Chapter 2

Travel between the gods' many worlds was made possible by a vast network of magic mirrors. When asked how many mirrors there were out there, each of my godly companions gave me a different number. And so I'd decided that no one truly knew how many magic mirrors existed in the universe. I suppose the task of summing them all up was akin to counting every grain of sand on a beach.

"Our mission here is straightforward," Devlin told us as we passed through the iron gates and entered the estate. "The Lords' Gala is a recurring meeting of the gods' lower nobility, one tier below the seven gods that sit on the council."

He was obviously explaining the gods' political structure for my benefit. The other soldiers on the team already knew it. They looked bored, but I was actually fascinated. I'd always known there were other gods out there, ones who weren't on the council, but to be honest, I'd never really thought about what they did.

"However, tonight's gala differs from the usual Lords' Gala in one very important way," Devlin said. "It is a Choosing."

"Are you certain?" Patch asked.

"You're joking," said Octavian.

"Yes, I am quite certain, and I don't joke," Devlin replied coolly.

"Could've fooled me," Arabelle muttered to Octavian.

He snorted. They were both grinning from ear to ear. Even Punch had perked up at the mention of this Choosing.

"The Choosing happens when one of the seven gods on the council has been displaced," Stash explained to me.

"Or someone in the lower nobility believes they have the necessary support to make a move and displace one of the Seven." Patch looked at Devlin. "Seeing as none of us have heard anything about this, my guess is the latter."

Devlin nodded. "Indeed."

"So who's making a play for power?" Arabelle asked. "And whose job are they after?"

"It's Valora. She's the one on the way out," Stash declared to everyone's surprise.

"How can you know that?" Octavian demanded.

"Is he right?" Arabelle asked Devlin.

"I am right," Stash said. "And I know because it's obvious. Due to recent events, Valora has lost many of her pledged supporters among the lower nobility."

I could have sworn Stash's gaze flickered to me for a fraction of a second, as though he were crediting me with Valora's misfortune. True, I'd unwittingly played a part in exposing her secret dirty deeds—and the secrets of all the ruling gods—but it was really Faris who'd masterminded the whole thing to advance his own position.

"Valora has lost face among the Seven as well," Stash continued. "The Seven voted for Faris to replace Valora as head of the council. Valora's trajectory is decidedly downward. She's a falling star."

The soldiers looked to Devlin for confirmation.

"Stash is correct," he told them. "The lower nobility is looking to push someone up to take Valora's place on the council. Valora's position is weak enough that one of them might succeed if they amass enough support here tonight. There are a few contenders, but the most likely to be chosen tonight is Lady Saphira. It is our mission to observe the Choosing and ensure that things don't come to blows—or to spells. Faris will be most displeased if anyone is killed tonight."

"Is the Choosing usually a bloody affair?" I asked.

"It varies, but there really have been so few of them, so it's hard to say," Patch said.

"The last one was a bloody good time." Punch looked up at the starry, moonless night, as though searching for an omen.

"Ironically, that was the night of Valora's Choosing," Octavian said. "It was a total shoe-in, of course, as everyone knew she was her father's choice to replace him. As such, nearly all of Mercer's supporters had pledged themselves to Valora."

"If everyone knew it was a shoe-in for Valora, why was it a bloody affair?" I asked.

Arabelle shrugged. "Another god tried to poison her supporters. And Valora retaliated. I heard the battle lasted seven days."

"Seven days and seven nights," Punch confirmed, looking way too cheerful about it. "I got to blow up more things in those seven days and nights than I ever have in any other battle in my life."

"The majority of what you blew up being furniture," Octavian said drily.

Punch glared at him, his hands compacting into fists. "I'll have you know that there were enemy combatants hiding behind that furniture."

Octavian glanced at me. "Thank goodness Leda hadn't been born yet, or the two of you would have destroyed the house too."

Punch snorted, and thumped me cheerfully on the back. I took it as a good sign that my godly teammates were including me in their banter; it meant they'd accepted me.

"I try to make a habit of not antagonizing houses," I said brightly. "It hurts like hell when they land on you."

"Well, let's refrain from blowing up houses or furniture at this Choosing," Devlin said over our chuckles. "It's our job to keep things civil." He leveled a commanding look on Punch. "Not to contribute to the mayhem."

"Of course, boss." Punch's words were contrite, but fantasies full of mayhem sparkled in his eyes.

The gala was just getting started when we finally reached the castle at the end of the very long, very meandering path from the estate's rear gate. The wide, open, straight path from the front gate was apparently reserved for the party guests, members of the gods' exclusive lower nobility.

"How does a god become a member of the lower nobility?" I asked as Stash and I took up our positions at one corner of the large stone terrace.

