“You don’t look fine,” Mina said. She was a close second to Jace in terms of outright obnoxiousness. Her gaze flickered to Ivy. “We saw this poor girl collapse on the track. Maybe it was that beating I gave her before. How’s your hand?”

The other brats snorted.

I stood up tall, staring them down. “Back off.”

“You weren’t holding up so well yourself, were you, Pandora?” Jace taunted. When Nero called me Pandora it was at least ten percent charming. When this asshole did it, it was one hundred percent aggravating. “Tripping over your own feet.” He chuckled. “Now that must have been embarrassing.”

It really had been, especially with Nero standing there, telling me to get up. I’d wanted to prove to him that I was as tough as the rest of them, but all I’d succeeded in was demonstrating how out of my league I really was.

I’d always considered myself fit and a better runner than most. But Nero’s idea of a good runner varied enormously from my own. He expected people to run a mile in under three minutes. He wasn’t interested in how impossible that was because supernaturals lived by different rules, he said. He’d once responded to my comment by running a mile in two minutes without breaking a sweat. It had taken enormous restraint not to give into the urge to remind the angel that he was running with all his gods-granted pistons firing, whereas our bodies were still mostly human. He would have just called it an excuse.

“You didn’t look so great yourself dangling from your ankle,” I shot back at Jace. “Did all your wild flailing make you finally fall out of the rope, or did they have to pull you back down like a hooked fish?”

Jace leaned forward. “Didn’t they teach to respect your betters out there on the butt-end of civilization?” Each word pulsed with pure malice.

“No, they just taught us to stand up to people who thought they were,” I said, grabbing Ivy’s hand and pushing past the brats.

“I’m looking forward to meeting you in the ring again, Pandora,” Jace called out after me.

I just kept moving. They didn’t try to stop us, probably only because Nero and Harker were still watching. Standing up to those bullies was probably going to come bite me in the ass later, but I was too mad to care about that right now.

“They are so full of themselves,” Ivy said to me as we loaded up our plates.

“Don’t worry about them,” I told her. “They’re Wonder Bread. All fluffy and pretty on the outside, no substance on the inside.”

“Yeah. Just because they’ve been groomed from birth to join the Legion, that doesn’t mean they’re better than we are.” Ivy laughed glumly.

“They aren’t.”

“Really. I’m all for optimism. Hell, it’s all that’s gotten me through these past few weeks. But every one of those six has one angel parent. Most of them have another parent in the Legion too. How are we supposed to compete with them?”

“This isn’t a competition against others,” I told her. “Only against yourself.”

“Tell that to them when we face them in the fighting ring,” she grumbled. “If they weaken us, we won’t make it. And people like that don’t want anyone else to make it. They think we aren’t good enough for the Legion. They’ve been Legion families for generations. They always make it high in the ranks. Some of the magic the gods grant people passes through to their children. It’s easier for them to unlock magical abilities than for nobodies like us.”

I wrapped my arm around her and said, “Don’t even think about them. We’re a team, and we will make it through this. They might be bursting with magic, but we have dogged determination and our will to survive on our side. Stubbornness trumps raw power every time.”

Ivy snorted.

“Now, come on. Drake is waving us over.”

We joined him at the table and began devouring our dinner. I’d expended several thousand calories today, and I had only half an hour to replenish them.

“What’s wrong?” Drake asked Ivy, who was mostly just staring down at her food.

She didn’t say anything.

“The brats tried to get under our skin. But we’re not letting them,” I reminded Ivy.

“Screw the brats and their pretty plastic parts.” Drake put his arm around Ivy, hugging her to him.

That’s when I saw it in her eyes. She liked him. In a romantic way. As I sucked on my chocolate shake, I wondered if Drake realized it too.

After dinner, we hurried back to our room for a quick shower. Then, for the first time in a month, we changed into something that hadn’t come out of the Legion’s closets. I slipped into my favorite pair of jeans and a lace-trimmed tank top Tessa had put into the suitcase Calli and the girls had sent over last week. And, just because I was feeling adventurous, I put on a pair of high-heeled boots.

Ivy had selected a pair of red leather pants and a see-through black mesh top with strategically-placed arrangements of lace. The heels on her scrappy gold sandals could have staked a vampire. Drake was sporting a pair of dark jeans and a muscle t-shirt that read ‘I may look like an angel, but I dance like a demon’. Ivy had bought it for him before they’d joined the Legion. Maybe I should get one for myself, if only to see the appalled expression on Nero’s face when I wore it in front of him. I snorted at the thought.

A kaleidoscope of flashing lights beamed down on us at Club Firefall. Our fellow initiates were all letting their hair down tonight, relishing in their freedom for the first time in a month. To the heavy, infectious beat of music, we danced and drank and let loose in a way none of us had in over four weeks—or, in my case, forever. There was something about a month of putting your body through one punishment after the other that made you appreciate life in a whole new way. For this one night, I was free.