Angel Fury (Immortal Legacy #2) - Ella Summers

1

The Wedding

I stood in front of a closed double door. In a few minutes, I would walk through those gilded gates into the grand ballroom to marry a man I hardly knew.

I had always been a rule-follower, the perfect soldier in the gods’ earthly army. I’d been raised from the day I was born to one day ascend to the highest tier of the Legion of Angels—to become an angel.

That perfect, rule-following, angel-destined soldier was quite familiar with the Legion’s rules and regulations. There were certain realities that went with being a soldier in the gods’ army. You lived where the Legion commanded you to live. Trained how they told you to train. And married whom they instructed you to marry.

I’d always known that if I did become an angel, this would be my fate. I would be wed to someone because his magic was compatible with mine. The Legion took its magic compatibility tests very seriously. The results were supposed to indicate which pairings had the highest chance of producing children with the potential to someday become angels.

I knew all of this. I’d never questioned it.

And yet, right now, with my wedding looming only minutes away, I realized that a part of me had always hoped I would marry someone out of love, not duty—as angels once did, before the Legion started dictating which people we could marry.

Yes, it had been a hopeless, naive hope, but I’d harbored it nonetheless.

Sighing, I turned and looked into the ornate mirror hanging on the wall. A pair of violet eyes stared back at me. My eyes. They looked so calm, so tranquil, so perfectly in control—everything an angel was supposed to be, everything I truly didn’t feel inside. But I’d been practicing in front of mirrors since I was a child, perfecting the art of appearing completely calm on the outside, no matter how I really felt inside.

“You look beautiful,” a voice said behind me.

I turned around to find a bronze-haired angel. He wore a well-fitted black leather uniform that accentuated his muscular physique, forged by years of rough training and even rougher battles.

Colonel Damiel Dragonsire, Master Interrogator and the most feared angel in the Legion. He stood just inside the small waiting room. A breeze slid through the open balcony door behind him, rustling his dark feathers. He’d clearly arrived here by air.

He stood before me, completely motionless. And yet there was so much power behind his apparent stillness—like a tiger crouching, collecting itself, before a single, explosive pounce. His eyes, burning like cerulean fire, considered me. Analyzed me.

Behind him and far below, the lights of Los Angeles shone through the gauzy curtains. The main headquarters of the Legion of Angels was in the city’s highest building.

The city lights, diffused through the translucent curtain, shone a halo around his body. His inky-black wings, glossy and bright, completed the angelic look.

“This is a private room. What are you doing here?” I asked Damiel.

I hadn’t spoken to him since my Dragon ceremony two days ago, the day I’d merged my magic with the Earth’s elemental sea magic and had claimed my place as angel commander of Storm Castle.

Damiel took a step forward, smooth and silky, like an eel slipping through water. “I thought I’d drop in and see how you’re doing.”

“See how I’m doing? I’m not dying, Damiel. I’m getting married.”

“Yes.” His brows arched. “To me.”

Two days ago, the afterparty of my Dragon ceremony had screeched to an abrupt halt at the First Angel’s declaration that Damiel and I would be getting married. It was a marriage approved, arranged, and mandated by the Legion, based on our magic compatibility. The news was creating quite a stir at the Legion, as two angels had never been magically compatible before.

I met Damiel’s eyes. “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re being told which person you can marry, and you’re just supposed to smile and go through with it?”

His shoulders rose in a nonchalant shrug. “Unlike my previous betrothed, I am fairly confident that you won’t try to kill me. That’s more than I can say for most everyone else out there.”

“I can’t understand how you are speaking so casually about this,” I said in exasperation.

“It’s only eternity.”

I laughed weakly. “Assuming we survive that long.”

As far as grooms went, Damiel wasn’t terrible. Yes, the Master Interrogator had a dreadful reputation. It was no wonder. His job was to seek out and expose traitors from within the Legion’s ranks, so it was to be expected that people didn’t greet