The Lords' Gala was taking place outside, right at the castle's doorstep. The stone building front was lit up like a stage backdrop. Soldiers stood guard on every tower, staring out across the dark plains that surrounded the castle. But not our team. We were supposed to stay here, on the ground level, and look out for trouble from within the gods' ranks.

"Alliances and intrigue," Stash told me. "Some gods are born into the lower nobility, but whether they stay there is entirely dependent on how well they can maintain and expand the alliances of their forbears. The Seven are more complicated. A god requires considerably more support to ascend to the council, but even the most powerful god can fall. As we are seeing with Valora right now."

"I can't say I will weep for her lost crown," I said. "But her losing it was Faris's doing. And now he's been rewarded for his plotting and scheming against the other Seven? It just feels wrong."

"The Seven chose Faris because they believe him to be the most capable god to lead us to victory over the Guardians. And he has already shown he will do whatever it takes to do that, even allying with the demons we've fought for millennia."

"We?" I arched my brows at him. "It's only been a few months, but you already talk like you are one of them."

"I am one of them. I always have been. And so are you, Leda. Stubbornly denying it might make us feel better about ourselves, but it won't change reality. We have to work with all that we've been given, not cut off our good arm in protest of other people's suffering. Crippling ourselves to soothe our conscience doesn't help those people. It only makes us weaker and less able to help them."

"You're right." I sighed. "I know you're right. It just…grates on me sometimes."

"Just remember who the enemy is."

"It's hard to remember who the enemy is when it changes every day."

He flashed me a grin. "One catastrophe at a time, Pandora."

"I like to multitask." I returned the smile. "The Guardians are the first on my list, but they aren't the last."

I looked out across the gala of gods. There they were, the members of heaven's lower nobility, dressed in their finest, surrounded by thousands of bright flames. There were candles everywhere—on all kinds of surfaces, and in all shapes and sizes.

A pleasant scent, fragrant yet not overwhelming, danced on the air. Actually, I realized, it was many scents, a bouquet of the senses, all combining seamlessly, melodiously, into one flowery aroma. The subtlety of the party's perfume surprised me. It was so delicate, so subdued. And so unlike the flamboyant gods. Whoever had cooked up the evening's aroma palette was as skilled as the person who'd designed the artful lighting.

A few weeks ago, I probably wouldn't have noticed any of these details. But ever since my sister Tessa had started her event planning business, she'd been burying me in design sketches, idea scrapbooks, and color collages. I'd never known there were so many varieties of the color pink, or so many ways to fold a napkin.

The gala's lights and aromas weren't the only elements that had been designed to perfection. Even the temperature was just right, not too chilly or too hot. The starry sky looked like a painting on the ceiling, almost too perfect to be real.

Tiny bottles of Nectar hung from the trees like fruit. When a god or goddess wanted a drink, they plucked one of the bottles from the branches. When they were hungry, they picked a shell from a flowering vine. The oyster-like shells were iridescent white, and tucked inside of them were bite-sized appetizers, elegantly prepared. Many of the party decorations were either edible, or edible things hung from them.

Water lilies floated inside immense fountains. Pink and white, purple and bronze, blue and silver, red and gold, black and platinum, orange and yellow—the lilies' petals glittered with magic. The flowers were all edible, each color a different dish. The fish that jumped between the flowers were edible too, but they weren't really fish. They were desserts that had been bewitched to look and move like fish. As soon as someone caught one, it transformed into a tiny cake, cookie, or some other sweet treat.

Beside me, Stash chuckled softly.

I looked at him. "Is something funny?"

"I've just had a delightful little daydream about you."

"I'm a married woman. And you and I are cousins, remember?" I scolded him.

"Not that kind of daydream, sweetness. I just had a fleeting thought about you grabbing Valora's crown and throwing it to the ground as you berated her for her misbehavior."

"That never happened."

"After that, you picked up her crown and put it on your own head."

"And that won't ever happen," I declared. "I am not going to take Valora's place on the council."

His brows drew together. "Why not?"

"Well, to start with the obvious, only gods can sit on the gods' council. I'm not a god."

"Your father is. The king of the gods, in fact."

"And my mother is a demon. So what does that make me?"

"Versatile?"

I nearly laughed. "An outcast. It makes me an outcast, Stash."

"You enjoy playing the outcast."

"Sure I do. Sometimes. But no one wants an outcast to sit on the gods' council. And I don't want it either. In that, the gods and I are for once in complete agreement."

"It was just an idea." Stash looked at me, his head tilting slightly. "You'd make a great evil queen."

"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence."

"If you ever change your mind, you have my vote, Leda."

