I squinted, looking in the mirror on the wall. My glamour had faded away. She looked like myself again, albeit a really awful version of myself. Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn’t see well enough. The crimson stain on my head looked bad enough with blurry vision. I did not need to see it in crisp detail.

If I had my own face back, that meant Nero could no longer maintain the spell. I hope he was ok. I could still sense him. Somewhere. The feeling was unfocused, muffled. Was he still unconscious? I wondered how long I’d been out.

“Your angel won’t be coming for you,” he told me in a cruel voice.

I was dizzy and a little delirious, but I definitely hadn’t spoken that time. Which meant he was reading my mind. Mind-reading, what was only mildly annoying when Nero did it, was about to get very problematic.

I tried to put up a mental barrier. I knew it had holes in it the size of New York City, but it was the best I could do right now. My headache was reaching epic proportions.

“Then I will come for Nero,” I told the angel defiantly.

He laughed. “Will you?”

“Yes. Right after I kick your ass.”

The angel laughed again. Apparently, I was really funny.

“I’m serious,” I said to him, glaring.

“Oh, I know you are, sweetheart. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t panic. I’m rather busy at the moment. And so are you. I need your help to get us into the Treasury.”

I looked at the sizable pile of gold beside him. “You’re already in.”

My eyes panned past the gold, snagging on the pile of rocks. My stomach knotted up. Nero was buried under all of that. I didn’t see the way out of the house, so the gateway must have closed. There were two hundred Legion soldiers in the city, but they didn’t even know Nero and I were here. And even if they had, they couldn’t get into this chamber. Only I could open the gateway. My heart surged with hope. That meant rogue angel and his allies couldn’t kill me, not if they wanted to ever get out of here again. That hope died as soon as it had come. One look into the angel’s cold eyes reminded me that there fates far worse than death—and that he was intimately aware of all of them.

“We’re not in the real Treasury. This is just the foyer. These worthless trinkets are not the real treasure.” He gave the gold and gems a dismissive wave. “The real valuable things are beyond there.”

His hands clamped around my throat, and he lifted me up like I weighed nothing. He dragged me over to the gold-framed door, my have chains scarping against the floor. The gateway had been sealed by a single angel symbol. A grid of thirty distinct symbols was etched into this door.

“Open it,” Osiris said, his voice snapping with a harsh strike of the command.

I tried to hide my hands behind my back.

“Putting your hands on the door is the first thing we tried,” he said, his voice almost bored. “It didn’t work. Your blood didn’t work either. I think this is a door that requires a spell.”

“Then cast away,” I snapped. “You’re an angel. I’m sure you can figure it out. You know a lot of spells.”

“Oh, but I can’t do that spell. Only a child of darkness and light can. You.”

She looked at the door. “I don’t know how to open it.”

He tapped his finger on my forehead. “It’s inside of you, that memory. Just waiting to be unlocked. And I’m going to help you remember.”

Black magic sparked on the angels’ hands, but it was the inhuman abyss of his dark eyes that chilled me to my core.

17

Memory

I couldn’t believe my luck when my restraints popped open, feeling my hands and legs. As I backed up slowly, not knowing where I was going but just glad to be able to go somewhere.

“Wardbreaker, what are you doing?” one of the men protested. “This isn’t a game.”

It was then that my foggy mind snagged on the realization that the angel had been the one to open my restraints. His companion was wrong. This was a game, that deadly mind game that angels played.

“I know what I’m doing,” Osiris declared. “If you want results, then leave me to my work.”

The men grumbled but left the chamber to go down a narrow tunnel. Where did it lead to? Probably nowhere useful, I feared. The only doors the angel seemed to care about were the gateway to the outside, now buried in rock, and that gold-framed door that led to the real treasure. The weapons of heaven and hell.

I realized that while I might be unchained, right now I was in even more danger than when I’d been nailed to the wall. I looked away from the angel’s dark, unyielding, trying to find a way out, but there wasn’t one. The angel stood in the doorway to the blocked tunnel. There was no way in or out of this nightmare. Maybe—just maybe—I could get to Nero, but Osiris would catch up to me long before I could dig him out. I didn’t have telekinetic powers, and she wasn’t that strong, not strong enough to move boulders. And right now I could barely lift my own head, let alone a pile of rocks. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t walk straight.

Osiris watched me with cool patience, that confident air that he would eventually get exactly what he wanted. I wouldn’t be able to frustrate him, to make him emotional. He was clearly prepared for the long game.

So what could I do? He was a powerful angel, more powerful than even Nero. I’d seen his power for myself. I couldn’t even beat Nero, so how did I have any chance of beating this original angel, hardened by centuries of training and killing. He was faster, stronger, and more powerful than I was. I didn’t have a move he hadn’t seen.