Chapter 5

Most Legion canteens were as rigidly ordered as the organization itself. There was a head table—or, in some cases, a private dining room—for the angel and higher officers. And then rows upon rows of rectangular tables for all the other soldiers.

From the beginning, I'd decided that my canteen was going to be different. Here in the Legion's Purgatory office, we ate at cozy round tables, surrounded by our friends. Angels and officers and soldiers and guests could all sit together, regardless of rank or title. There was no head table at all. Call me a rebel, but I liked to have some choice of where I could sit, not be stuck in my assigned seat.

This morning, I sat with Basanti and Alec at a mostly empty table. The other attendees of our little breakfast party had yet to arrive.

"Hey, Major, are you going to eat those hash browns?" Alec asked Basanti.

Lieutenant Alec Morrows was one of the Legion's walking talking battering rams. He was built strong and talked tough, but underneath all that muscle and all the lewd jokes, he had a good heart. He preferred heavy artillery—and shooting monsters with it. Alec had a raunchy sense of humor, and you had to take everything he said with a grain of salt.

Basanti had been staring off into the room, obviously lost in thought, but Alec's words brought her back into the here and now. "Yes, I'm going to eat them, Morrows." She plunged her fork into the hash browns in question, staking her claim. "That's why I put them on my plate."

Basanti had served the Legion for over a century. She'd seen a lot, done a lot, and didn't take any shit from anyone.

"Shame." Alec's gaze slid over to my overflowing plate.

"Forget it," I told him, skewering a strawberry.

"Sharing is caring, Leda."

"Spoken like someone who wants something."

Beside me, Basanti snorted.

My canteen's free-choice seating was about so much more than where you got to sit. It was about choosing your own friends. It was about not allowing invisible boundaries to keep you apart. Angels were always set so far above everyone that they were left completely isolated, completely alone. Their only company was other angels, and most of them wanted to stab one another in the back. That's probably why most angels were so damn inhuman.

Basanti had known me since I'd joined the Legion of Angels; in fact, when I'd been an initiate, she'd served as one of my trainers. And Alec had known me nearly as long. In a normal Legion office, it wouldn't have mattered. As soon as I'd become an angel, they'd have put me on a pedestal, high and holy above everyone. So high and holy above everyone, in fact, that few people would have dared speak to me.

That wasn't the kind of angel I wanted to be. I didn't want to be alone. I wanted to be surrounded by friends. Always and forever. Because friends mattered so much more than proving what a badass I was.

"Here." I tossed Alec one of my muffins.

He caught it. His eyes looked down at it, then up at me, his brow furrowing in suspicion. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing," I assured him.

"Then why are you sharing it with me?"

I smirked at him. "I'm feeling particularly magnanimous this morning."

He took a bite, and, when it didn't kill him, he took another. "You sure are in a good mood. Maybe you should go away more often."

Basanti elbowed him in the shoulder.

"Ow, woman! That hurt!" he complained.

"You'll live." Her dark eyes sparkled; her lips curled. "But if you're rude, Leda will smite you."

Alec looked at me. "Will you really do that?" He pretended to look frightened.

"I'm not even sure how to smite people," I admitted. "But when I find out, you'll be the first person I find." I winked at him.

He chuckled, then tossed what was left of the muffin into his mouth. All Legion soldiers had a hearty appetite. Due to all our magic and all the running around we did, we burned through food like we breathed in air. But Alec was special. He could eat twice as much dinner as the typical soldier and still be hungry for dessert.

A chorus of catcalls interrupted Alec's search for food. I glanced over at the door—and the source of the commotion.

Ivy and Drake had just entered the canteen. Ivy had the figure of a supermodel, the shimmering hair of a goddess, and the compassion of everyone's best friend. Drake was professional yet funny, and handsome yet boyish. Both Ivy and Drake had their fair share of admirers. A few of those admirers now shouted out their congratulations. Drake had recently been promoted to level five and Ivy to level four.

Basanti's eyes panned across the room. "Their arrival has caused a great deal of hoopla."

"Purgatory is a new office, and Ivy and Drake are our first promotions." Alec glanced at me and bowed his head. "Besides our illustrious Pandora. But you became an angel before you were promoted. And before there was an office here." He frowned. "You know, Leda, you always do everything out of order."

"And we love her for it," Ivy said as she and Drake sat down at the table, their food trays fully loaded.

I arched my brows at her. "Stockpiling for the winter?"

