Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(61)

“What happened?” I asked her.

“I saw Cadence.”

I looked back to gauge Nero’s reaction. He was very still, eerily quiet. He hadn’t cleaned up since our trip to the Sea of Ice, and interrogating the dark angel hadn’t helped with his terrifying, blood-stained appearance.

Colonel Starborn met his eyes. “I really saw her, Nero.”

A hint of relief flashed across his face. He was finally starting to believe his mother was truly alive.

“I didn’t see her in person,” she amended quickly. “I saw her in my mind. She used our connection—and her telepathic magic—to reach out to me. I’d spent years blaming myself for helping her and Damiel escape. I thought he’d betrayed and killed her. When she spoke to me that day, she told me he’d never betrayed her. During the escape, they’d gotten separated, and she’d found herself in a new and wondrous place. A place where powerful magical beings protected her and other refugees.”

“The Guardians,” I said.

“So you’ve heard of them.”

I looked at Nero. “We’ve heard the name, but we don’t know what they do or who they really are.”

“No one does. Not any of us out here anyway,” replied Colonel Starborn.

“Out here?”

“Cadence told me the Guardians live in a dimension outside of our own. They speak to us in visions, in dreams. And sometimes people find their way to them. By searching, by being found, by mere chance. The Guardians found Cadence in the Western Wilderness. She was almost dead, her injuries severe. She’d just escaped captivity. Her captor had mutilated her wings to keep her in a cage, so she couldn’t fly away.”

Her captor. That was Raven, the man who’d been abhorrent even before he’d been turned into a vampire.

“The Guardians brought Cadence to their dimension. They healed her, bringing her back from the brink of death. She is with them even now.”

“Damiel is looking for her,” I said.

“She knows.”

“Then why hasn’t she left?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know,” Nero muttered, his tone making his dislike for his father perfectly clear.

“When I talked to her, I got the feeling she wants to go to him, but she can’t,” Colonel Starborn told him.

“Why?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Can you lead us to my mother?” Nero asked her.

“No. She is outside our dimension. She can contact me, but I can’t find her. At least not under normal conditions.” She bit down on her lip, her eyes lifting in contemplation. “When I was trapped in that dark nightmare being tortured, I reached out to anyone and everyone I cared about. Cadence must have heard me because she answered my call. She told me she was sending someone to get me out of there.”

I looked at Nero. “The voice I heard in my head in the Fire Mountains, the voice who told me where the dark angels had taken Colonel Starborn, that must have been your mother trying to help us save her.”

“That’s something Cadence would do,” Colonel Starborn said. “She was always so kind.”

“If she has been alive all this time, why hasn’t she reached out to me?” Nero asked her.

He looked so young, so vulnerable, so different from his usual hard, tough exterior. When I saw that vulnerability peek out from his armor, it made me want to throw my arms around him and give him a big hug.

“I don’t know why she hasn’t contacted you,” replied Colonel Starborn. “We’ll ask her when we find her.”

“Yes. We will.”

“I have a lot to say to her,” she said. “Most of all, I have to apologize for doubting her.”

“We all make mistakes,” I told her. “What matters is not those mistakes, but what we do after them. That is what defines us, who we are, what we stand for.”

“Yes. I need to stop the demons. I need to clean up the mess I’ve made, the mess the Dark Force has usurped for their own purposes.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know you will fight to the end to stop the demons. I meant you and Captain Somerset. It’s never too late to fix things.” I could feel Nero’s eyes on me.

“I don’t think she wants to hear what I have to say,” Colonel Starborn told me.

“I think she can be convinced. When I talked to her, she sounded like she regretted what happened between you two.”

Hope lit up her eyes. “Really?”

“Really. You were both unwilling to back down, unwilling to accept the other without change. Love isn’t conditional. It isn’t about changing the other person. It is about accepting someone for who they are.”

Colonel Starborn gave me a long, assessing look. “You are very wise for someone so young.”

“I might know a thing or two about it.”

She tried to sit up again, rising nearly an inch before she fell back down. “This is unacceptable,” she stated with the cold ferocity of an angel.

“Give it time,” I said.

“If only I had time. But the Dark Force is not done with us. I fear what they did to me was just the tip of the iceberg. I was so foolish.”