A tortured, strangled noise escaped my lips. “Can’t you just give me more pushups?”

“During our regular training sessions, I will quiz you on the material you’ve read. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate what you’ve learned while going through your physical exercises.”

From the look on his face, he was perfectly serious. Of course he was. Nero was brutally efficient. Why kill two birds with one stone when you could kill ten with a boulder? I hoped his efficiency didn’t kill me too.

“But there will be no training session tomorrow morning. We will leave early for our meeting with the witches,” Nero said.

“Is that all?” I asked. Something in his eyes said it wasn’t. Was he going to talk about what had happened downstairs?

“Yes, actually, I did want to speak to you about something.”

He moved in closer, and I clutched the paper bundles to my chest. They would make a pitiful shield against an angel, and an even worse sword. Well, unless angels’ mortal weakness was a paper cut.

“About what?” I asked, backing up.

“There’s no reason to feel terrified,” he said impatiently. “I’m not going to bite you.”

Was it messed up that a part of me was disappointed by that statement?

Yep, my inner cynic told me. That is really messed up.

“It’s about Harker,” he said.

I stopped backing up. “Has he been judged?”

“No, he is still being questioned,” Nero said.

“Still? But it’s been a whole month!” I protested.

“Yes, but his situation is difficult. I could not tell the High Angels about the dose of pure Nectar he tried to give you. They would want to know why he gave it to you, and they wouldn’t hesitate to use any means necessary.”

The meaning of his words could not have been more clear. Nor could the look he gave me. “They would torture me.”

“Yes.” The soft hiss of that single word was as damning as a chorus of accusations.

“So if the High Angels don’t know the truth of what happened, what do they think Harker did?” I asked.

“There was only one reason I could give them for taking Harker into custody: his unsanctioned execution of Rose Crane. He could have taken her into custody during the battle at Sweet Dreams, but he killed her instead. And by doing so, the Legion was robbed of the opportunity to question the mastermind behind the demons’ supernatural recruiting scheme in New York.”

Disgust rolled over me. “They would have tortured her, Nero. I might not agree with Harker trying to use me to find my brother for whichever god he’s working for, but he killed Rose to spare her years of torture. Between death and torture, I know she would have chosen death herself. I don’t know why he did it, but it was an act of mercy.”

“I know why he did it,” Nero said quietly. “Because despite everything he did, Harker still cares about you. He spared Rose to spare you the guilt of knowing that by going after her, you had doomed her to eternal agony.”

“I…I don’t know what to say about that.” No one had ever killed someone for me before, and I was torn between appreciating his mercy and despising his callous disregard for human life.

Nero watched me closely, as if my face held the key to the world’s greatest mystery. “Only time will tell how this plays out—and what the High Angels’ response will be. Or, I should say, what Nyx’s response will be. She heads the High Angels, and she is personally handling Harker’s interrogation.”

“Will Harker tell them about the Nectar he tried to give me? Or about Zane?” I asked Nero.

“No,” he said immediately. He must have thought this through already. “Harker is acting on the orders of a god, one who is scheming without the knowledge of the others. Just as the demons spelled their followers to withstand interrogation, this god would have done the same to Harker.”

“Will the god step in and save him?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Nero. “He is making a power play of his own. So far, none of the other gods know about your brother.”

Right. If all the gods knew about Zane, they’d have already arrested me and forced me to take the Nectar to find him. Only someone with a close connection to Zane could mentally link to him without knowing where he was.

“So the god cannot tip his hand by helping Harker now. At least not directly. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out which god we’re dealing with.”

“How?” I didn’t think Nero planned to barge into one of their meetings and demand to know which of them was pulling Harker’s strings.

“I’ve been talking to Nyx, asking her discreet questions about the gods to figure out which one might be preparing to make a power play against the others. She knows them better than any of us.”

“Because she meets with the gods?” I asked.

“Because one of the gods is her lover,” he told me.

Oh, wow. Now that was interesting. I’d never heard of any god taking an angel for a lover, but Nyx was clearly not just any angel. There had to be a reason she was the First Angel.

“Does that relationship make her more impartial or less impartial in dealing with Harker?” I asked. “What if her lover is the god Harker made a deal with? Then she might already know what Zane is.” I felt the need to do something, to find my brother now and protect him, but I was still so far from the power I needed to do that. And even if I became an angel and gained that power, I would be no match for a god.