I forced a smile to my aching lips. Everything in my body ached, though that feeling was fading fast. In a few seconds, I might even feel human again instead of like some dog’s chew toy.

“I’m fine,” I told Harker, allowing him to help me to my feet.

He shot me a little wink, then went to stand beside Nero. The dog was walking back to the blast door. As soon as it was standing on the other side, the steel slab slammed shut behind it.

“You will need to practice that again,” Nero said.

“Again?” I replied, horrified. The memory of that beast’s jaw cutting through my body sent shivers down my spine. “I have to do that again?”

He stepped toward me. “You will have to do this and more every day.”

He reached out to me. I tried to pull away, but he was quicker. His hand closed around my wrist. As his other hand brushed across my skin, pain bubbled up.

“You missed a spot,” he told Harker.

A smile touched Harker’s lips. “So I did.”

Nero’s fingertip glowed, golden and blinding. He tapped it to the cut in my arm. A rush of warmth cascaded through my body, pulsing in time to my heartbeat in a beautiful, intoxicating melody of magic. I inhaled deeply, drawing the delicious scent of that magic into me.

“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice dancing on the notes of the sweet song swirling inside my head.

I opened my mouth to tell him everything, to spill every secret I had. They were his to have. Every single one of them.

I stopped. What was I saying? I couldn’t tell him anything. He was an angel. And he was working his magic on me. I pushed away from him, and he didn’t try to stop me. He just watched me as the last of his magical song faded out of my head. A sense of profound loss cut through my previous contentment, leaving me shivering and sad. I wanted to feel his magic again, even knowing it wasn’t real. None of this was real. This was a game he was playing, an angel’s game. I took another step away from him. I would not let him have that power over me.

Surprise flashed in his emerald eyes. Maybe no one had ever resisted his siren’s song before. But that breath of surprise quickly hardened into granite as he turned to address all of the initiates.

“You will train willpower here,” he said. “You must resist pain and fear and any enemy you might face in battle. But you must never resist those who command you.”

Even though his eyes scanned the crowd of initiates, I could feel them on me.

“The Legion has no use for soldiers who question orders. We need to know that in battle you will listen to your superiors, that you will do what you’re told. No fear. No hesitation. No questioning.” His eyes fell on me. “You can either obey me by choice, or I will make you obey.”

A wave of pure power shot out from him. All around me, my fellow initiates began falling to their knees. Nero’s magic tore at me, fierce this time rather than sweet. The sheer power of his magic felt like a mountain on my shoulders, pressing me down inch by inch. It hurt to resist—hurt more than punching that door, more than the dog mauling me—but every fiber of my being rebelled against his control.

You shouldn’t resist, a voice said inside my head. It didn’t sound like Nero’s voice. It sounded like my own.

And the voice, that sensible part of me, was right. I shouldn’t resist. I had to behave. I was here to gain the power I needed to save my brother, not to prove that I could stand up to an angel. So I stopped fighting. Relief flooded me immediately—relief from the agony of that heavy weight on my shoulders, relief from thinking. It was so easy to obey, to let someone make the decisions for me. A warm blanket of magic enveloped us all, protecting us, leading us. Uniting us.

“Obedience is everything,” Nero said. A halo shining like a million crushed diamonds lit up his body. “You can hate me all you want, but you will follow my orders. Do you understand?”

We all nodded, unable to speak.

“Good,” he said, releasing his hold on us. As the layers of his spell dissolved into the air, the easy contentment I’d felt faded away. “Now stand up, initiates, and run another ten laps.”

The next few weeks passed in a repeating loop of agony. Nero had us run until we couldn’t stand, do pushups until our arms gave out, and punch that cursed door over and over again until our blood stained it too. We jumped from great heights and ran through obstacle courses designed to break our bodies. And we did this often after only two hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation was one of Nero’s favorite tools.

We had to fight dogs—and then one another with swords, knives, and all kinds of other weapons from the Legion’s arsenal. Bleeding was no excuse for giving up and neither were missing limbs. Nero pointed out that he could heal our wounds after the fight. If we fought well and didn’t surrender, he even did that right away. If we didn’t…well, he waited longer to heal us.

The man was a twisted, sadistic beast, and before the end of the first week, I wanted to kill him. By the end of the second week, I’d decided that death was too good for him. I had to make him suffer first.

By the end of the first month, I was too exhausted to fantasize about killing him. The only thing that kept me going was my need to save my brother.

“Pick up the pace, Pandora,” Nero called out.

Pandora was his nickname for me. Apparently, our first conversation had left an impression, the one where I’d talked about my family’s business Pandora’s Box. So I was the bringer of evil and chaos? Well, it was better than being the torturer of desperate souls.