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“It doesn’t matter. Faris’s pride won’t allow him to tolerate a challenge to your authority.”

Claudia was right. Life had been so much simpler before I’d joined the Legion.

Simpler—but not better, I thought, smiling at Sierra.

“Well, whether or not I find a knife stuck in my back tomorrow isn’t the issue here,” I said.

Gold flashed in Nero’s eyes. “I won’t let that happen.”

“I know you won’t.” I smiled at him. “The issue is my territory. As you said, it encompasses over half of the Earth. That is far too large for one angel to command, especially now that new cities are going to start popping up everywhere inside of it. The First Angel should make more angels, divide up my territory, and give pieces of it to them.”

“Bitten off more than you can chew, Pandora?”

“I never asked for the Plains of Monsters. Nyx gave them to me to fix. And I fixed them. There are no monsters anymore. Problem solved. Job done.” I brushed off my hands. “And now….well, my territory…it’s just so big.”

His brows shot up. “No angel has ever complained about having too large of a territory.”

“Well, we both know that I’m not like other angels.”

“Very true,” Nero chuckled.

“Purging the Earth of wild magic and monsters…” I drummed my fingers on my leg. “That’s something I’m good at. I am not good at handling administrative nightmares. And that’s what my territory is right now: one big administrative nightmare. It’s not even all on one continent! So now that it isn’t a big wasteland anymore, now that it’s filling up with cities, Nyx needs to divide up the former Plains of Monsters between the other angels.”

“Your talents would be better spent elsewhere,” Nero agreed.

“I need to talk to Nyx about it.” My gaze snapped to Sierra. She’d gone from chastising one of the dresses for being too ‘ugly’, to waging all-out war against it. I lifted my hand to put out the fire she’d set, but Nero was faster to cast the flame-smothering spell. I glanced at him. “Well, if I can even get an audience with the elusive First Angel. She’s sure been gone a lot lately. I wonder what that’s about.”

He stroked his chin. “I’ve been wondering the same.”

“So you snooped around?” I asked hopefully.

“I investigated.” The twitch of his mouth was almost imperceptible. “Not snooped.”

“Of course.” I smiled. “Angels don’t snoop.”

“Nyx has been going off world with Ronan,” he told me.

I frowned. “I knew that already. But what are they doing?”

“I do not know.”

“There sure have been a lot of weird things happening lately,” I commented. “Nyx going on clandestine missions. Mysterious gods popping up out of nowhere, stealing immortal artifacts and the faith of entire worlds.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m itching to dive into these weird problems and figure it out,” I told him. “Dealing with weird problems: that’s my specialty. Hmm, I should get that line printed on a t-shirt. If I had cool slogans on all my t-shirts, I’d definitely make an effort to put them on right side out.”

Nero looked amused.

“The Guardians are behind this. They have to be,” I said. “But why? What do they want with a powerful immortal artifact? They can’t even use magical artifacts because of their magic-nullifying effect on people and things.”

“In the past, the Guardians had others working for them, people with magic, people who could use magical artifacts,” Nero pointed out.

“Yeah.” I frowned. We were missing too many pieces of this puzzle. It didn’t all add up. “Whatever the Guardians are planning, I can’t help but worry that it’s all about Sierra.”

Nero followed my gaze to our daughter. “I worry about that too,” he said, twining his fingers with mine. “But they will not succeed.”

“How can you be sure?”