I swallowed hard and looked at Damiel. “You knew this was coming. You knew this was the test.”

“Yes.”

Hot, angry tears burned in my eyes. I didn’t try to pretend I wasn’t scared; that would have been a lie. I didn’t want to die.

Wood and metal crashed. Nero had punched through another stall.

“This scenario has been playing out for hundreds of years,” Damiel continued. “The City of Ashes cannot be saved. It’s not meant to be saved. The gods rigged the trials to test Nero, to see if he would give up that which he holds most dear in order to save humanity.”

I’d thought I knew the gods were ruthless and cruel, but I’d never truly known it until now.

“Don’t think you can just do nothing,” said Damiel. “The gods are fully prepared to watch the Earth’s cities fall and humanity die. If the angels didn’t know they were willing to make that sacrifice, then this test wouldn’t work.”

The gods wanted Nero to prove how far he would go—how much he would sacrifice—to do his duty and protect the Earth.

“I refuse to sacrifice Leda for the sake of a game.” Nero looked like he wanted to demolish the whole carnival, but he folded his quivering arms together and turned to his father. “There must be another way, another source of magic to power the generator.”

“You can’t kill yourself instead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” replied Damiel. “If you did, the gods would kill her anyway.”

“I know.” Nero wrapped his arms around me, holding me to him. It was a silent promise to me that he wasn’t going to let me die.

I didn’t want to die. I still had so much to do, so much to live for. I had to find my brother. And Nero… I knew there was more for us. This could not be it. For it all to end like this now, in the gods’ game, it would be like my life had meant nothing.

But my life didn’t mean nothing to the First Angel. Nyx wanted me to be an angel, and I couldn’t become an angel if I were dead. She’d known what she was sending us into. There had to be a way out of this. There was always a way out. If only I could see it.

“You found a way out in your trials, right?” I asked Damiel. “Cadence was the person most dear to you, and she didn’t die.”

“The test was designed to give you no way out,” Damiel told me. “Even I did not find a way around that. I had to sacrifice my best friend, using our bond of friendship to save the city.”

“This city? You saved this city?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. If you saved the city, why is it lost again?”

Anger burned in Damiel’s eyes, those eyes that were usually under complete control. “Because the city isn’t meant to be saved,” he growled. “Once the test is over, the gods throw it back to the wilds so they can use it again to torment the next unsuspecting angel.”

My mouth dropped in outrage.

“My trials took place when Cadence was pregnant with Nero. She was about to give birth to the first child of two angels, so she was considered too important to risk her life on missions. She couldn’t be my second for the Gods’ Trials. That alone saved her life.” Damiel clenched his fists. “If my trials had happened at a different time, any other time, she would have died—and for nothing.” He hissed the word.

“I’ve always wondered why you turned away from the Legion, even long before they marked you for death,” Nero said. “This was the reason, wasn’t it?”

Damiel laughed. The sound that came out of his mouth was neither joyous nor jolly; it wasn’t even human. It was a sound born in the deepest, darkest part of his soul.

“Yes, the Gods’ Trials were the beginning of my fall from grace,” he said. “When I sacrificed my best friend in the City of Ashes, I thought I was saving the world. But it was just another one of the gods’ games. It was all for nothing, a meaningless sacrifice.”

“Is there another way?” Nero asked his father, his eyes pleading, desperate. I’d never seen him look at Damiel that way.

“I knew you would one day face this same choice. Hate me all you want, Nero. I deserve it. I was a cruel father. A hard father. But I do love you. And after I lost my best friend, I swore I would never see my son forced to make the same choice. There is another way. It took me centuries to find it. There’s a magic source hidden in the city, one powerful enough to restart the Magitech generator and save everyone.”

“The gods brought it here?” Nero’s brows drew together, as though he couldn’t believe the gods would offer us an easy way out.

Neither did I. The gods wouldn’t give us a magic source that solved all of our problems. This test wasn’t about magic. It was about an angel doing whatever was necessary to fulfill his duty to protect the Earth.

“No, not the gods,” Damiel said.

“You?” I guessed.

“Leda, I’m flattered, but even I do not have enough power to wield the magic it requires to bring it here. It is an ancient artifact, one that precedes the gods’ time on Earth. The cruel immortal minds who designed these trials don’t even know it’s here. It is made from the same kind of magic as your bond.”

“Ancient magic,” Nero said. “A cheat.”

“This whole test is a cheat. It’s rigged. You’re supposed to lose, no matter what you do. Sacrifice the one you love to save humanity, or sacrifice humanity to save the one you love. But find this artifact, and you can use it to save the world. And to save Leda from the cruel fate the gods have made for her. Unless you are afraid,” Damiel challenged him.

Nero met his father’s stare. Respect shone in his eyes. Respect and understanding. Nero understood what had happened to Damiel, how the gods had pushed his father away, how Damiel’s need to protect him had governed his actions for two hundred years.

“Thank you.” Nero extended his hand.

Damiel shook it. But when he tried to step back, Nero’s grip tightened, holding him there.

“I still don’t completely trust you,” he told his father.

Damiel laughed. “I wouldn’t respect you if you did.”

And then, just like that, Damiel disappeared. The fog rolled in, swallowing the carnival of my memories. A white light flashed before my eyes. When my vision cleared, we were back in the power building, standing right where we’d been before the trance. Well, one of us was standing anyway. My hands and knees were pressed to the ground, surrounded by dust bunnies and brick bunnies. And glass bunnies. At least none of them had come to life while we were out.

