Or didn’t I? Maybe I couldn’t win the way Legion soldiers fought, but I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t disciplined. I was chaotic, rough, dirty. Uncivilized. And maybe that unpredictably would be just what I needed to catch the well-trained angel off guard. It was a long shot, but it was my only hope.

“Why did you leave the Legion?” I asked.

“We are not here to discuss me. We’re here to discuss you. And what you have in your head.”

“I have nothing in my head,” I quipped.

He laughed. “I’ve caught glimpses of those memories, those visions you’re afraid to talk about. Seeing things doesn’t make you crazy, Leda. It makes you special. You can help me save the world, save countless lives, prevent a war that would tear the world apart.”

“By giving you a weapon that will make you invincible, that will give you the power to kill angels. To kill thousands. Or even millions. Are you taking it for yourself or for your demon masters?”

“There is so much you don’t understand, Leda. The gods are not the saviors of the world. They were the ones who brought this destruction upon us.”

“I know what happened. I know that both gods and demons released the monsters and lost control of them.”

“And yet you serve those false gods.” He looked at me as though he could drill through to the core of my soul. “You need something from them.”

I locked down my mind.

“Nectar. Power.” He laughed. “You don’t seem like the sort, but it always comes down to power, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know what I’ve seen in your delightfully manic mind. Until you blocked me. Impressive. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to do that.”

“Mental fortitude is just another word for stubbornness, and I’ve got stubbornness to spare.” I smirked at him.

“It won’t last, you know.”

“I can hold you off.” I tried to make my words ring with strength, but they clanged weakly in my ears. My head felt like it was splitting open from the burden of being alive.

“I wasn’t talking about blocking me,” he said. “I meant your honeymoon with the Legion. You will come to wish you’d never joined their ranks, that you’d never cast your lot in with the gods.”

I didn’t fail to register the threat laced into the pleasant tone of his voice. He was going to torture me. Nice.

“Threatening me won’t convince me to help you,” I told him.

“It wasn’t a threat. It was a truth. People like you, they can’t be happy in the Legion. You don’t fit in there.”

“Is this the part where you confess to me how you never felt like you fit in? The part where you say how alike we really are? Cut the crap and save me your lies. You’re an angel. You managed to fit in well enough, I’d say. Maybe too well. What happened? Did you get restless? Did you want more power, more magic. More than they would give you?”

“I told you we aren’t here to talk about me. We are here to talk about you. What you can do for me. And what I can do for you.”

“I have nothing for you. I want nothing from you.”

He let out a resigned sigh. “I didn’t think you’d want to do this the easy way.”

“With angels, there is no easy way.”

He laughed. “Indeed.”

I didn’t even see him move. One moment I was mouthing off to him and the next I was hitting the ground hard. Telekinesis. If only I could block that power like I could the mind-reading. She got up groggily. He could have hit me twenty times over in the time it took for me to get up, but he was just watching me. He was probably someone who liked to draw out his brutality, torturing his victims. That’s what Jace had said about him. Osiris Wardbreaker. Osiris the Black-hearted.

I patted down my body, surprised to find I had all of my weapons and potions. He really was arrogant. He thought I was no threat. Maybe he was right. Maybe I wasn’t a threat. But sometimes you didn’t need to be a threat. Sometimes being an annoyance was good enough. He wouldn’t be the first to underestimate me. I was used to it.

He watches with amusement as I pulled out some potions from the pouches at my belt, mixing them. I tossed them, sprinkling them all over the treasure chest behind him. The lid burst open. Gold coins and jewels and things shot up like a geyser, raining down on him.

He gave me a bored look. “Pretty but ineffective.”

Behind him, the chest was growing larger, thanks to the growing spell I’d put on it. He was too busy judging me to notice.

I tossed another potion. A stream of sparkles hit him, a wind spell. He stood there, his hair rippling in the wind, his feet planted firmly on the ground. He didn’t slide an inch.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” he told me.

The wind spell slammed into the big empty treasure chest behind him, tossing it up in the air. It fell over him, trapping him beneath. I sprinkled a sticky potion at the box, sealing it to the ground. And not a second too soon. The box was rumbling, like he was trying to hurl it off of him.

But he couldn’t do that now. Even an angel wasn’t strong enough to break that seal. The glue moved with you, absorbing the force of your movements, using them to power the sticky spell. All that potion-studying was coming in handy. Now if I could just figure out how to get around that big box and make my way out of here.