How awful would it be if that happened and it was all my fault?

Dread turned in my stomach. What if I couldn’t resist him? What if he forced me to open the gates and slaughtered all the angels there? Don’t fear. Don’t fear.

Oh God. I’m going to be sick.

Raphael stepped forward, placing a firm hand on my shoulder. A healing energy rolled through me, chasing away my anxiety.

“Whatever will be will be, and that’s okay,” he declared.

Oh, Raph. Such a good guy, always making it seem okay if I made mistakes.

Without warning, I leapt forward and pulled him into a hug. Our armor clinked together in the process, making it a bit awkward. I wanted him to know how much it meant to me that he was always guiding me, allowing me to be me, and not making me feel bad for my mistakes.

His arms came around me immediately, squeezing me back. “We’re very proud of you, Brielle. No matter what,” he confessed over my head.

I was going to cry if I didn’t pull away soon, so I stepped back from him and nodded.

“But our pride will intensify if you lay a beatdown on him.” Michael winked.

Ahhh, a Michael wink. The only thing equal to a Lincoln wink.

“Let’s begin. We have our poker game in an hour,” Uriel stated from the corner of the room, where he looked quite bored.

The three angels shot him a look, and his cheeks reddened.

Poker game? I chuckled, shaking my head. Spend enough time on Earth, and you pick up our habits.

“All right, Brielle. Take your defensive stance, and we’ll each practice coming at you with a full-blooded angel power,” Michael instructed.

I gulped.

“And remember to protect yourself like you would in a real battle. Use shields, both sides of your magic, whatever you have at your disposal. You won’t hurt us,” Raphael added.

Looking over my shoulder, I glared at my husband—it was his brilliant idea to do this—but when he shrugged, I faced forward once more.

“Okay.” Pulling my sword free, I held it aloft in one hand, picking up my metal shield with the other. With ease, I called forth my power, creating the energy shield I had learned to do easily, and dragging it over myself like a dome.

The back doors creaked open, and Emberly and her best friend, Mel, walked in then.

Oh God. An audience?

Mel was an adorable redheaded human, with twice the sass of Emberly. When I looked over, Emberly waved and joined Lincoln and the others on the sideline.

Michael stepped up to the plate first, staring me down. He was looking at my energy shield, seeing the edges of it.

“I’m going to break your shield,” he declared, pulling his sword free with a burst of blazing blue light.

“The hell you are!” Emberly razzed him from the sidelines.

I grinned, but it was short-lived. When Michael’s face turned menacing and he raised his sword, my humor faded, and I braced for impact. Holding my metal shield above me, I tried at the same time to bolster the other one. Michael’s sword came down hard on my energy barrier, causing it to flex and wobble. Pain sliced through my body, everywhere at once, but the shield held. Tiny blue cracks appeared in its outer wall, but his sword didn’t puncture it.

Hell yeah!

Michael looked dumbfounded for a second. “Fascinating. Gabriel, come break this.” He stepped aside.

Oh God.

I tried to repair the cracks Michael’s blue light had made, but they seemed to be growing by the second. Gabriel didn’t wait for an introduction, simply tossed a ball of white fire at me. Coupled with Michael’s blue cracks, the force sent my shield crumbling around me.

My onlookers booed.

“I thought so,” Michael mumbled curiously.

I decided to give them a little taste of what fighting with Brielle was like. If I were fighting Lucy, I wouldn’t let him stand around and talk.

Dropping my metal shield to the ground, I sprang from where I was crouched, sword held aloft and aimed right for Michael. Obviously, I wasn’t going to hurt him if he didn’t move, but I had a feeling he would be ready.

Sure enough, the archangel snapped to the side, grinning as he parried my blow with such a force, that my sword was flung from my grasp.

Damn superhuman power.

“Good!” he shouted. “Never underestimate the power of a surprise attack.”

Yeah, but it didn’t work, and now I was weaponless. I stood there frozen, body tensed, unsure what to do.

Raphael stepped forward. “A Celestial is never weaponless. You have magic within your every pore.”

Right. I kept forgetting that, and it made me really miss Sera. She would make me look like such a badass right now. Maybe this was what I needed to hear all along. I was powerful without her.

Would I go to Hell if I flung black magic at Archangel Michael?

“Give him all you’ve got,” Raphael encouraged.

Mind reader.

Without missing a beat, I clapped my hands together, creating a small baseball-sized black blob of magic. Michael’s twenty-foot wings flapped, causing the other angels to step back a foot, and I chucked the ball. Michael didn’t flinch or try to deflect it; instead, he let it splash across his chest, where it molded to his metal breast plate, constricting it.

“I just wanted to see what that felt like,” he observed, looking down at the dark magic with fascination. “It stings.”

I was glad I could satisfy his curiosities.

Bringing up his sword, he cut lengthwise along his armor, shredding my black magic like it was made of paper. The dark blob fell to the floor and shriveled in on itself, leaving behind dented armor in its wake.

Michael assessed the dents with fascination. “Does it work on the Dark Prince?” he queried.

I shook my head. “No, but a mixture of both sides of my magic does.”

Kind of. My memories of my time down there were full of depression and drug-induced fatigue, so I couldn’t be entirely certain.

“Incoming!” Uriel shouted out of nowhere, then ran at me full speed.

Wind picked up and tossed my hair to the side, and panic ripped through me. Our friendly, chatty, sparring session had taken a turn. Clearly Uriel really wanted to get to his poker session.

My wings snapped out and I pumped them, causing me to rise higher and go over his head. As he passed under me, I collapsed my wings and dropped to the ground near my sword, bending to pick it up again. The moment I wrapped my fingers around the cold steel, a gust of wind slammed into my back, knocking the wind out of me.

I fell forward a bit, trying to get back the air that had been slammed from my lungs.

What the hell? Wind magic? Really?

“Lucifer will often surprise you. He won’t hesitate to harm you when your back is to him. He has no morals,” Uriel’s voice carried on the wind from behind me.

Motherfricker. He was right, and I wanted to prove to the archangels that I could do this. Anger rose up within me and I spun around in my crouched position, before bursting into the air, allowing my wings to help me gain speed. Uriel was ready, wearing the same grin Michael had. These men were angels, yes, but they were also warriors, that much was clear.

I came down hard with my sword, and it clinked against his midair. The shock of the metal weapons coming together stung my arm, sending vibrations throughout my body. We slashed our swords out, back and forth for a few moments when Raphael called out to me.