Chapter 18

The next day, when we arrived in New Orleans, Jace came up to the airship to greet us. He met us in the garden library.

"Colonel Pandora, Colonel Lightbringer," he said, nodding to me and Cadence in turn.

I rushed forward and gave my friend a hug.

"Leda, I'm trying to uphold all due formalities," he complained.

I stepped back, amused. "Oh, very well. Then you'll want to meet my friends from Heaven's Army." I indicated the godly soldiers. "That's Devlin, the team leader. Then we have Octavian, Arabelle, Punch, Patch, Theon, and I believe you've already met Stash."

Jace bowed to them. "It is an honor."

Octavian's mouth twisted into a grin. "He's a much better-behaved angel than you, Pandora."

"You can go hang out with him instead if you want," I told him.

"No," replied Octavian. "I'm still waiting for things to get really disastrous here. We all know they will."

"Patch and I have a wager going about the source of the disaster," Punch said. "He thinks an unsavory character will try to crash the Angels' Court. I, on the other hand, am betting on monsters attacking the airship. Maybe the ship will even explode."

He looked far too excited by the prospect.

"I sure hope not," I told him. "Nyx threatened to bill me directly if I blow up any more of the Legion's property."

Jace indicated the armed guards he'd brought with him. "I have brought twenty of my soldiers to guard this ship from unsavory characters, monsters, and explosions for the duration of your stay in my territory."

I knew his offered soldiers weren't just about my protection; they were also about keeping an eye on another angel in his territory. I had to hand it to Jace; he was a really great angel. He knew every greeting, upheld every formality. No wonder a few of the other angels had tried to turn him against me.

Jace then acknowledged Andromeda and Alice, going in order of rank. "Captain Singh." Finally, he came to his mother. "Lieutenant Jones."

Alice nodded back. "Lieutenant Colonel Angelblood."

Jace did look happy to see his mother. A hint of that happiness broke through his cool and collected angelic facade

He gestured to his soldiers, who turned neatly on the spot, then went briskly off to their posts. Once they were gone, Jace's shoulders relaxed a little. He didn't need to put on a show for his subordinates anymore.

He joined his mother at the bar, asking enthusiastically about her health and her pregnancy. Seeing mother and son like this, I knew I had to act to preserve their perfect family.

"Could you give us a moment?" I said quietly to Cadence and Andromeda. "I want to speak to Jace and Alice."

They looked curious, but they left.

"You guys too," I told the soldiers from Heaven's Army.

"We're supposed to be protecting you," Devlin protested.

"You can do that from outside the room."

Devlin stood there for a moment. I thought he was going to argue, but then he left with the others. He must have realized I was right. Anyone who wanted to attack me would first have to go through that door—and through all of them.

I looked at Stash, the only one who'd stayed behind.

"I'm sticking to you like glue, sweetness. No one is going to hurt you." He stared back at me, daring me to tell him to go.

I didn't. Stash and I had been through a lot together, including the time he'd inadvertently tried to take over the world. Ironically enough, it was partly because of that incident that I trusted him completely.

I put up the privacy spell I'd learned from Harker, then I joined Jace and his mother at the bar. Jace had made tea for both of them, and they were drinking it.

He glanced at me. "The room cleared out fast."

"I asked them all to leave. I need to discuss something very important with you."

And I wanted Alice to feel like she could speak freely, without fear that anyone might overhear her.

"You look very serious, Leda," said Jace.

"This is very serious," I told him. I looked at Alice. "It's regarding your husband's Archangel Trials."

Recognition flashed in Jace's eyes. He knew what I was going to say because I'd told him it before. But I hadn't yet told his mother, and she was the key to making Colonel Fireswift see reason.

"As you know, I accompanied Nero as his second during his Archangel Trials," I said to Alice. "What you don't know is that I was not supposed to survive the Trials. None of the seconds are supposed to survive. That's the whole point of the Archangel Trials. The gods present the prospective archangel with an impossible problem, one that can only be solved by sacrificing the companion they'd brought with them, the person they love most in the world. The Archangel Trials aren't about proving your magic or might. They are about proving you would sacrifice anything and everything for the gods. Only then do they make you an archangel."