I set my hand on his arm. "Thanks." I appreciated the sentiment, in any case. "So…" I shifted my gaze back to the dressed-up gods and goddesses. "Which one of them is Lady Saphira?"

His eyes scanned the crowd. "There," he finally said. "She's the goddess in the sparkling blue gown, the one wearing a decorative comb in her black hair."

I found her now. Lady Saphira was a little on the short side for an all-powerful goddess, but what she lacked in physical size, she made up for in presence. A cluster of gods had formed around her, and it was growing. There was something about her that drew people to her.

"What can you tell me about her?" I asked Stash.

"Lady Saphira is from a small but respected family with a vast network of alliances, many of them negotiated by Saphira herself. As you can see for yourself, she is very popular. She has an uncanny talent for always knowing just what to say to everyone. That's the main reason she has so much support to join the council. I believe her talent stems from her strong, highly-adaptable shifting magic."

"Strong shifting magic. Like Valora."

"That makes her an ideal fit to take Valora's place and become the next patron goddess of shifters," said Stash. "Another reason Saphira has managed to amass so much support is a key political alliance with her now-fiancé Lord Eros."

I followed Stash's gaze to a god with a soldierly stance. Even his black suit looked more like armor than evening wear. A dagger was strapped to his belt and a band of small throwing knives to each arm, but I hardly noticed them. My eyes were inevitably drawn to the massive sword on his back, which looked big and sharp enough to cut through a dragon, or slash the top off an ancient redwood tree. Eros must have always attended the Lords' Gala armed to the teeth because no one else was gaping at his impressive armament. Seriously, I counted more weapons on him than on any of my comrades in Heaven's Army, and I was fairly sure Eros had a few more weapons that I couldn't see.

"In other words, Saphira and Eros have pooled their resources with the goal of landing a seat on the council," Stash told me. "Lord Eros has pledged all his supporters to her. And with that, Lady Saphira has more support than any god here, even more than Valora."

"It sounds like she has this Choosing in the bag," I commented.

"Perhaps," he said. "But the night is still young."

"Who's that man standing next to Saphira? The one with arms as thick as tree trunks and eyes that burn like watchtowers."

"That's Calix," he told me. "And he's somewhat of a legend. Long ago, he served as a soldier in Heaven's Army, but now he serves only Saphira. He's her bodyguard, teacher, and trainer, sworn to protect her at all costs. Lady Saphira has studied under Calix her whole life in order to prepare her for this day, the day that she will claim her destiny."

"Very melodramatic. You should write speeches," I told him.

"I've thought about it."

"But for a burly fellow such as yourself, there are more jobs wielding a sword than wielding a pen?"

He chuckled. "Yeah. People see me and think ‘front line', not ‘fits well behind a desk'."

I snorted. "What did you mean about Saphira claiming her destiny?"

"From what I hear, her family has been trying—and failing—to ascend to the gods' council for millennia. So when Saphira was born, her mother decided her daughter would train day and night her entire life to be the perfect goddess."

"The perfect goddess," I repeated. "Talk about a lot of pressure."

"She is up to the challenge. If she wins the Choosing. She has competition. Someone else really wants the job."

I followed his gaze to an auburn-haired goddess. She was tall, and even beneath her fluffy ballgown, her form was lean and muscular. She had the eyes of a hawk and the air of someone who wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty.

"That's Lady Coralia," Stash told me. "After Lady Saphira, she's the member of the lower nobility with the most support."

"She doesn't look like a very nice person."

"She isn't," he confirmed. "Coralia believes the council has been too lenient with the gods' subjects. She wants to curb freedoms and force devotion."

"She sounds like a real treat."

"And yet her views appeal to many of the gods, those who believe they need to be less generous with ‘lesser beings'."

"Like mortals."

"Mortals are the beginning, but far from the end. Coralia and her supporters believe no one but the gods should possess magic. They don't believe in giving it away."

"She wants to dissolve the Legion of Angels?"

"She doesn't just want to dissolve it. She wants to hunt down and kill each and every Legion soldier. Because, according to her, they should never have been given magic to begin with."

This was getting better by the second.

"Including the angels?" I asked.

"Especially the angels. Because angels, with all their magic, are in the best position to challenge the gods."

"If she believes that, then she can't be a fan of either you or me."

"She's not."

"How do you know so much about her?" I asked him.

"I have seen into her soul."

Right. I'd forgotten Stash had that power. All gods—and angels too when they grew powerful enough—had a few special abilities outside the usual battery of spells and magic.

I hadn't yet displayed any truly unique abilities myself, well unless you counted my penchant for chaos. From my glowing hair that mesmerized vampires, to my power to compel monsters, every ‘special' power I had was just an extension of Siren's Song or Vampire's Kiss. So did that makes me nothing more than the end solution of a magic equation between my father the God of Sirens and my mother the Demon of Vampires?

