Angel Fever (Immortal Legacy #3) - Ella Summers Page 0,6

Nero.

Damiel shook his head. “You aren’t ready.”

“I’ve been training hard. I am ready.” Nero’s words were saturated with fierce emotion. “And I’m going to prove just how ready I am.”

“Nero is too eager to do battle,” my father commented to me. “Just like his father.”

“You are staying in New York,” Damiel told Nero, ignoring my father. “You will go to school. And after school, you will come here and train with Captain Marsh.”

The Angel Preparatory Academy that Nero attended was the only one of its kind in the world. He learned alongside all the other Legion brats. His hours outside of school, though, he spent very differently than his classmates, his time divided between New York and Storm Castle. Sometimes, he trained here with Damiel and his soldiers; the rest of the time, he trained with me and mine.

Nero got a lot of grief from the other Legion brats about this. They simply could not understand living in two places. They each had only one angel parent, not two. And their parents lived together. The nature of our work—and of our very existence as angels—meant Damiel and I could not live together. We were each responsible for a different territory.

“Dragonsire, I hear you are bringing only Cadence and one other solider, the Fire Dragon, along with you on this mission,” my father said.

“Heard from whom?”

My father didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “You will be only three Legion soldiers. Three against untold masses of dark soldiers. I find that unwise.”

“I do not believe in throwing gigantic armies at problems. An angel should not make use of the machine gun approach.”

My father folded his hands together. His face was blank, but I could tell he was insulted by Damiel comparing him to a machine gun. Of course he was. Any angel would be.

“I prefer to bring in small, agile teams of specialists,” Damiel said. “Two Dragons on the Elemental Expanse are stronger than an army of soldiers. Plus, I will be there.”

“Yes, you will be there. However, your ego is not an adequate substitute for a proper weapon, Dragonsire.”

My father wasn’t playing nice either.

Damiel’s brows peaked. “Then why are you always shooting off your ego like it’s a flamethrower?”

They both jumped to their feet.

“Stop,” I warned them.

I was surprised when Damiel actually did stop moving. But then he pulled his phone out of his jacket. So that’s why he’d stopped. He’d received a message.

He glanced down at the screen, then back up at us. “There’s an important matter I must attend to.” He waved his hand toward the table. “Enjoy the pancakes.”

Then he turned and left the room.

My father glanced down at the pancakes, his eyes burning with cold, fiery disapproval.

And this time it wasn’t just Nero who laughed behind his napkin. So did I.

3

A Monster Graveyard

A halo of pink and purple light surrounded Storm Castle, bathing it in the rays of the rising sun. Perched high on the peak of Mount Cornerstone, the castle was the central point of the Elemental Expanse.

We were driving away from it now, moving across the desert. Moving deeper into the realm of earth magic, a place dubbed the Desert Rose. It and the other three realms—the Wetlands, the Fire Mountains, and the Sky Plains—made up the Elemental Expanse. It was a peaceful place, where the elements mixed and mingled in a great, magical symphony. It was the Elemental Expanse that kept the Earth’s elements in harmony.

Outside the Elemental Expanse, far in the north, raged an unruly summer snowstorm. Those lands lay beyond the Magitech wall, beyond civilization. They did not belong to humanity; they belonged to the monsters. Monster magic was wild, chaotic, and completely beyond our control. Even the guardian Dragons, the four Legion soldiers each linked to one of the Earth’s four elements, could not tame the weather on the plains of monsters. Those wildernesses existed outside the laws of nature.

Damiel and I sat in the backseat of the rumbling Legion truck. There were no roads on the Elemental Expanse. That often made for a bumpy ride.

“You were gone when I returned home last night,” Damiel said.

“After my father left, I went back to Storm Castle.”

“And how did General Silverstar enjoy his pancakes?” A devilish sparkle lit up his eyes.

I sighed. “You shouldn’t antagonize my father.”

“Cadence, you’ve misread the situation entirely.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. This was going to be good. “Then enlighten me, Master Interrogator.”

“Your father arrives at every family dinner, wanting to be antagonized. Because if he feels