Everyone except for me.

I’d always had a natural resistance to the sirens’ songs. Or angels’ songs, for that matter. Shortly after joining the Legion, Nero had tried the same trick on me that Harker was using now. It hadn’t worked then either. I stood tall and met Harker’s eyes, allowing a smile to curl my lips.

He stepped off the platform, moving through the crowd of kneeling soldiers like a giant through a field of tiny tulips. The smile never left his face, even as he stopped in front of me.

“You’re supposed to kneel, Pandora,” he said casually, his voice dipped low.

I lifted my brows at the sound of my nickname. It was the nickname Nero had given me. Harker spoke the name just like Nero—with that same hard edge. Hard but not cruel.

But Harker hadn’t been an angel nearly as long as Nero had. There were cracks in his armor. I could see the strain in his face as he tried to compel me to kneel—and the frustration in his eyes when I did not go down easily.

“You’re still not kneeling,” he told me.

I smiled.

“This is how things are done at the Legion.” Despite himself, he actually looked amused. Even as he stood there in his big, black uniform with his big, black wings. Even as he chastised me for my lack of protocol and respect. He set his hands on my shoulders. His touch was firm, but he was forcing me down. “You’re drawing attention to yourself.”

I looked around. He spoke the truth. Some of the other soldiers were staring at me in shock.

“It isn’t common to resist an angel’s compulsion.” Harker’s tone was borderline casual. “They’re going to start asking what you really are.”

“And what am I?” I asked, my defiance somewhat diminished by my burning desire to know.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m sure it will come out eventually. Unique magic has a habit of not staying buried.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but what could I say? I didn’t know what I was, nor did I know where I’d come from.

“Who me?” I said with perfect innocence, a smile on my face. “I’m just a regular girl from the Frontier of civilization.”

“We both know that’s not true, Leda.”

I kept smiling. Even if I had known something, I wouldn’t have told him. Sure, we’d recently worked together to save Storm Castle, but I was living under no delusions that Harker was trustworthy. He was too ambitious to gain magic, to level up in the Legion. And he was too loyal to the mystery god he served. That loyalty had obviously paid off. It must be the reason he’d been made into an angel.

The bigger question was why the First Angel had agreed to make Harker an angel. She didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t have kept him locked up for months if she did. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice. If a god commanded her to make someone an angel, could she say no? Nyx was a fighter, but sometimes you had to cut the crap and go with the flow. I looked at the growing number of eyes on me. Perhaps, now was one of those times.

I was about to kneel, anything to blend in, to not draw attention to myself, when I felt another ripple of magic slide across me like a warm, balmy breeze. I turned to find Nero walking across the room.

His black leather uniform shifted deliciously against his muscular body as he moved forward in hard, powerful strides. Each step was like a pulsing punch of energy. His wings—a tapestry of black, blue, and green feathers—were extended high and wide in a show of strength. He looked huge, even bigger than Harker. Like a predator on the prowl.

Nero stopped beside me, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. He took my hand.

“The mate of an angel does not kneel before another angel,” he said, his voice as hard as granite, his eyes as unforgiving as green diamonds. “You and I are one. For you to kneel would be for me to kneel.”

In other words, it would make Nero look weak. He was a soldier of the ninth level. He did not kneel before other angels, least of all lower-level angels.

“I didn’t know,” I told Nero.

The truth was I didn’t know a lot of things, especially when it came to the ways of angels. That’s what I got for jumping in head first, for deciding to be Nero’s mate. But, even now, I didn’t regret it a bit. I loved Nero. I could put up with the games of angels if it meant we were together.

One of Nero’s wings brushed against my back. It was a sign of support, his way of telling me that even when he sounded hard and unforgiving, he wasn’t mad at me. He had my back.

“But I’m sure you were about to tell her that,” he said to Harker.

The other angel smiled. “Of course.”

Nero’s expression was masked, but that calm icy facade didn’t fool me. Hints of emotion seeped through our bond—surprise and worry and some other emotions brewing deep beneath the surface. Harker’s appearance, his promotion, had thrown Nero for a loop. He hadn’t known Harker was coming to be the new head of the Legion’s New York office.

But then what was Nero’s news? Why had Nyx sent him here?

The two angels continued to stare at each other in silence, the tension growing between them like a thick fog bubbling up from a witch’s cauldron. They looked ready to fight. That was just what we did not need right now.

I squeezed Nero’s hand.

That seemed to snap him out of it. “Come with me,” he said to me.

Then he turned his back on Harker and headed toward the exit, golden and silver magic sizzling across his wings like a fireworks show. To say Nero was agitated would have been an enormous understatement. I didn’t have to be a telepath to know what was going through his head right now. As far as Nero was concerned, the only thing worse than Harker’s promotion and appointment to the New York office was that he hadn’t known about it.

I walked beside Nero, the hard soles of our boots echoing through the silence. I glanced past the faces in the crowd. Some people smiled at me, some frowned. The Legion of Angels as a whole fell into two distinct camps: people who really liked me, and people who couldn’t stand me. The representation in this room was no different.

“Leda,” Nero said as soon as we were in the hallway, the doors closed behind us. “I have something important to tell you.”

“I take it this has to do with the reason you are here?”

“Yes.”

“I really thought you were back here permanently, that you were in charge of the New York office again. I thought that was your news.”

“No.” The word was equal parts regret and resignation. “Nyx’s concerns about us haven’t changed.”

The First Angel was under the impression that I was a bad influence on Nero. She wasn’t wrong. I got him mixed up in all kinds of shenanigans.

“Then why are you here?” I asked him.

“The wait is over. Nyx has given me my next assignment.” He paused. He sure did know how to keep me on my toes.

“Well? What is it? Bloodthirsty vampires? Dark angels trying to take over the world?”

Nero snorted. “Vampires are always bloodthirsty. And dark angels are always trying to take over the world.” His face grew serious. “It’s time for my promotion test, the Gods’ Trials. That is the task Nyx has given me. And you, if you still wish to be my second.”

“Of course I do. Without me, you’ll just get into trouble.”

“I find that an unusual statement coming from you.”

I grinned. He didn’t call me Pandora for nothing.

“When does it happen?” I asked.

“Now. We leave immediately. We have an appointment to keep with the God of War.”

2 The Battle Maiden of New York

I gazed out the window of the airship, down at the scorched sands of the Western Wilderness. The blanket of desert stretched as far as my supernatural eyes could see, punctuated only by the occasional cactus or a low plateau of red-orange stones. The only animals that lived out here were insects and the roaming herds of monsters.