bond opened, and the tsunami crashed against me, drowning me in Nero’s agony. I’d never felt anything like it, not even when he’d lost his magic. I didn’t understand the tears streaming down my cheeks. I only knew that my heart was in pieces, and I’d never feel whole again.

“What is it?” I asked Nero, choking on my tears.

Anger flashed across our bond. Pure, undiluted rage. But Nero didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure that he could. Something had taken him over.

“An angel’s mark can be removed, albeit with great difficulty,” Damiel said. “But a bond like yours—a bond forged in love, not only possession—is a whole other kind of magic altogether. It is one of the most powerful kinds of magic there is. And it is for life.”

Nero punched through the support beams holding up a carnival stand. Wood splinters shot in every direction, and toy unicorns poured down to the ground.

“Only death can remove it,” Damiel finished.

And then it all clicked in my head. Nero’s pain. His anger. His helplessness. The only way to harness the power of our bond, to feed it into the Magitech generator and save millions of lives, was for me to die.

7 Ancient Magic

I swallowed hard and looked at Damiel. “You knew this was coming. You knew this was the test.”

“Yes.”

Hot, angry tears burned in my eyes. I didn’t try to pretend I wasn’t scared; that would have been a lie. I didn’t want to die.

Wood and metal crashed. Nero had punched through another stall.

“This scenario has been playing out for hundreds of years,” Damiel continued. “The City of Ashes cannot be saved. It’s not meant to be saved. The gods rigged the trials to test Nero, to see if he would give up that which he holds most dear in order to save humanity.”

I’d thought I knew the gods were ruthless and cruel, but I’d never truly known it until now.

“Don’t think you can just do nothing,” said Damiel. “The gods are fully prepared to watch the Earth’s cities fall and humanity die. If the angels didn’t know they were willing to make that sacrifice, then this test wouldn’t work.”

The gods wanted Nero to prove how far he would go—how much he would sacrifice—to do his duty and protect the Earth.

“I refuse to sacrifice Leda for the sake of a game.” Nero looked like he wanted to demolish the whole carnival, but he folded his quivering arms together and turned to his father. “There must be another way, another source of magic to power the generator.”

“You can’t kill yourself instead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” replied Damiel. “If you did, the gods would kill her anyway.”

“I know.” Nero wrapped his arms around me, holding me to him. It was a silent promise to me that he wasn’t going to let me die.

I didn’t want to die. I still had so much to do, so much to live for. I had to find my brother. And Nero… I knew there was more for us. This could not be it. For it all to end like this now, in the gods’ game, it would be like my life had meant nothing.

But my life didn’t mean nothing to the First Angel. Nyx wanted me to be an angel, and I couldn’t become an angel if I were dead. She’d known what she was sending us into. There had to be a way out of this. There was always a way out. If only I could see it.

“You found a way out in your trials, right?” I asked Damiel. “Cadence was the person most dear to you, and she didn’t die.”

“The test was designed to give you no way out,” Damiel told me. “Even I did not find a way around that. I had to sacrifice my best friend, using our bond of friendship to save the city.”

“This city? You saved this city?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. If you saved the city, why is it lost again?”

Anger burned in Damiel’s eyes, those eyes that were usually under complete control. “Because the city isn’t meant to be saved,” he growled. “Once the test is over, the gods throw it back to the wilds so they can use it again to torment the next unsuspecting angel.”

My mouth dropped in outrage.

“My trials took place when Cadence was pregnant with Nero. She was about to give birth to the first child of two angels, so she was considered too important to risk her life on missions. She couldn’t be my second for the Gods’ Trials. That alone saved her life.” Damiel clenched his fists. “If my trials had happened at a different time, any other time, she would have died—and for nothing.” He hissed the word.