My other little sister had more than enough to say for the both of them.

“Your picture is being projected all over town with some fancy Magitech machines the Legion dropped off,” Tessa told me. “It must be costing a boatload of magic to keep that all running.”

I felt my jaw clench up involuntarily. Colonel Fireswift was being such a pain in the ass.

“Are you two on the run from the Legion? Are you going rogue?” Tessa asked me.

“No.”

“Then what’s going on?”

I scooped potato pancakes onto my plate. “It’s classified.”

Tessa gave me a hard look. “You really are one of them now, aren’t you?”

“One of what?” I asked, spreading applesauce over the pancakes.

“One of them. The Legion. A soldier. The old Leda wouldn’t keep things from us.”

“It’s for your own protection.”

Tessa pouted out her lips. “I bet you told Calli.”

“Calli is an adult, not a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ll be eighteen in four months.”

“Then we can revisit this topic at that point.”

“Not cool, Leda. Not cool.”

“Leda is just teasing you,” Bella told her.

Tessa gave me a challenging stare.

“Yeah, I am.” I snickered. “You are such an easy target.”

Tessa was sensitive about her age. She wanted to be an adult—yesterday—and she didn’t like being called a kid. You had to know your loved ones’ weaknesses so you could tease them properly. And protect them. Especially that.

I told them all why Nero and I were here. When I was done, Bella said, “This Colonel Fireswift doesn’t sound like a very nice person.”

“What a dingleberry,” Tessa declared.

Nero’s eyebrow twitched like he’d appreciated the insult. “Indeed.”

“I can’t believe we have a real-live angel in our house. At our table.” Tessa smiled sweetly at him. “How old are you? How many feathers does an angel have? Is it true an angel’s wings are an erogenous zone? I read that in Paranormal Teen. Oh my gods, I have so many questions! How many people have you killed? What do angels like to eat? How many lovers have you had? Do angels really mark their lovers? I read that in Paranormal Teen too. And that angels can have sex like twenty times in a row.”

“Are you writing a piece for Paranormal Teen?” I commented.

She ignored me, her attention firmly on Nero. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Translation: she was going to repeat back everything he said to her friends at school and thereby become even more popular than she already was.

“How many Legion soldiers passed through here yesterday?” I asked Calli, before Tessa could come up with any more crazy questions for Nero.

“Nearly a hundred,” Calli replied. “It’s the biggest excursion onto the Black Plains that I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you think we could borrow your motorcycle, the one you keep outside in the wall in that shed?”

“The last time you borrowed one of my motorcycles, you almost got killed trying to rescue an angel.” She looked at Nero like it was his fault.

Nero responded to the accusation with cool silence. That silence held for a few minutes, while we ate our pancakes and applesauce.

Tessa finally broke it to ask Nero, “Is it true you once fought nearly two hundred monsters all by yourself?”

“No, it was over two hundred.”

“Wow.” She looks at him in awe. “My sister’s boyfriend is a super-hot angel.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Oh?” Tessa asked with a challenging grin. “Then what is he exactly? Because you have been staring at him all of dinner like you want to jump his bones.”

I blushed.

“And?” Tessa persisted. “What is Colonel Stud to you?”

I looked to Calli for support, a silent plea to tell off Tessa for being inappropriate.

But Calli braided her fingers together and said, “I’d like to know too, Leda.”

“As would I,” Nero said.

Tessa latched onto him like a drowning woman holding onto a life raft. “Do you think you and Leda are soulmates? And when you get married, can I plan the wedding? I’m thinking white roses, pale like Leda’s hair. Or do you think she’ll look washed out all in white?”

“The Legion uses white roses at funerals to honor our soldiers who have fallen in battle,” Nero informed her.

Gods, he did not just take the bait.

“Red?” Tessa asked.

“The Legion uses red roses for promotions, to signify the blood that was spilled on our path to glory.”

Tessa shot him a cute scowl. “You are just making this up.”

Nero shook his head once.

“Well, do you have a color chart or something for what wedding-approved colors I can chose from?”

“Golden roses. They signify new beginnings and the gods’ will. That is the flower color of weddings.”

I had a feeling he was playing along to tease me. Angels had a twisted sense of humor. Kind of like family.

“Only that one flower? That’s it? What happened to freewill and choice?”

“Dear, I don’t think you understand how a military works,” Calli said gently. “The Legion of Angels isn’t about freewill or choice. It is about rules and regulations, duty and honor.”