Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(21)

I took a deep breath. “I need some time to think.” To decide if I could really get involved with someone who was so different from me, from someone who would do whatever he had to in order to keep me safe—at the expense of my own freewill.

“Let me know when you’ve made your decision.”

His face was as hard as granite, not a single emotion present on it. He brushed the back of his hand softly across my cheek. A gust of wind shot through the room, and then he was gone, leaving behind a single dark feather.





7





The Cold Kiss of Vengence





I held the dark blue angel feather between my thumb and index finger. There was magic in it. Nero’s magic. It melted through my skin like a warm snowflake dissolving into my soul. I zipped open my jacket to put it inside, but I stopped.

A skeptical voice inside of me screamed that this was just another angel game. Nero hadn’t left the feather there by mistake. He’d wanted me to have something of him with me always. It was just another way of marking me.

What is so bad about taking something of him with me? I asked that voice. That’s what people who care about each other do. They give each other mementos. I tucked the feather inside my jacket and invited the skeptical voice to go take a hike.

When I got back downstairs, Damiel was still standing at the kitchen island, making buttermilk pancakes. And eating them. He must have the metabolism of a race horse.

“More pancakes?” he asked, offering me a small stack.

I waved the plate away. I wasn’t feeling very hungry anymore.

“Chocolate?”

I looked at the piece of dark chocolate in his hand. Chocolate was different. I was always hungry for chocolate. I took the tiny piece into my mouth, allowing the rich flavor to slowly melt into my tastebuds.

“So Nero figured out how to remove the mark.” Damiel dumped a small bowl of strawberries over his pancakes. “I figured he would if sufficiently motivated.”

“So, you knew it could be removed?”

“Yes.” He looked offended. Of course he knew. He knew everything about angels. Nero really had to put aside his pride and ask his father to help him prepare for his promotion trials.

I plopped down on the barstool across from the stove. “Yes, Nero was sufficiently motivated to remove it.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear.”

I cringed. Somehow the fact that he’d overheard my serious conversation with Nero upset me much more than him eavesdropping when we’d been making out downstairs. What we’d spoken of up there as we bared our hearts and souls was deeply intimate.

“Nero is right, you know,” he told me.

“Thanks,” I said darkly.

Damiel shrugged. He was an angel and Nero’s father. The two of them had a lot of views in common, more than Nero and I had, in fact.

“You have to be sure you can accept the angel and the man,” he said. “Best to head this off now before you break his heart.”

Break Nero’s heart? My heart was in far more danger. Angels took many lovers, but they didn’t love. Not easily. Most of them had one true love in their entire immortal life and that was it. Everyone knew that, even the girls who lied to themselves that they would be the one, the love of an angel’s life—right before they threw their panties at them. I blushed, recalling that I had thrown my panties on the floor of Nero’s office. But I’d been high on Nectar. That was different.

I wasn’t in this for fun. I wanted something else. But could I even have that with Nero? He’d only been gone a few minutes, and I missed him already. But the thought of that archaic angel tradition of marking whatever you’d deemed to be yours… It just made me mad! How many other bizarre angel traditions were there that I didn’t know about?

“A lot of them,” Damiel told me.

I looked up sharply. “You need to ask before you intrude on someone’s thoughts.”

Damiel gave me an unrepentant smile. “I like you, Leda.”

I didn’t know why that offhand comment made me feel better, but it did. A little anyway. But a little wasn’t enough. Not even close.

“You are torturing yourself,” Damiel said.

It was a comment, an observation. Not a judgment. An angel would never judge someone for torturing themselves. They believed self-flagellation built character.

I rose from my seat. “I have to go.”

“Come back soon. It’s horribly dull here.”

I left Damiel in his gilded cage. Outside, the clouds were back. There wasn’t a rainbow in sight. The frozen rain had slowed to an icy drizzle. It spilled down my neck. My boots squelched against the slushy pavement.

I couldn’t run fast enough to the Legion office. When I got there, the reception area was as full as I’d ever seen it, packed with soldiers hauling in prisoners and bodies. One of the soldiers was arguing with the secretary about whether he was allowed to bring in a werewolf who smelled of garbage. The werewolf had apparently been hiding for weeks. His injuries coupled with the tight security around the city had prevented him from ever making it out of New York. So he’d been eating out of trashcans to survive.

“He smells,” the secretary declared. “Colonel Fireswift will hold me personally responsible if I allow that werewolf and his stench past the reception hall. You shouldn’t have even brought him inside.”