"For the day," Ivy replied. "I expect I won't find time to eat again today."

Ivy had been especially busy lately. Living on the chaotic Frontier had come as a big change for most of the Legion soldiers, who were so accustomed to order. Ivy was helping them adjust. She was the Legion's counselor in Purgatory.

Her real name was Ivy Downs, but she didn't want people to think of her as Dr. Downs. She wanted to make people happy, not depressed. So she'd told people to call her Dr. Happy. She'd even stuck a happy face pin to her jacket.

"You have time to see me later today, doc?" Alec asked her.

"Sorry, my schedule's full."

"But I'm so despondent." Alec put on a sad face. "And I need cheering up." He pretended to look at the happy face pin on her jacket, but we all knew he was really staring at her breasts.

Drake thumped him on the back to adjust his gaze. "Is Nerissa joining us today?"

"Not today," I said.

A contemplative crinkle formed between Ivy's eyes, but she didn't comment. I was avoiding Nerissa at the moment, but I hadn't told anyone. I really didn't want to get into it.

"After a week with Heaven's Army, how does it feel to come back down to Earth?" Ivy asked me, smiling.

I returned her smile. "It's good to be back."

"Did those gods give you a hard time?"

"No, not really. The soldiers in Heaven's Army…well, they weren't what I'd expected. They weren't like the gods I'd met before, the Seven. Being with them felt a lot like it does here, with my friends. Some of them seemed almost human."

"Besides the earth-shattering magic," said Alec.

I nodded. "Well, there is that, yes."

"And how long will you be staying here?" Alec asked. "Don't get me wrong. General Windstriker is a competent commander, but he's not nearly as much fun as you are."

I chuckled. "Nero was hard on you, was he?"

"You have no idea."

"He was just trying to make us stronger, so we'll survive the battles to come," Drake said.

Alec rubbed his arm, like it still hurt from one of Nero's training sessions. "His efforts to help us survive felt an awful lot like trying to kill us."

"That's just his way of showing he cares," I laughed.

"It seems the General has other ways of showing he cares." Ivy flicked her gaze to my new necklace. "Nice bling."

The noise level in the canteen had finally settled down after Ivy and Drake's grand entrance, but it now spiked again. Even before I turned and saw her, I'd felt her enter: my kitten Angel. It appeared her morning hunt had been a success. She sauntered across the canteen, dragging a dead giant rat with her.

"I swear that cat's grown a few inches since yesterday," Alec commented. "That's not natural." He looked at Drake. "Is it?"

Our resident cat expert weighed in. "She has grown."

Basanti's eyes followed Angel's progress across the room. "She's certainly bigger than Storm."

Storm was Basanti's cat, a gift from her angel lover Leila.

"Storm is normal," Drake said. "Angel is not."

"Who are you calling not normal?" I demanded.

"Your cat," Alec told me.

"She's bigger than any house cat I've ever seen, that's for sure," said Drake. "In fact, she looks more like a monster than a cat."

"The universe has a twisted sense of humor." I sighed. "I wouldn't be surprised if my kitten turned into a monster."

Angel plopped down at my feet, purring with contentment as she ate her breakfast.

I looked fondly upon her. "But I've never seen a monster that was so cute."

"True," Ivy agreed, reaching down to give my kitten a cupcake to go with her dead rat.

Like a true cat of mine, Angel grabbed the cupcake between her paws and proceeded to lick off the creamy icing.

Alec blinked. "Your cat eats icing."

"Yes."

"She's going to make herself sick."

"Angel has an iron stomach. And she loves icing. And cheesecake. And pizza with extra cheese."

"I thought cats couldn't eat dairy products." Alec glanced at Drake.

But Drake didn't answer. His attention was on something else—or, more accurately, on someone else.

"You have sprinkles in your hair," he said, fishing candy pearls out of Ivy's crimson mane.

He ate one of the sprinkles, then offered another to Ivy. She licked it right off his finger. Then they both laughed. Alec snorted, Basanti rolled her eyes, and we all wondered once again why Drake and Ivy weren't a couple. No one understood it. Perhaps the fact that they'd been friends since birth was holding them back, but in all honesty, they already were a couple. They were just the only ones who hadn't realized it yet.

"It must be nice," Alec sighed. "I'm still trying to find my one true love." He set his hand over his chest. "A woman to warm my heart."

"More like warm other things," Ivy teased him, finally disengaging from her sprinkles hunt with Drake.

"Ivy, I assure you that I—" Alec's eyes locked onto the doorway to the canteen. "Oh, hello, there."

