“Your task is to tag the real Lieutenant Vance,” Nero told me.

I squinted at them, trying to pick out any differences, even minor ones. But they not only looked the same—they moved the same. Claudia had done a good job on them, masking their individuality with her magic. They all looked like her, talked like her, moved like her. Even the two big guys. I just kept watching them, hoping for inspiration to hit me.

One of the Claudias hit me first. I recovered my balance and moved around her so that all four of them were in front of me. I wasn’t going to let them sneak up on me again.

“Come on, Pandora,” Nero called out. His words were both an encouragement that I could do this and a reminder to get a move on.

Yes, come on, Leda, I told myself.

Back in the Lost City, I’d been able to see through Nero’s shifting magic, and he was a lot more powerful than Claudia. I could do this. Of course, at the time, I’d just exchanged a few pints of blood with Nero, so my magic and blood were completely in tune with his. And I’d seen through Damiel’s shift because he was Nero’s father, and the two of them shared blood.

I couldn’t cheat this time. I hadn’t exchanged blood or slept with any one of the four Claudias.

“Time’s up, Pandora.” Nero waved the Claudia army forward.

They all rushed me in a storm of punches and kicks. I evaded most of their attacks. I endured the others. After the agony of my pain resistance training with Nero, I hardly felt the blows. But fighting four opponents at once kept me too busy to concentrate on seeing through the shift.

“What do you think you’re doing, Nero?” I demanded. If I could have spared him a scowl, I would have.

“Helping.”

One of the Claudias hit me in the head. I felt that. It must have been Drake or Alec. They hit hard. But, then again, so did the real Claudia. This was so frustrating!

“You call this helping?!”

“Yes,” Nero replied calmly.

Another fist slammed against my head. I slipped aside to avoid the follow-up. It was then—in that moment I moved aside—that I realized something. Nero was right. It was easy to maintain an illusion when they were just talking or walking. But the illusion cracked under the complexity of a fight. Every one of them had a different style, different moves. This was where the cracks in Claudia’s spell showed. She couldn’t maintain such a complex illusion. I could see them now.

Alec and Drake charged at me from two sides. I darted past them, zigzagged around Ivy, then ran straight for Claudia.

“You’re it,” I said and tagged her on the shoulder.

Claudia laughed, and the last remnants of her spell fizzled out.

“Hey, I’m pretty good at this,” I said, throwing Nero a triumphant smirk

“Oh, Pandora,” he replied. “That was merely the warm-up. We’re just getting started.”

After that ‘warm-up’, Claudia and her magic clones armed themselves with lightning whips. I, on the other hand, was armed with nothing but my charming smile. I didn’t bother complaining about the unfairness of the fight. I’d learned long ago that Nero didn’t believe in fairness when it came to training Legion soldiers. He said fairness—like luck and coffee—was a crutch you shouldn’t depend on.

The bite of the lightning whips took me down faster than my opponents’ fists could. I must have passed out a good dozen times on that floor before I managed to see the truth behind Claudia’s shifting spell.

Nero rewarded my achievement by arming my opponents with guns that shot magic stun pellets. That allowed them to knock me on my ass even faster.

With each phase of the training session, I had less time to see through the illusions, less time to find the real Claudia. On the bright side, I got to spend a lot of quality time on the floor.

“You won’t improve by napping during training, Pandora,” Nero chided me as I tried—and failed—to push off the ground.

My sides hurt. My head hurt. Every inch of my body, inside and out, hurt.

“Nero Windstriker, you are a sick, sadistic miscreant.”

I picked the word I thought would annoy him the most. Rules and procedures were the bread and butter of his life. Calling him a lawbreaker should have solicited at least a frown.

The angel’s mouth didn’t even twitch. “Less talking, more standing.”

I clenched my jaw hard and peeled my aching body off the floor. I staggered to my feet, holding my hand to my bruised side. My opponents stared in morbid fascination at the inky patterns of black and blue quickly spreading across my skin. I looked like a peach that had been dropped on the floor—and then put through the garbage disposal for good measure.

“Why are you four just standing there?” Nero demanded. “Shoot her.”

Glowing pellets burst out of their guns like shooting stars. Desperate, I drew on my dark elemental magic, hurling a stream of fire at the incoming pellets. They disintegrated.

“Cool,” I muttered out of my bruised lips.

A few minutes ago, I’d tried the same spell with light magic, and the pellets had gone right through like the fire wasn’t even there. Some people considered light magic good and dark magic evil, but they were really just two sides of the same magic coin. Dark tore into light magic and light tore into dark. That’s why my dark magic fire had worked where my light-based fire had failed. The guns shot light-magic pellets, resistant to light magic, weak against dark.

My opponents tried again. This time, I put more power behind the fire. The resulting reaction of pellets and dark fire created an invisible magical explosion that rippled across the gym, tearing through Claudia’s spell. The illusion shattered, revealing my opponents’ true faces.

“Cool,” I said again.

Ivy was standing the closest to me. I slammed my fist into her arm, disarming her. I caught her gun before it fell and used it to shoot Claudia in the leg. She growled in pain, clutching a blossoming bruise.

“Got you,” I told her.

The slow, steady crack of clapping hands echoed off the walls. I spun toward the door. A man stood there, dressed in a suit of fitted battle leather as black as his hair. A pair of wings folded out from his back, wings unlike any I had ever seen. The feathers sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight.

“Lord Ronan,” Nero said.

Ronan was the God of War and Lord of the Legion of Angels, the gods’ army on Earth.

3 The God of War

My friends knelt before Ronan, their heads bowed low. Claudia lowered with difficulty thanks to the swelling bruise in her leg.

I looked at Nero. Were we supposed to kneel before the gods? I didn’t want to make the same mistake I’d almost made with Harker. Dating an angel really should have come with a guidebook. The book that Nero had given me, the illustrated guide on the ways of angels, didn’t cover the finer points of etiquette.

Nero took my hand. Yes, he said in my mind. Angels and their mates kneel before the gods.

Of course they did. Nero and I had knelt before Nyx, and she was only a demigod.

I mimicked Nero’s slow, graceful drop into his knees. I’d never seen anyone genuflect with such elegance and dignity. He kept his gaze lifted toward the god in our midst. Ronan walked around my friends, not sparing them a second glance—or a first one, for that matter. He stopped in front of me and Nero.

“Nero Windstriker, you and your mate may rise.”

As we rose from the ground, I tried not to stare too hard at Ronan. This was Nyx’s boss, Lord of the Legion of Angels. A god stood in front of me, in the flesh. He was the only god I’d ever seen. Besides the heavenly glow of his skin—and the fact that he was taller than anyone I’d ever seen in my life—he didn’t look much different than the rest of us. Nyx was romantically involved with one of the gods. Was Ronan her godly lover?