Angel Fever (Immortal Legacy #3) - Ella Summers Page 0,49

me.

Besides, the Legion considered the monsters’ blood to be ‘vile and tainted’ because the beasts were a mixture of dark and light magic. My mother was an Immortal. That meant my magical heritage was not only light and dark, but also active and passive magic. I was sure I could handle a little ‘impure’ monster blood.

My meal ended with a clamorous chorus of howls. More wolves. It sounded like at least twenty of them. I couldn’t fight them all. I had to keep moving. I rose from the ground.

“Cadence Lightbringer.”

I turned to find two angelic silhouettes before me. I focused my eyes, attempting to penetrate the shadows cast by the harsh sun.

One of the angels was a woman, the other a man. Both had long hair that shimmered in the light of their halo.

The male angel wore a suit of bright armor. The sun’s rays bounced off the silver array of metal, mixing with his halo to create one blinding picture.

His companion wore an airy, light-colored dress, a pair of boots, and a bow across her back.

I wiped the wolf’s blood from my lips. “Who are you?” I asked cautiously.

I didn’t recognize either of them. And I knew every angel and dark angel who’d ever lived. My father had made me memorize their names and faces. And these angels’ faces weren’t among them.

Also, there was something…odd about them.

There was always fire in an angel’s eyes, the ghosts of everything we had given up to get where we were today. There was no great power without great sacrifice.

But that fire did not burn in these angels’ eyes. They seemed too calm, like they’d never had to give up anything. Like they didn’t even know the meaning of the word sacrifice.

The female angel waved her hand in a graceful arc. “We’ve come to help you, Cadence.”

A rift split in the air, lit up by ethereal light brighter than a thousand suns, and coupled by darkness blacker than a starless sky. Light and dark swirled around the rift.

It didn’t look like the magic mirrors that linked the worlds in the cosmos together. Not at all. But this rift sure felt like an interworld portal. Whether a mirror, or made by my dagger, these magical passages all shared a certain resonance. A certain frequency at which the air hummed.

“Who are you?” I asked them.

“We are the Guardians,” replied the female angel.

The Guardians. I’d heard that name before. Back when I’d been a child. In one of my books. But which one? I just couldn’t remember. The last few days had taken their toll on my body and my mind.

When I didn’t say anything, the male angel spoke, “We’re the defenders of magic in its true, pure form. Before gods and demons split magic into light and dark. Before they tore the Earth apart.”

But it was the Immortals who’d been around in the early days. It was the Immortals who’d used magic in its true form. These Guardians, whoever they were, weren’t Immortals. They were different…

The female angel spoke, her words rich with sympathy, “You have lost so much to the unnatural division of dark and light.”

Her words were so smooth, so polished. Her smile was so perfect. So why did I feel like she was trying to sell me a used car?

“The Legion of Angels ordered you to kill your beloved because he was ‘too dark’,” she continued.

Magic gripped me. A deluge of memories crashed through the weakened gates of my mind. My battle with Damiel. Colonel Holyfire’s crusade. Fighting the dark angels. The Dark Force. Meeting them on the battlefield. Again and again. It was a martial dance that might take a short break, but it never ended.

Losing Nero. Losing my father. Leaving them behind. All so Nero could be safe. So he could one day drink the gods’ Nectar. So he could become an angel.

“Is it better to be a slave with wings than a slave on the ground?” the female angel asked.

There was a flash of silver light, and the rift gobbled us up.

I never got a chance to answer the angel’s question. And, honestly, thinking back over the centuries, remembering this day, I didn’t think I was ever meant to. They’d come to me, knights in shining armor, to rescue me from the Legion, the gods, the demons, and whatever other villains lurked in my memories.

But I wasn’t ever given a choice. I wasn’t rescued. I was abducted. And it would be two hundred years before I saw my family