Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(20)

I shuddered to think of what Fireswift had done to Jace. He’d basically crucified him to the wall to make a point, to teach his son a lesson.

“You are in our world now, Leda. The world of angels. You joined the Legion willingly. You went into this with eyes open.”

“Not this,” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. “The work, the magic, the training. The very real possibility of death. Yes, I signed up for that. I didn’t sign up to be marked by warring angels.”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” he said with a patient sigh. “I am trying to protect you. The fact that you expected to continue your life in the same manner as you had lived before joining the Legion shows how naive you are. You are no longer human, Leda. You need to stop thinking of yourself as such. You have to make some adjustments to our culture. You won’t survive otherwise. And you won’t ever be happy.”

Loneliness swelled up inside of me. I felt so lost, so out of place. The world of angels, the Legion, the path to becoming an angel myself—it was so different from everything that I’d ever known.

I missed my home. My family. The familiar smells from Calli’s kitchen. Waking up next to my sister. Sharing that stupid tiny bathroom between the six of us. Laughing over meals. Teasing each other. I missed it all. It made my heart hurt to think of everything I’d given up.

But there was no going back now. I’d thought the hard part of joining the Legion would be surviving the Nectar. The trials, the training, the monsters. The constant exhaustion and stress that pushed me to the breaking point.

I’d been wrong. The hardest part of joining the Legion was everything I’d had to leave behind—and this whole new world I’d blindly flung myself into. I’d read a book about angels, but I didn’t understand them. I didn’t even understand my place in the world anymore. I wanted to bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth, humming loudly until it all went away. But I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t all go away. I knew it wouldn’t. This was my life now. The best I could hope for was to hold onto as much as my humanity as I could, like Captain Somerset had.

“Please. Remove the mark,” I pleaded with Nero. “If you care at all about me, you will.”

“I did this because I care. Fireswift did it to hurt me by hurting you. I’d rather you hate me and be safe than be a slave to him.”

My heart was a twisted clump of joy and pain. “I know why you did it, but you should have asked me.”

“We both know you would have refused. And that your refusal would have been a foolish decision. You still don’t understand our world, Leda.”

He was right. I didn’t understand this crazy world of angels and gods. How could I? It was all so alien to me.

He looked at me, his expression softening slightly. “There is a way to remove my mark. It hasn’t spread far. I can still drink it out of you.”

“Please do it.”

I thought I caught a flash of pain—of betrayal—in his eyes, but it was gone so fast that maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I didn’t want to hurt him.

Nero lifted his hand to my face. He brushed the hair off my neck, and my pulse sped up in anticipation. I was so hopelessly addicted to him that it was hard to think straight. But I had to. I had to wrap my humanity around myself like a shield, just as Captain Somerset had.

His fangs penetrated my skin, but this time when he drank from me, it didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel anything in fact, except for a dull pain from the wound. There was nothing sensual about it. He drank carefully, draining his mark from me with surgical precision.

Finally, he pulled back and said, “It is done.”

“Thank you.” I reached into one of my pouches for my healing powder, which I dabbed over the puncture marks on my neck.

“Fireswift will just mark you again,” he warned me.

“I will handle him. Now that I know his game, I can stop him.”

Nero didn’t respond. His expression proclaimed he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Maybe he was right, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Nero turned away. “I have to go.” His voice was so cold.

I caught his arm. “Removing the mark isn’t about you.”

He glanced back at me. “Leda, don’t insult both of us by lying to yourself. This is entirely about me. And it’s about you. You joined the Legion. This is your world now, your culture. You just haven’t accepted it. And you haven’t accepted me for who I am.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he spoke first. “It’s the truth. You want to become an angel, to gain our powers for your own use, but you want nothing to do with who we are. You can’t have it both ways, Leda. And you can’t have me both ways either. If you want to be with me, you have to accept me for what I am. I’m not going to lie to you. A lot of what angels do isn’t pretty. Humans paint us in shining halos, but we aren’t that way at all. We are vicious and stubborn and simply don’t think the way humans do. We can be cold-hearted bastards, but we always protect those we care about.”

“I do care about you, Nero.”

“The angel and the man are one person. Intertwined, inseparable. It is who I am. Can you accept that?”

“I…”

I stopped myself. This was important. Could I really accept all of the angel politics, the games, the power plays? Nero was right. It was part of him and his culture. I couldn’t ask him to stop being who he was. I wouldn’t even respect him if he did.