I turned to check what had gotten him so excited. I wasn't overjoyed with what I found.

"Stop looking at my little sister like that," I warned him.

Ok, so Tessa was nineteen years old now and technically an adult, but she'd always be my little sister. From across the room, Tessa gave me a little wave—and Alec a big wink. To make matters worse, she was wearing a pair of skintight pink hot pants and a crop top that had about as much fabric to its credit as a washcloth.

"I told you to stop looking," I hissed at Alec.

He pretended to look away, but that pretense evaporated as soon as Tessa slid into the seat between him and me. As usual, Tessa basked in the attention. At the age of six, my sister had discovered the joys of makeup. At seven, during our trip to the big city, she'd had her first spa treatment. And by eight, she'd had a line of boys following her around wherever she went.

"Sorry I'm late. I had to pick up the latest edition of Magical Weddings." Tessa slapped the magazine down on the table.

I recognized the flower-filled picture on the glossy front cover. Well, I should have. It had been taken at my wedding two weeks ago. Overlaid on the picture, in a flamboyant cursive font, was the line ‘a wedding fit for an angel'.

I dropped my face to my open palms. "Tessa, why is that picture on the magazine cover?"

"I know. I told them to use the one of the aisle instead." She rolled her eyes. "But what do I know? I'm only the one who designed the whole wedding!"

"I meant, why is my wedding even in a magazine at all?"

"The editor of Magical Weddings was interested in doing a piece on me…" She flipped forward a few pages, past advertisements for Bewitching Moisturizing Lotion and Stardust Shampoo. "…ah, here it is. A feature on ‘the visionary Tessa Pierce, the most exciting thing to hit the wedding planning market since magic candles'." She pointed at a picture of herself, standing in front of the angel mural at the Purgatory train station, her gloved hands crossed demurely in front of her body. She was wearing an elegant silk suit whose creation had required at least ten times as much fabric as the outfit she was currently wearing.

"Very smart outfit," Ivy commented.

Tessa grinned at her. "Thank you. It's an Estelle Annette original."

"Couldn't you have let Estelle dress you today?" I sighed.

"Oh, Leda, Estelle is far too busy to make house calls." Tessa giggled. "But I hope someday she'll lend her clothing designs to my event designs."

"It's good to have goals, but that still doesn't answer why my wedding is in this magazine." I tapped my index finger on a photo of me in my wedding dress.

"Because your wedding made me, Leda. You're all the rage. And so now are angel weddings. I'm getting so many bookings for them. All the brides want to be just like you. And they want their grooms to be just like Nero."

"If a bride wants her groom to be a different person, maybe she should actually marry a different person," Basanti said practically.

"A lot of women think they can change their man. But no one's changing me," Alec declared proudly. "If the Legion can't change who I am, then no one can."

"No one thinks they can change you, Alec," Ivy assured him. "It's universally accepted that you're a hopeless cause."

His whole face lit up with a grin. "Why, thank you, Ivy."

"I'm glad your business is doing well," I said to Tessa. "But couldn't you have used another wedding in the magazine?"

"Oh, no. It had to be you. You're an angel, Leda. You can't feature an angel wedding without an angel."

"Someone should tell that to all those brides buying angel weddings," Drake chuckled.

Basanti grunted in assent.

I just sighed. "I thought Bella was coming with you today," I said to Tessa.

"She'll be along soon." My sister didn't even look up from the magazine, but she did snicker.

What could that mean? Maybe Tessa had played a practical joke on Bella, something like drawing a mustache on her face with a marker while she was sleeping. Tessa had pulled that silly prank on all of us back when we'd been kids.

It wasn't long before I got my answer to the source of Tessa's glee. Bella entered the canteen. There was no marker-mustache on her face, but she was with Harker. Like really with him. They weren't holding hands or anything like that, but something had changed between them. I could sense it in the way they moved, and I could see it in the way they looked at each other.

"What brings you here, Harker?" Basanti asked him as he sat down at our table.

"I'm escorting Bella from New York," he replied. "It's a dangerous journey."

The trip from New York to Purgatory was one hour by high-speed train through quiet, empty plains on the right side of civilization. It wasn't any more dangerous than a trip to the local grocery store. So either Harker just wanted to spend time with Bella, or he was worried that something other than monsters would get her. I suspected the answer was a little bit of both. He was in love with Bella, and being the granddaughter of a demon did make her life dangerous.