Alice's eyes were wide. "Why has no one noticed by now that an angel's second always dies in the Archangel Trials?"

"I suppose because the Archangel Trials are such a rare event," Jace said. "And we're all told how dangerous they are."

Alice gave her son a hard look. "You knew about this?"

"Leda told me a few weeks ago. I've wanted to tell Father, but I just don't know how to bring it up. You know how he is."

"Yes, I do."

"He always has to follow the rules, no matter what." Jace frowned. "The person Father loves most in the world is you, Mother."

"Your father has already asked me to be his second." Alice swallowed hard. "The gods really want him to sacrifice me?"

"Yes," I told her. "To prove his loyalty to them. In exchange, they will make him an archangel."

"How did you survive?" she asked me.

"I wasn't meant to survive. Nero and I cheated, and we almost didn't get away with it. The gods nearly sentenced us both to death for what we did. We were only saved by some convenient political infighting between the gods on the council. But they made it clear that such a thing will not happen again. They won't allow anyone else to circumvent their rules. Even now, the gods insist the Archangel Trials will remain as they are." I pounded my clenched fist down on the countertop. "But the Archangel Trials are nothing more than a sacrificial ritual. They are against everything I believe, everything I am trying to do now with the Angels' Court. I want to gain people's trust, to help them, not demand horrible sacrifices out of them."

"Leda is trying to make the Legion's initiation ritual safer for initiates," Alice told Jace. "Dr. Harding is experimenting with Nectar to see if it can be done."

"That's ambitious." Jace looked at me. "Most angels won't like that any more than they like your Angels' Court. They want people to believe the Nectar is only for the chosen few. They don't want too many people to be worthy. It's about sacrifice."

"It's exactly that kind of thinking that leads to the Archangel Trials, where an angel needs to sacrifice the one they love most," I said. "Sacrifice. This is all about sacrifice. When we join the Legion of Angels, we're told our lives are over, that we belong to the Legion now. They separate us from our past, from humans and supernaturals. And then the sacrifices continue. To become an archangel, you need to sacrifice even more. You need to kill the person you love most."

"Have you told Xerxes?" Alice asked me.

"I've tried to speak to him, to warn him, but he refuses to hear anything at all I have to say about the Archangel Trials."

"Xerxes is very proud. He wants to win by playing by the rules."

"In the Archangel Trials, even if you win, you lose," I told her. "The gods designed it that way. The Trials aren't about how strong or how good you are; they're about if you are willing to sacrifice what you love most in this world."

Jace looked at his mother. "Her."

"They won't do it now, not while she's pregnant," I said. "When Cadence was pregnant with Nero, they had Damiel's best friend go with him to his Archangel Trials. They sent Jiro there to be sacrificed. But now, I don't even know who else they'd send with your father. Jace, you're an angel. The Legion is very short on angels right now. The gods won't sacrifice one angel to promote another to archangel. They will wait until Alice has given birth."

"And then they will send her off to die," Jace said darkly.

"Not if we can help it," I told him. "I've asked Ronan to try to change the others' minds about the sacrifice, but he is only one god. I can't imagine Zarion or Aleris agreeing to change anything, and the other four gods won't be easy to convince either." I offered Alice and Jace a smile. "Still, we have eight months to figure this out. And we will. I promise you we will save your mother, Jace."

He clasped my hands. "Thank you for helping us, Leda, even though it's against the rules."

"I'll remind you that you thanked me for breaking the rules the next time you lecture me about rules."

Jace hugged me. So did his mother.

"May the gods bless you and your child, Leda," she said solemnly.

"Ah, shucks, you're making me blush."

"If you're all quite finished hugging…" Stash smirked. "…I need to clear up some security issues with Leda before today's Angels' Court."

"Of course," Jace said, then he and Alice left the room.

When we were alone, Stash turned to me. "You are risking a lot to help them, Leda. Disrupting the gods' order isn't something one should take lightly. Faris does not wish to kill you, but once your child is born, he might decide you're more trouble than you're worth to him."

"Faris will most likely try to kill me anyway once my daughter is born," I replied. "And he will try to kill Nero too. Not that we're going to allow that to happen. As long as we're in the picture, Faris will never truly control our daughter. So I guess we have eight months to figure out a solution to that problem too."

