her Earth-ending spell. “Purgatory is safe. The Earth is safe. We’ve won. And you’re all going to be all right.”
Nero watched with desperate, horrified eyes as she fell to her knees.
“Leda broke the spell over Meda,” I told him. “To stop the collar from self-destructing and taking all of us with it, she put the collar around her own neck.”
“Giving it a new target.” Nero’s face grew very blank, which meant he was very worried.
“Yes,” I said. “And now the collar is trying to take over her mind.”
“I refuse to let her die,” Nero growled.
“And she won’t,” I promised him. “She is fighting the collar.”
“That’s the problem. If she wins, the collar explodes, killing her and everyone else. And if the collar wins, it takes control over her and forces her to kill everyone anyway.”
Nero’s voice was thick with desperation. One look at him was enough for me to realize he loved Leda very much.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She is the Angel of Chaos. There’s another way.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but Leda did. She knew what she was doing when she grabbed that collar.”
As I’d witnessed the first day I saw her, she was very adept at fighting a superior foe.
Leda’s whole body shook, as though to challenge my faith in her.
“She’s losing it.” There was a flash of silver as Damiel drew his sword.
I pulled out the Life potion. Zane hadn’t known it at the time, but this was why he’d given it to me. So I could save his sister’s life.
“She’ll make it,” I told my son. “But she could use a helping hand, Nero.”
“How can I help her?”
“You and Leda are connected by magic,” I told him. “You’ve marked each other. I can sense it. You need to use that connection you share to offer her your strength.”
Nero gave the vial in my hand a long, hard look. “That’s Life potion.”
“That’s right. It will activate the other side of your magic, the side that has remained dormant your whole life. Your dark magic.”
The Guardians had sporadically fed me diluted Life potion for two hundred years. They’d claimed I would die if I started with a full dose, that it took a long time to build up to Life in its purest form. On the surface, it sounded like a reasonable explanation. After all, the Legion and the Dark Force administered Nectar and Venom in just that way.
Except those rules didn’t apply to me. Not when it came to Life potion. I was an Immortal descendant, so my magic was by nature balanced. A full-strength dose of the Life potion could have balanced my light and dark magic instantly.
The Guardians hadn’t held back their Life potion to protect me. They’d done it to keep me locked away inside the Sanctuary.
“You know about our Immortal blood,” Nero said to me.
“Yes, and this is the key to unlocking it.”
This wasn’t the way I’d hoped to break it to him. It seemed he’d already figured it out, though. I handed him the vial.
He drank it down without hesitation, demonstrating once again just how much he loved Leda.
The potion must have worked because after a few minutes of Nero silently holding Leda, her collar popped open and fell to the ground.
As they embraced, Damiel stepped toward me. “Cadence, is that really you?” He looked like he wasn’t entirely convinced, even as he reached out to me.
I pressed my palm to his. “Of course it’s me. Don’t you know your own wife?”
“My memory’s a bit fuzzy. I need to reacquaint myself with your qualities.” He cast a long, leisurely look down the length of my body.
My heart skipped a beat, but I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m sure you do.”
He moved in lightning-quick, his touch sending a delicious shiver down my arm. Bowing, he kissed the top of my hand. “Will you be my date at our son’s wedding?”
“That depends,” I replied coyly, though I could hardly resist him when he adopted that smooth, silky tone. I suspected he’d sunk a bit of siren magic into his words too.
“On what?”
“On whether or not you can keep your hands to yourself, Damiel.”
He smiled. “I will be a perfect gentleman.”
“Will you?” I sighed. “How disappointing. After two hundred years apart, I was hoping for a warmer welcome.”
His eyes lit up with something more than magic. “That can be arranged.”
19
Reunion
I needed to get to my father, to warn him. It would take me at least a day to get to