“Of all of you, you always were the one to get into the most trouble,” Calli said. “More than all the others combined, in fact.” She chuckled. “And you always insisted on getting yourself out of it too.”

“Of course. The one who made the mess should fix it. That’s orderly.”

Calli gave me a strange look I couldn’t decipher. “You are more like your Colonel Windstriker than you think.”

I didn’t bother to argue with her about ‘your angel’. I’d argued the point with my sisters and friends, but not with Calli. She’d always been able to see through right through my bullshit. And truth be told, all pretending aside, my heart did lose a beat whenever someone called him mine or said that I was his. I tried not to think about that too much, about what that meant, because, honestly, it scared me shitless—even more than the thought of trekking to the heart of the monster-ridden Black Plains.

So I merely said, “You don’t even know Nero. How can you say we’re alike?”

“I know he’s an angel. And that’s how angels think. Cleaning up messes. Restoring order to chaos. Like you.”

Nero called me the bringer of chaos, and he was right. But so was Calli. I did feel the need to restore order after unleashing that chaos. It was a weird dichotomy that lived inside of me. A split. That’s what I was—perpetually caught, constantly tugged between order and chaos.

“Also I read about him,” Calli continued.

“Oh, really?” I imagined Calli, my badass mother, flipping through the latest tabloid column, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the image.

“I felt it prudent to know what you were getting yourself into,” she said. “Leda, he’s an angel nearly two hundred years old, so I don’t need to tell you how dangerous he is. You know the Legion of Angels doesn’t have its soldiers do the right thing, just the lawful thing. The law of the gods. This might be our world, but it’s their playground. And their rules.”

“I know, Calli. And you know I never wanted any of this. I never wanted this life. I wanted to be here with all of you, together.”

Calli set her hand on mine. “This life was never meant for you, Leda. I always knew it, deep down. I wouldn’t admit it to myself, even after you left to join the Legion. But it is the truth. You were meant for great things. You were meant to join the Legion of Angels.”

Nero had once told me something just like that. He’d told me that my path would eventually lead me to the Legion.

“Do you believe in destiny?” I asked Calli.

“For most of my life, I’d have said no. But now…” She shook her head. “I’m just not sure anymore.”

I’d never seen Calli so indecisive. It was unsettling. Calli was our rock and our glue. She’d always known what to do, no matter what problem we’d had.

“Do you know anything about my past?” I asked her, then took a bite of my roll. I was running out of time.

“Nothing before your days living on the streets. I once looked up your previous foster mother, but I couldn’t find anything about a witch named Julianna Mather. “

“Thanks,” I said, disappointed but not surprised. I pushed back from the counter. “I have to go now.”

I walked down the dark streets of Purgatory. The town was waking up, people hurrying from one place to another, as though afraid to be caught outside in the dark. They watched me from their windows, hope in their eyes. They thought I was here to save them from the atrocities that plagued the town. My throat constricted with guilt. I wasn’t their savior.

“Come on, honey,” a male voice cooed. “Don’t go doing that now.”

I snapped my head around, looking for the man who owned that voice. I found him in the shadows of an old building. He and his buddy were wearing black trench coats. That meant they were Royal’s men.

“What is that she’s carrying?” the other man asked.

“A taser. Magitech. The boss says civilians aren’t allowed to carry weapons in town.”

A shadow beyond them shook. As I moved in closer, I saw that shadow was a woman. Trembling, she held the taser before her body. The first man smacked the weapon from her hands. It slid across the cobbled street and clinked against the stone building on the other side. The temple. Those fiends were doing this just outside the Pilgrims’ temple.

“Don’t even think about it.” The first man moved with her, blocking her from reaching the weapon. “Don’t move, or I’ll cut up that pretty face of yours.”

I hurried forward, my steps fueled by pure anger. I didn’t care that I wasn’t allowed to interfere. I didn’t even think about what would happen to me if I did. All I could see was that poor woman, those two thugs, and the end of my sword.

A hand locked around my arm like an iron clamp. I spun around to punch whoever had the gall to stand in my way of helping that woman. Nero caught my fist mid-air.

“Let me go,” I growled.

“You will not interfere in local affairs.”

I gritted my teeth, pushing against his hold. I couldn’t budge him an inch. I was stuck.

“Stop, Leda.”

I kicked him in the shin.

“This is your last warning.”

I pushed with every shred of supernatural strength I had, but I might as well have been trying to move a mountain. Nero’s hand jerked sideways. I heard my wrist snap a moment before the pain tore through my nerves. I swallowed my agony and didn’t stop fighting. I pushed and pulled and kicked.