Nero reached down and locked his arm with mine, pulling me up. I was barely standing on my own feet again when Nero shook and tumbled. I caught him before he hit the floor. He’d lost another power.

“We will get through this. You’ll get your magic back,” I told him, stroking my hands down his face.

He steadied himself. “I would withstand the agony of losing my magic a million times over before I ever let you go, Leda.”

“Nero…” My voice shook. Joy and pain twisted up inside of me. That was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.

“We need to scour the city for this ancient magic source,” he said, his mouth hard with determination.

“Something tells me that we don’t have to go far.”

He looked over my shoulder to see the big ‘x’ I’d apparently scratched in the sand while kneeling on the ground. I’d also drawn an assortment of symbols around it.

“I guess I wrote that during the trance.” I showed him my dirty fingernails.

“What does the text mean?”

“X marks the spot.”

“X marks the spot?”

“Yeah, that,” I said. “It’s the way to the ancient artifact. And I think the symbols are instructions on how to get there.”

Nero’s eyes panned across the symbols. “I’ve seen these markings before. They belong to one of the ancient languages, one not of this world. I can’t read them. Can you?”

“I think so.”

“How?”

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “I guess the same way I have weird visions of things that happened long ago.”

“Can you translate them?”

“I can try.” I read the first line of symbols. “You need the blood of a black flower.” I frowned. “The blood of a black flower?”

“A black rose. When you shred the petals, they bleed.”

He opened one of the pouches on his belt and grabbed a handful of black petals. Then he drew his knife and shred the petals to pieces. The moment they hit the x, a black liquid oozed out of them.

“Five drops of blood from an angel,” I said.

Nero slashed the blade across his hand and squeezed his blood onto the ‘bleeding’ rose petals. The growing pool of black liquid flashed, turning the color of caramel.

“Next is—”

A crash of metal cut through my words like tempered steel. I turned to face the latest menace to crash our party. The silver…thing was a few inches taller than me, modeled in the shape of a man.

“What is that? Monster or machine?” I asked Nero.

“Both. The wild magic out here infuses life into metal, forming it into machine monsters.”

I looked across the machine man’s hard chest. Every line was defined, even exaggerated. Any bodybuilder would have killed for that body. “He has nice muscles.” I smirked at Nero.

He returned my stare, clearly not amused.

“Hey, I was just kidding. You are much sexier than he is.” I set my hand over his as he moved to draw his sword. “You perform the spell to access the artifact.” I drew my own sword. “I’ll take care of the monster.”

“But you don’t have any magic,” he reminded me as I ran toward the silver machine.

“I was kicking ass long before I had magic,” I called back. “And I was doing it in style. You worry about breaking that seal. I’ll keep the monster busy.”

Mr. Muscles swung a punch at me. I ducked and darted around its shiny silver body, and his fist slammed through the wall like a wrecking ball, taking a huge chunk out of it. Tiny slivers of shattered brick pelleted my face.

“The next ingredient is vampire blood,” I called out to Nero. “Hey, I’m starting to sense a pattern here.”

Nero took out a small vial and poured the vampire blood over the seal. It gurgled and popped, swirling into the other ingredients. The mixture was a real boiling brew now. Flames licked the surface.

I darted around a stone column to avoid Mr. Muscles. The machine smashed right through it like it wasn’t even there. Broken stones crashed down on me, slamming me to the ground. Coughing out dust and blood, I pulled myself up again and swung my sword at the machine. The blade bounced off his chest.

Mr. Muscles looked down at the scratch I’d etched into his metal abs. His eyes pulsed with crimson fury. He swung his arm, hurling me across the room, and I smashed into a supply cabinet. It tipped over. Tools and cables spilled out all around me.

“Are you sure you don’t require assistance?” Nero asked me.

Mr. Muscles stood in front of a brick wall a few feet away, stomping on the tools that had fallen out of the cabinet. He might have had the body of a man, but he had the mind of a child.

“I’m fine. Keep the fire going.” I got to my feet, picking up an axe that had spilled out of the cabinet.

“What is the next ingredient?”

I charged at the machine. He swung a punch at me. I ducked and turned. He pivoted with me and punched again. His fist smashed through the wall of bricks behind me. He’d hit it with so much force that his fist got stuck inside the wall. Grinning at him, I swung my axe. The blade cut through the soft material at his elbow, severing the lower part of his arm. The chunk of metal fell at my feet.

I kicked the silver arm toward Nero. “The next ingredient is silver. The more, the better.”

Nero grabbed the arm and tossed it into the bubbling mixture. The silver melted, turning the liquid white.

Mr. Muscles came at me again, knocking the axe out of my hand. I grabbed a hammer and a handful of nails off the floor. The machine was armored, but there were weak spots. And though he was made of metal, he shared some similarities to a human body. I rolled and hammered a nail into the Achilles tendon on his right leg. The monster dropped to its knee. I hammered at the same spot on his other leg. He collapsed to the other knee. I picked up my axe again and hacked off the monster’s remaining limbs at the joints. Silver machine parts broke off in all directions, tumbling into Nero’s potion.

He looked at the mangled machine parts sinking into the white liquid, then at the axe in my hand. “You sure have an interesting style,” he declared.

I tossed the axe aside. “I aim to please.”

The influx of silver had ignited the potion. Pillars of white flames bubbled and burst out of it. There was a snap and crunch, like the breaking of an enormous tree branch. The ground collapsed under us, and we tumbled into a chasm.