"Escorting Bella?" Alec sounded disappointed. "And here I was, thinking you just wanted to steal Leda's food."

"He knows better than to try that one again." I flashed Harker a grin.

He returned the gesture, his blue eyes twinkling. Though his smile had grown a tad harder, even wiser, since he'd been made an angel, there was still humor in that smile.

"I don't know about that," Basanti said. "I think Harker will definitely try to raid the parfait buffet."

Like Basanti, Harker had been once a student of Leila Starborn, the Fire Dragon and Angel of Storm Castle. They'd been friends for years, and Basanti knew him better than anyone except for Nero.

"Parfaits?" I said, surprised. "Really? That's your weakness?"

"Yes, really," replied Harker. "Now you know my weakness. Don't try to throw a parfait at me during training."

"You know how I am, Harker. Everything that isn't nailed down is fair game."

"And even some things that are nailed down," Ivy snickered. "I still remember how you got Jace Fireswift tangled up in some gym ropes when we were all initiates."

I laughed. "Nero gave me such a chewing out over that. He claimed tangling up your opponent during training wasn't dignified."

"Well, what would you do if one of your initiates tangled up her opponent in gym ropes instead of performing the exercise that you'd set her?" Basanti asked.

"Applaud her for her stellar creative thinking skills?" I suggested.

Basanti buried her face in her hands.

Creativity can be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, Pandora.

My gaze zeroed in on the canteen's doorway. Nero stood there, dressed in a fitted leather uniform that made me wish he was wearing nothing at all.

And creativity is dangerous in my hands?I asked him.

Everything is dangerous in your hands.

There was a light in Nero's green eyes as they drank me in, a light that made me feel like I was the only woman in the world and nothing else mattered. His gaze caught on the necklace he'd given me earlier this morning. He looked pleased that I was still wearing it. Magic crackled, supercharging the large space between us. A slow, sexy smile twisted his lips. Oh, yes, he was pleased. Very pleased.

"Leda, your hair is blushing," Ivy whispered to me.

The look in Nero's eyes had left my body flushed and my skin tingling. Of course my hair had wanted to be heard too. I tried to calm it down. My hair was like a big mood ring, broadcasting whatever I was feeling to anyone around to see it. Controlling my hair was especially difficult when my emotions were running hot. Suffice it to say, Nero had a talent for making my emotions run hot.

At least I'd managed to stop my wings before they'd exploded out of my back. My wings were even worse than my hair. They also changed color with my changing emotions, but they had a much bigger canvas size to broadcast my feelings to the world.

I missed you, I told Nero.

Sure it hadn't even been an hour since we'd been together, but it already felt like an eternity. My time with Heaven's Army had kept us apart for a whole week. After that ordeal, I didn't want him to ever again leave my side. I wanted nothing short of being with him every second of every day, from here on out to eternity. Because there was no better life than this.

Of course you missed me,he said. We are two hearts in one. And when you venture too far from me, it feels like a part of me has been ripped away.

I rose from my seat. No wonder you were so irritable with my soldiers, I teased him. I could hardly stop myself from running full-speed at him.

Nero stepped over the threshold, into the canteen. I was only steps away from him. I briefly considered throwing propriety to the wind and jumping into his arms, but the sight of his parents walking in behind him put those plans on hold.

Damiel stepped forward, his gaze focused on my new jewelry. "What a beautiful necklace, Leda."

"Thank you. Nero gave it to me."

"Destiny stones are exceedingly rare. And very, very expensive." He glanced at his son. "I didn't realize that you had accumulated that much wealth, Nero."

Nero's green eyes met his father's blue ones. "Being a loyal Legion soldier is more profitable than faking your own death and going rogue."

Damiel was already opening his mouth to counter, but Cadence was faster to the draw. "Leda, Damiel and I have come to help you on your demon errand."

She looked different than the last time I'd seen her, on the night of my wedding. Damiel looked different too. I couldn't quite put my finger on how they'd changed, but that change was undeniable. Even their halos seemed to have a different kind of glow to them.

"You see, we've learned of a magical passage that leads directly into the demons' council chamber," Cadence told me.

A passage into the demons' council chamber. That certainly peaked my curiosity. I was about to ask her how she'd come to possess such knowledge, when my phone buzzed.

I pulled it out of my jacket and glanced at the message on the screen. "Looks like we'll have to take this party to go." I tucked my phone back into the inside pocket. "That was Faris. He's ordered me to move out and make contact with the demons' council."