Chapter 19

The Angels' Court took a recess for lunch, and we returned to the garden library. I glanced up as the door to the library opened, but it wasn't the kitchen staff with the food I'd ordered. It was Leila and Basanti.

I stood, surprised by their appearance, but glad to see them. "What are you doing here?"

Neither Basanti nor Leila answered. Their faces were blank, like they were trying to keep some really bad news from me.

"Are those burn marks on your jacket?" I asked Basanti. "Has there been an attack on Storm Castle?"

"No," she replied. "For the past few weeks, Leila and I have been running some experiments with magic and the weather at Storm Castle."

"We're trying to figure out if we can calm the weather and magic in the Earth's wild areas," Leila added. "Just as Cadence and Damiel did on the Interchange. And in doing so, they wiped out all the monsters on that world. It's simply a matter of balancing the planet's magic completely."

Cadence smiled at her former protégé. "To accomplish that, Damiel and I had simply just absorbed the powers of sixteen immortal daggers, realizing our destiny as Keepers, the most powerful of the Immortals. And we had just died and been reborn in a pool of boiling lava. The magic from all of that happening exploded from us and balanced the world's magic once more."

"I'm no scientist, but it doesn't sound like those are conditions we can easily repeat," I said.

"No," Leila agreed. "True, we don't have sixteen immortal daggers at our disposal, but the principle of using magic to balance the Earth's wild magic remains the same. Without the benefit of all that Immortal Keeper magic, we're going for precision over power."

Leila laughed strangely. Uneasily. She sounded weird, kind of mad-scientist-like. She was definitely not her usual straight-talking-soldier self.

"Experiments, you say?" I said. "So what happened? Did you two nearly blow yourselves up or something?"

"No," Leila said, distracted. "Well, maybe we blew ourselves up just a little." She gave her hand a casual, dismissive wave. "But our injuries were minor."

I arched my brows at her. "And now you're hanging out with us because…"

Basanti said, "After the accident—"

"The nearly-blowing-yourselves-up accident?"

"Yes," Basanti answered me. "Afterwards, Ivy was looking us over. And she found something else."

I waved my hands around. "Don't leave us hanging, girls."

"We're pregnant," Leila declared.

So not bad news, but certainly surprising news.

"Congratulations," I said. "Which one of you?"

"Both of us," Leila said.

My eyes grew wide. "Both of you? At the same time?"

"Yes," Basanti said.

"To the day," Leila added.

"Not to sound indelicate, but…"

"You are rarely delicate, Leda Pandora," Leila told me.

I smiled and shrugged.

"The babies have no father," Leila answered my unasked question.

"Then how did this happen?" I asked.

Basanti shook her head. "We have no idea."

"Because typically to get a baby, a man and a woman—"

"Thank you, Professor Pandora," Basanti cut me off. "We all know how babies are made."

"Well, apparently, you don't know how these babies were made," I pointed out.

"According to Ivy's tests, the babies are the biological product of Basanti and myself," Leila said.

"And these experiments you were running…"

"Were strictly about the magic of the Earth's weather and elements," said Leila. "It did not involve our DNA or test tubes."

"There's more," Basanti said. "According to Ivy, we're both nearly two months pregnant."

"The same as all of you," Leila added.

"This is just getting weirder and weirder," I said to Cadence.

"Indeed," she agreed. "First, we all come down with the Fever and all get pregnant in the same cycle."

"And now Leila and Basanti got each other pregnant," I said. "Has that ever happened before?"

Cadence shook her head. "No."

Basanti looked at me, her eyes narrowed. "I blame Leda."

"Why me?"

"You started this. It must be contagious."

"I'm pretty sure pregnancy is not contagious," I laughed.

"When you do it, it is."

My smile wobbled. "I don't even know what that means."

"You're the Angel of Chaos. The laws of nature get all wonky whenever you're around."

"True. Maybe we should quarantine her. Before this spreads further." Leila winked at me.

"I'm already effectively quarantined," I sighed. "And so are all of you, here in our gilded airship guarded by gods and elite Vanguard soldiers."

"This is truly fascinating. So many angel offspring conceived at once. And now the two of you." There was a spark of academic delight in Cadence's eyes. She looked liked she wanted to throw on a lab coat and figure this all out.

"Your pregnancies are truly a miracle," I told Basanti and Leila.

Basanti sat down beside me. "Tell it to my queasy stomach."

I patted her back. "You know what helps with that? Cake. Lots of cake."

"You should not give nutritional advice to anyone, Pandora," Basanti said with wary eyes.

"You're just grumpy because you're pregnant, so Nyx exiled you to hide away here just like the rest of us," I told her, smiling. "But at least you and Leila get to spend time with each other. We haven't seen our husbands in days. It could be weeks before we do. Or maybe months."

"The Angel of Chaos has a point," Leila said to Basanti.

"Sure, there's the nausea and the peeing every hour, but there are perks to pregnancy too," I told them.

"Like what?" Basanti asked, looking quite miserable.

