I gazed out the window of the airship, down at the scorched sands of the Western Wilderness. The blanket of desert stretched as far as my supernatural eyes could see, punctuated only by the occasional cactus or a low plateau of red-orange stones. The only animals that lived out here were insects and the roaming herds of monsters.

One of those herds had just come around a plateau. They looked like a cross between wild horses and bison. The sun’s unrelenting rays shone hard against their long, crimson-tipped horns, giving them a glossy glow—like the beasts had painted their horns with the blood of anyone unfortunate enough to be wandering these forsaken lands. Their equally-crimson hooves trampled across the cracked ground, kicking up a sandstorm of dust that followed in the herd’s wake.

“No time for daydreaming, Pandora,” Nero said behind me.

I turned away from the window and faced him, hastily rebinding my bloody hands. Nero and I had spent the past four hours—basically, every moment since we’d boarded the airship in New York—training in this onboard gym. The God of War hadn’t yet graced us with his presence, so we’d filled the time by kicking ass. Actually, the ass-kicking had been decidedly one-sided, as training often was with Nero. We’d started with endurance training, then moved on to pain resistance. I looked down at my bloody hands. I hated pain resistance training.

Of course, Nero heard my thoughts. “To survive the Gods’ Trials, we will need both our mental strength and will,” he said aloud. “We can’t rely on our magic. The trials will strip us of our powers one-by-one until we have no magic left.”

And that’s what made the level ten promotion different from every one that had come before. We trained for each new level by practicing that power—or, more often, our resistance to that power—to prime our magic for the Nectar. But this was a different kind of test. For this test, the test for the highest angel level, Nero wasn’t priming a power. He would be stripped of his magic and then thrown into some unknown crisis to see how he dealt with it.

“What kind of magic do angels of the tenth level gain?” I asked him.

Every other level in the Legion of Angels was defined by an ability. Each level was named for that ability. Vampire’s Kiss gave Legion initiates the powers of strength, speed, and stamina; it also allowed them to heal quickly when drinking the blood of others. Witch’s Cauldron gave them the powers of potion brewing. Siren’s Song, Dragon’s Storm, Shifter’s Shadow…and so on, all the way up to level ten, the final level. But level ten had no name.

“Level ten has no name because there is no single ability tied to it,” Nero explained. “The Nectar I will drink is pure Nectar. In addition to strengthening my previous powers, I will gain a new power. Or perhaps more than one. You never know before you drink.”

When I’d first joined the Legion, I’d drunk a heavily diluted Nectar. It had killed half of us, but those who survived grew stronger. That tiny hint of Nectar primed our magic. When we’d sipped a stronger Nectar the next time, more of us survived, and those that did gained the gods’ first gift of magic. With each new level, the Nectar was less diluted. Level ten was pure Nectar, the food of the gods. It made angels as close to the gods as any human could be. And so it made sense that every soldier of the tenth level—every archangel—had their own unique powers, just like the gods did.

“We are done with my training for now,” Nero said.

He unwrapped his own bloody hands. He hadn’t healed himself either. He’d told me that the trials wouldn’t be decided by magic but by tenacity. That was just a fancy word for stubbornness.

“It’s your turn,” he told me, walking toward the door.

Yeah, that wasn’t foreboding at all.

“If there’s a monster behind that door, I’m going to let it eat you,” I promised as I tried to salvage what was left of my bloody bandages.

The door opened, and Alec Morrows stepped into the gym. He gave me a long, assessing look, then declared, “Whoa, Leda. You look like shit.”

I shot him a saccharine smile. “Thanks. That makes me feel much better.”

He swept into a bow. “Glad to be of service.”

His dramatics cleared the doorway, allowing Ivy and Drake to squeeze past his juggernaut body. Claudia strode in after them, the battle maiden of New York. She had the kind of voluptuous curves that turned heads wherever she went, but she wasn’t soft. She was stronger than Alec and Drake, the New York Legion office’s go-to muscle men, and she could shoot the eyelashes off a dragonfly from hundred feet away. Or so the urban legend said. I wasn’t sure dragonflies even had eyelashes.

“Hey, Leda,” she greeted me.

Alec winked at her.

“Morrows, direct your eyes higher, or you’ll be staring at my fist.”

“Oh, I wasn’t looking at your assets. Honest.” He was almost convincing. Almost. I knew Alec too well to be fooled. “I was just admiring your new pin, Lieutenant Vance.”

Sure enough, ‘Lt. Vance’ was stitched into her jacket. That must have happened when I was away at Storm Castle, during one of Colonel Fireswift’s mass level-up-or-die promotions. At least Harker was putting an end to those.

“Congratulations,” I told Claudia.

Claudia touched the metal pin on her jacket, the symbol of her magic rank. It was the shape of a wolf paw, the universal symbol for shifting magic. Werewolves weren’t the only type of shifters, but they were the most famous. Or perhaps infamous was the better word.

Claudia smiled at me. “It’s your turn now.”

“Yes,” Nero agreed, as his psychic gust slammed the door shut. “It is your turn, Leda.” He looked at Ivy, Drake, Claudia, and Alec. “Leda is training for the fifth level, the power of Shifter’s Shadow, and she needs your help. Due to my own trials and her role in them, time is tight. I’ve summoned you here because Leda considers you friends.”

Alec gaped at me. “Even me?”

“Na, you’re just here because you hit hard,” I told him.

Alec chuckled.

Nero looked at me. “Shifting has mental and physical components. You can actually change your appearance—what is called a physical shift. Or you can create an illusion—a mental shift, often referred to as glamour.”

I nodded.

“Werewolves and other shifters perform physical shifts,” he continued. “A physical shift is more complete; others cannot see through it. Soldiers of the Legion usually opt for a mental shift because it requires substantially less magic. A physical shift is a constant drain on your magic. It takes so much out of you that you cannot use any other powers at the same time. That works for shifters, whose magic is their strength and their claws. But as a Legion soldier, you use many powers in parallel. For that reason, we tend to prefer a mental shift over a physical one.”

Nero motioned Claudia forward. “We are going to train your shifting magic the same way you trained your elemental magic: by building up your resistance.”

“You want me to resist shifting my shape?” I asked, confused.

“No, I want you to resist the mental magic woven by someone who is casting it,” he explained. “Lieutenant Vance is going to use her shifting magic, and you have to see through the spell. Just remember: the higher the level of the person casting a spell, the harder it is to see through the illusion.”

At a nod from Nero, Claudia waved her hand in front of Ivy, Drake, and Alec. Magic rippled across their bodies, snapping like a rubber band. And then there were four Claudias in front of me.

I blinked. “Amazing. You all look just like her.”

One of the Claudias looked down at her chest and smirked. “We really do.” That was definitely Alec.

“Morrows, what did I say about you ogling my breasts?” the real Claudia warned him.

Alec’s smirk persisted. “They are my breasts now.”

Nero gave them a hard stare. They stopped bickering and stood still, like perfect soldiers.

Then he looked at me. “Close your eyes.”

I closed them. I could hear my friends shuffling positions.

“Ok, Leda,” Nero said.

When I opened my eyes again, the four Claudias were circling around me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who was who. They looked like quadruplets.

“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.