I really didn't want to think about it.

"Luckily for us, it doesn't look like Coralia will win the Choosing," I said.

I had enough problems as it was without worrying about some fanatical deity coming after me and everyone I cared about.

"Yes, luckily," Stash agreed, but he was watching Coralia with obvious trepidation.

So I watched her too. The goddess was walking toward the water lily fountain, her bubblegum-pink ballgown swooshing as she moved. Every step was calculated, every footfall landing precisely where she intended it to be.

She was at the fountain. She was reaching toward one of the flowers...no, her hand landed on the stone rim. Her foot set down beside it. Then the other. She hopped across the water, onto the mermaid sculpture at the center. She was climbing onto the mermaid.

"What the hell…" I glanced at Stash.

Coralia's soul must have been shining the color of pure evil right now because he looked like he was bracing for one catastrophic explosion.

"Lords and ladies, gods and goddesses." Coralia's voice penetrated the chatter, silencing them all at once. "We have gathered here tonight to choose one of our own to challenge Valora, to ascend and become one of heaven's Seven. Most of us have come here in good faith, bonded by loyalty and shared virtue." She nodded at a cluster of gods and goddesses, presumably her supporters. "However, others have come here with only darkness in their hearts and lies on their lips." Her head snapped to Saphira, and she unfolded a very long, very damning finger toward the other goddess. "Lady Saphira has lied to you all. She is not what she seems. She is neither perfect nor loyal. And she has committed the most deplorable sin of all: she has lied to those who call her an ally." Coralia's eyes honed in on Eros. "She has betrayed you, Lord Eros."

Eros said nothing, but all around him, the gods erupted into loud calls, some denouncing Coralia's words and others voicing their support.

"Saphira pretended to be your ally," Coralia pressed on. "But all along, she's been stabbing you in the back. She lured you in with sweet promises, Eros. Behind your back, however, she has been aiding the rebels in your territory. She's been helping those terrorists plot against you." Coralia looked at Saphira's shocked face, and her eyes flashed with predatory delight.

"Words! That's all this is! But where is your proof, Coralia?!" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Proof is what you want?" A smile twisted the goddess's lips. "Well, then here it is." Coralia pulled out a photograph. She waved her hand over the paper, projecting the picture onto the dark sky. "Here is your proof."

The gods erupted in fury. The sky-picture showed a gathering of people in hand-stitched wilderness clothing. They stood around various smaller tables decked with fruit and bread baskets, eating and talking and laughing by candlelight. And Saphira was among them.

"Those are the clothes of a people who call themselves the Free," Stash whispered to me. "They live on a world inside Lord Eros's territory, but they do not acknowledge his authority as lord. In fact, the Free do not worship any god, demon, or deity of any kind. And so the gods have labeled them heretics and insurgents, disrupters of the holy order of the universe."

"I'm surprised the gods haven't killed them all," I replied softly.

"They cannot," said Stash. "The Free have chosen their hiding place well. The world on which they live is a world where no magic works. As long as the Free remain there, the gods cannot touch them."

That would explain the gods' fury. The Free weren't only an affront to their authority, the gods were also powerless to do anything about them. And if there was one thing the gods abhorred above all else, it was feeling powerless.

The gods' angry eyes turned on Saphira. They accused her of treachery and of consorting with the enemy. They accused her of being wholly unholy.

And Saphira just stood there in silence, her face frozen in shock. She might have been trained since birth to be the perfect goddess, to always know what to say to everyone, but right now she was completely speechless.

"Enough!" bellowed her bodyguard Calix.

His voice boomed so loudly that it ripped apart Coralia's sky-picture. The crowd fell silent too.

"These accusations are lies," hissed the god, standing protectively before Saphira. "And Lady Saphira is exercising her right to an immediate inquiry."

Coralia laughed, shaking the photograph in her hand. "An inquiry is a waste of time. The evidence is right here. She's a traitor to the gods, and no traitor to the gods can become one of the Seven."

I clenched my fists. I didn't know much about the Free or Saphira, but I did know that I couldn't stand conniving, self-serving evil bitch goddesses like Coralia.

"It does not matter what you think, Coralia." Saphira's bodyguard gave the evil goddess a cool look. "Law is law, and the gods' law states that Lady Saphira has the right to an immediate inquiry." His brows drew up slowly. "Unless you believe yourself above the law?"

Coralia set her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Fine. Whatever. An inquiry will not change the truth: she is a traitor." She looked at Saphira. "Choose your Inquirer well, Saphira."

Saphira lifted her head and her voice too. "I choose Leda Pandora."