I grinned at her. Then I pulled out my phone and added even more food to our lunch order.

* * *

Our lunch arrivedat the same time as Stash did. The three guys from the kitchen walked in after my demigod cousin, pushing carts very full with food.

"You think you ordered enough to eat, Leda?" Stash commented.

"No, but I can always order more," I said brightly.

"The kitchen is going to run out of food."

"I'm way ahead of you. I've already approved an increase in our food budget."

Angels got to do important things like that.

"Our pregnancies are certainly costing the Legion a lot of money," Cadence commented.

I smirked at her. "I'm not the one craving all that fancy food."

"Schnitzel is not fancy food, Leda."

"Sure it is." I grabbed a fat fry with my fingers. "It's fancy because you have to eat it with a knife and a fork."

"I love being pregnant again," Alice said happily. "The rest of the time, the Legion has all these rules about what you may and may not eat."

"Especially in the Central Territory," said Leila. "When it comes to nutritionally-balanced meals, Fireswift is hardcore, even for an angel."

"Yes, he is," Alice said. "I know those nutritionally-balanced meals are key to ensuring soldiers operate at peak performance, but sometimes I just want to eat something fun."

I looked at her yogurt with berries. It even had granola sprinkled on top.

"Now let's not get too crazy," I told her.

"But when I'm pregnant, I can eat whatever and how much ever I want. It's glorious." Alice ate a spoonful of her totally healthy yogurt. She closed her eyes, and a decidedly dreamy look fell over her whole face.

"It is awesome," I agreed. "I can finally order coffee again. And have ice cream with every meal. I can finally do that too."

"I bet you always did that," Cadence teased me.

I dropped a scoopful of ice cream into my coffee. "True." I grinned.

"It's not just about the food. It's also the pampering," Andromeda said. "Bubblebaths, facials, manicures, hair treatments, beauty treatments…we can get whatever we want. And all because we carry the Legion's future inside of us."

"So much for the famous self-discipline of the Legion's soldiers," Stash chuckled.

"Hey, do you want to be pregnant?" I asked him.

"No. Not really." He looked horrified by the very idea of it.

I laughed, then continued listening to Cadence's description of wing massages. They sounded heavenly. I wondered if I could convince Nero to give me one. Of course I didn't say that in front of Cadence. She was Nero's mother, after all, so that would have been just too weird.

"You two should join us for our morning pregnancy yoga," Alice said to Leila and Basanti.

"I'm not flexible," Basanti stated matter-of-factly.

"That's ok. Neither is Leda," Alice pointed out.

"Hey! I'm getting better. I actually managed to touch my toes this morning."

"Because you bent your knees," Andromeda reminded me. "A lot."

I shrugged. "But it got the job done."

"I'm not really into frou-frou sport and braiding each other's hair and all that," Basanti said.

But Leila looked like she liked the idea. Her hand rested on her belly. Sure, it was still flat like all of our bellies, but that wasn't the point. It was a gesture of love. Love for the baby growing inside of her.

Leila was really glowing. I remembered her recently telling me about how much she'd always wanted to have kids but had never been so lucky to get them. Well, now she and Basanti were going to have two.

"And then there's the best thing about being pregnant: I finally have real boobs." Alice pointed down at her chest.

I lifted my coffee cup in the air. "I'll drink to that. I am, for the first time since joining the Legion, getting some serious curves. Now I look like one of those busty women on the cover of a muscle car magazine, sprawled out on the hood of a truck, sticking out my scantily-clad chest, a devilish come-hither look on my lips."

"You sure have a vivid imagination, Leda." Basanti took a bite of cake. Then she turned to me, surprise written all over her face. "You're right. Cake does make my queasy stomach feel better."

"Told you."

Basanti took another bite of cake. "I can't believe I'm subscribing to the Leda Pandora pregnancy diet of cake and ice cream."

"Just keep clear of those vitamins Nerissa keeps trying to give us," I warned her. "They have the opposite effect of the cake and ice cream."

One of Basanti's eyebrows cocked upward. "You mean, they're actually healthy?"

I laughed and took some more dessert.

* * *

Now that ournumbers had swelled, Tessa had to add more chairs to the dais in the Court Chamber—and add a fancy angel banner for Leila too.

Finally, we'd reached the end of the day, the final round of petitions. It opened with a bang. Our first petitioner of the session was none other than Arina Phoenix.

Arina marched up to the base of the dais and declared, "Leda Pandora, I heard you're looking for me."

"Yes," I said in surprise.

Arina's arrival here on the airship would save me the trouble of searching the city for her.

"We need your help," I told her.

"And I need yours. That's why I came here."

"How can we help?" I asked her.

"It's my children." Arina's voice shook. "I need you to help me get them back."

I remembered her cute twins, a girl and a boy about eight years old.

"I'm so sorry they're gone, Arina. Don't worry. We'll find them."

"I know where they are," she said, her voice harder, her fists clenched. "And I know who took them. It was the Guardians."