Angel Fever (Immortal Legacy #3) - Ella Summers Page 0,51

an analytical mind—to see things for what they truly were, not what I wanted them to be. And my mind was telling me in no uncertain terms that the Guardians were no saviors. They might profess to be the champions of balanced magic, but they were shady as hell.

I’d tried to escape the Sanctuary many different times in many different ways. I’d finally come to the conclusion that there was no way out, except with the Guardians’ blessing.

Ostensibly, the Guardians were about balance and harmony, about freedom from the war of gods and demons. But if that were true, why weren’t any of us free to go? They used all this bright, shiny propaganda—that they were ‘protecting’ us—to serve their purpose. They told us what we wanted to hear, then used us to serve their needs. That was how fanatics worked.

I was pretending to go along with them. For now. But I would figure out a way to escape this gilded cage.

“Direct the goddess to destroy the Pandora, the bringer of chaos. But she is not to harm Windstriker. He is far too important. His Immortal blood is the key to our salvation, to our finally breaking the curse the Immortals placed on us, to claiming the magic that is rightfully ours.”

I’d learned more about the Guardians in those couple sentences than I had in the last couple centuries.

Firstly, they knew about Nero’s Immortal blood. Which meant they knew about mine too. So that was why I was here. Like the many other supernaturals, they’d collected me too—me and my Immortal Legacy.

Secondly, they believed Nero, I, and others with Immortal blood were the key to breaking the Immortals’ curse so they could find their magic. That was reason enough to get the hell out of here.

Given the Guardians’ shady behavior, I had long wondered if they might be the ones sending hunters to track down the Immortals’ descendants and kill us. But they couldn’t be, not if they needed us to break their curse. Which raised the question: who was behind the hunters?

“I will handle the goddess,” said one Guardian to another. “You worry about the immortal daggers.”

That got my attention.

“Evelina has seen that the daggers will play a critical role in our future.”

Evelina was a young telepathic girl who sometimes had visions of the future. She lived here in the Sanctuary with her twin half-brother, a powerful healer. Taron and Giselle, the Guardians’ loyal soldiers, had made both children immortal, freezing them in time at the age of ten.

Ten. That was the same age my son Nero had been the last time I’d seen him. The Guardians had robbed these children of their childhood. And for what? To use them and their magic. The Guardians didn’t truly care about any of us; they only cared about their quest for magic.

“Then we’d better move fast,” a voice echoed through the hall.

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in two hundred years, not since the day my whole life had come crashing down. And she was the one who’d falsely accused my husband of being a traitor. She was the one who’d ruined everything.

Eva Doren.

I resisted the urge to jump to the ground and strangle Eva. First of all, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the drop. And even if I did survive, I’d be revealing myself. I didn’t think the secretive Guardians appreciated people spying on them. Just because they thought they needed to keep me alive to break their curse, that didn’t mean they needed to keep me comfortable. And if I was locked up behind bars, it would be that much harder to escape the Sanctuary.

So I stayed in my hiding spot and clenched the support beam. The upside of no magic meant I didn’t have the strength to crush wood with my hands. The Guardians probably would have noticed if the ceiling came crashing down on them.

“Idris and I have been watching the demons,” said Eva.

The fallen angel Idris Starfire stood beside her. I hadn’t seen him since that dreadful day either. Two hundred years ago, he’d proclaimed he served a mysterious master who would change the world. It looked like I’d finally figured out who that master was. Starfire served the Guardians.

And so did Eva. Damiel and I had guessed the two of them were working together.

“The demons are after the complete set of immortal daggers,” Starfire told the Guardians. “Up until last month, they had only one in their possession. But our spies tell us that