"I will help you in any way I can." Stash set his hand over his heart.

And I set my hand over his. "I know you will."

We started walking to the Court Chamber.

"How are you handling being caught in the middle of the conflict between Zarion and Faris?" I asked him.

"For now, they're both happy with where I am, and so neither is asking anything from me. Sooner or later, each will try to force my hand against the other. I'll deal with that problem when I have to. Naturally, I've set up contingency plans for that stormy day. But until then, I'm going to live my life day by day. I have to try to live for myself as much as possible, you know?"

"I can help you deal with Faris and Zarion," I offered.

"That is nice of you, Leda, but don't you think you have more than enough on your plate already?"

"Truth be told, my plate is overflowing, but I'm not about to let that stand in my way of helping the people I love."

Stash stared at me for a bit, then pulled me in for a big hug. "Thanks, sweetness. You really are my favorite cousin."

"Do you even have any other cousins?" I chuckled.

"We do," Stash told me. "Zarion and Faris have another brother, named Regin, but they don't ever talk about him. Apparently, the gods all consider him quite mad."

"He must really be off his rocker if the other gods think him mad."

Stash nodded. "He really is. And so are all ten of his children."

"Ten children? Whoa."

Gods were even less fertile than angels. And even for a human, ten children would have been pushing the boundaries of fertility.

"Rumor has it Regin's children were the product of some pretty foul magic," Stash said. "The gods won't even speak of it."

I cringed. "Which means it's really, really bad, or they don't even know how it happened."

"Regin and his children live on eleven distant moons that orbit the same world," Stash told me. "Those moons are barren, desolate places with no portals to anywhere else. They're much like prisons actually. And Regin and his ten children are all kept separate because the gods can't trust them when they are together. They would gather too much power—and likely scheme to overthrow the gods' council."

"They sound like a lovely bunch of megalomaniacs."

"Faris once gave my team the job of checking up on Regin and all of his offspring," said Stash. "All of them are completely bonkers, through and through."

I smiled at him. "Well, I'm honored you like me more than our other crazy cousins."

Stash chuckled. When he stepped back, I spotted a tear in his eye.

"Hey, badass, are you crying?"

"I apologize for my weakness, Leda."

I wiped his tear away. "Don't be afraid to let them see us cry, sweat, and bleed. For it is not a sign of weakness. It is a strength they cannot understand and therefore fear."

Stash nodded. "Very wise words."

"Yeah, they are. I once read them on a roll of inspiration toilet paper."

Stash laughed.

We'd reached the entrance to the Court Chamber. Cadence, Andromeda, and Alice were waiting for us there. Jace must have already flown back to his office on the ground.

Punch and Patch stood on either side of the double doors.

"Give ‘em hell, Pandora," Punch said.

I winked at him. "I always do."

His grin widened as he and his brother opened the doors for us. I entered the room with Cadence at my side. As always, Andromeda and Alice followed just a few steps behind us.

The Chamber was decked out as grandly as before, though Tessa had added considerably more flowers. The place smelled divine. My sister had also hung three banners behind the dais where our four chairs waited for us.

Cadence's banner displayed a female angel, in full halo. The angel, which looked a lot like Cadence, held her glowing sword over her hand. Her wings were spread out, wide and majestic, in all their heavenly glory. Her angel name ‘Lightbringer' was printed in a large, grand font under the picture.

My emblem was a female angel holding a box, opened just a crack, with monsters lurking on either side of me. My wings were folded protectively around my body—no, around the box in my hands. The wings were shielding the box from the monsters that lurked at the banner's fringes. ‘Pandora' was written in a more whimsical font than Cadence's ‘Lightbringer'.

The third banner was Jace's, a sign of respect for our host angel. Even though he wasn't here with us, we were in his territory. His emblem was of a male angel who held a flaming sword in each hand. His name ‘Angelblood' was written, big and bold, below him.

All the banners' illustrations were colorful and realistic. They looked like playing cards from the game of Legion, which was well-known for its high-quality art.

The four of us took our seats, and then the sergeant with the big, booming voice began our introductions. They lasted longer this time, since he had to pay respect to our host angel. And Jace had two other angels in his family history that required mention.

Finally, I could declare, "The Angels' Court may now commence."