Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(59)

I looked at the angel wiping sleep from her eyes. “How did you sleep?”

“Better than I have in many weeks.” She dipped her chin to me. “Thank you for the rescue.”

“Thank you for not turning.”

The last thing the world needed was another dark angel wreaking havoc on humanity—or a doubly powerful light-dark angel wreaking havoc on humanity. She might not have thought a Legion soldier could wield both light and dark magic, but I was living proof that it was possible. I’d held the dark angel’s flaming sword, and it hadn’t gone out. I’d drunk both Nectar and Venom. There was dark magic in me too. Harker had been this close to telling Colonel Starborn about it, but he’d stopped himself. He hadn’t betrayed me this time.

“How is Storm Castle? Is it well?” She wasn’t asking about the castle. She wanted to know how Captain Somerset was doing.

“She is doing well,” I told her.

A small smile broke the angel’s lips.

“You were close.”

“Yes, long ago. She was my student, like Harker. When her previous mentor died, I offered to train her. She was very good, a rising star. She had so much ambition.” Colonel Starborn sighed. “But she didn’t stay long, only a few months. We never formed the magical bond of student and teacher that I have with Harker.”

“You regret that.”

“Yes.”

I’d always been so sure of what everyone was and what they weren’t. I’d been so wrong. Sitting here, I was beginning to realize that angels could regret. They weren’t as infallible as they pretended to be—and they felt more than they’d ever admit. And when they did feel something, those feelings were as strong as the magic that flowed through their blood. It only took one look at the pain burning in Colonel Starborn’s eyes to realize how deep her feelings ran.

“We were close almost at once,” she told me.

“But you grew apart.”

“I pushed her away. Not consciously. I was just acting as I thought was right. Duty to the Legion above all else. I didn’t consider that she was different, so new to the Legion. She didn’t know the ways of the angels. The ways of the Legion.”

It always came down to the same issue.

“Do you know why there are so few angel matings?” she asked me.

“Too much Nectar in the human body changes its balance. Two people with powerful light magic cannot produce children, so an angel is always mated with a soldier of a lower level, someone the Legion’s tests confirm to be a good magical match. Each person’s body integrates the Nectar differently.”

“Yes,” she said. “Nero is rare, the child of two angels. One of a kind. Nero’s parents’ pairing worked because his father was dark enough, though they didn’t realize this at the time. That darkness made them compatible. That made Nero’s conception possible.”

“The Legion wants to have as many angels as they can get,” she continued. “So it decides whom its angels will marry. Pairings are made to create the highest chance of magic-rich children. A few years after I became an angel, when I was fertile for the first time, the Legion married me to another soldier in the hopes we would have a child.” A look of sadness washed across her face.

“You didn’t love him?” I guessed.

“Caleb was my best friend. I loved him like a brother. We’d been friends since we were initiated into the Legion together. We were both shocked when the magic tests showed us to be compatible, but we did our duty. We were married for many years without producing a child. Then I met Basanti. She knew about him, about our marriage. She said it didn’t matter.” Colonel Starborn frowned. “Until it did.”

“What happened?”

“Do you know what happens when a female angel becomes fertile?”

I nodded, remembering Nerissa’s speech about angel fertility. “It heightens the emotions of everyone around you.”

“Basanti’s emotions were very heightened when she attacked Caleb one evening in my apartment. We all said things we regretted.” Resignation hardened her voice. “I went away with Caleb the next morning on our retreat. When I returned, Basanti informed me that she was leaving. She’d applied for a transfer to another office. This whole thing was too much for her. I tried to explain I was just fulfilling my duty as an angel, to make soldiers for the Legion, but she couldn’t separate personal and professional. She even liked Caleb, but after that evening she couldn’t stand to be around either of us. She felt betrayed. And every time she looked at us, she saw that betrayal. She couldn’t be with me as long as I was married to him. Even after he married someone else, it was too late for us.”

“I didn’t know you could get out of a marriage the Legion arranged.”

“It’s hard for an angel to produce a child, especially a female angel.”

That explained why most Legion brats had an angel father, not an angel mother.

“Even under perfect magic circumstances, even when everything is aligned, conception is very unlikely,” she continued. “After many years of us not producing a child, the Legion decided we weren’t compatible enough, that it wasn’t meant to be. They allowed Caleb to marry someone else. I haven’t been magically compatible with anyone else since, at least not enough to be paired.”