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“No, there isn’t,” she agreed. “Which is why we can’t find this conductor. We have to make it.”

Thatgot his attention.

“How?” he asked her.

Grace put her hands on her hips. “You’re pretty dense, aren’t you? If you want to make someone with the powers of a god and a demon, you need to make someone with the powers of a god and a demon.”

Faris blinked. “You wish to have sex with me.”

“No, I don’t. Not really. But, unfortunately for both of us, that’s how babies are made, Faris.”

Grace didn’t tell Faris that she had other plans for this child, that she planned for the child to grow up to bear another child, an Immortal child with the power to defeat the Guardians.

And Grace already had her future daughter’s mate picked out. She would pair the child that she and Faris created with the angel Nero Windstriker, the offspring of two angels with Immortal blood. That combination should do the trick. Light and dark, passive and active, order and chaos—all bound together by love.

That meant her child and Nero Windstriker would need to fall in love, but that was manageable. And Grace needed the Immortal child to be made on Earth, the world of infinite potential. That was the perfect formula, the perfect recipe for the ultimate weapon.

* * *

“My Queen,do you require anything else?” Colonel Soulslayer asked.

Sonja looked up from the Legion soldier chained to her table. The man was so close to death’s door that there wasn’t much point in continuing. She needed a fresh subject.

“Take this one away and kill him,” Sonja told the dark angel. “Then bring me something else, someone with a little less light magic. The Venom killed this one too fast.”

Colonel Soulslayer bowed. “It will be done.” He lifted the soldier from the table, balanced him over his shoulder, then left the room.

Sonja took the time to jot down a few notes. She’d been at these experiments for centuries, but she didn’t feel any closer to creating a subject with the right magic to destroy the Guardians. She must have been missing something, some vital piece of the equation.

* * *

Ava knewthe odds were stacked against them when it came to Grace and Faris conceiving the child who would be their weapon, but she also knew of one deity who had cheated those odds. He was a god named Regin, and he’d managed to cheat the odds not once or twice or even three times. He’d cheated those odds ten times, and he had ten children because of it.

Regin was the brother of Faris and Zarion, but that hadn’t saved him when the gods decided he was dabbling in magic too odious to be tolerated. They’d exiled him and his ten offspring to eleven distant, desolate moons, cut off from one another and from the rest of civilization.

Ava decided to pay the disgraced god a visit. The place was completely off the grid. No magic mirrors could bring her there. So she had to use a djinn to teleport her.

Regin lived in a broken-down old wooden house that looked like it had been built by a blind man. None of the walls were straight, and there were cracks between the wooden planks wide enough for Ava to stick her hand through.

The house was situated on a cliff above the ocean, but the water was very cold and very salty. Ava could taste it on her tongue. As far as she could see, the land in every direction was rocky and barren. There weren’t any plants or animals anywhere.

“Wait here,” Ava told the djinn who had brought her to this forsaken place.

Then she opened the door and walked inside the house. Regin sat on a misshapen chair by the fireplace. Deities were ageless, but you never would have known it from the god’s appearance. His wrinkled face was framed by a long, white beard that would have touched the floor if not for all the knots in it. The hair on his head was just as long, white, and knotted. He wore a tattered, blood-stained robe and no shoes at all.

“Regin,” Ava said, standing in the doorway.

The god squinted at her, blinded by the light she’d let in. He must have not left the house in a very long time.

“Shut the door!”

His voice was scratchy. Ava wondered how long it had been since he’d used it.

She shut the door. She glided over to the defeated god hunched over the tiny fire. “You are the god called Regin.”

“And you’re a dirty demon.”

“Be careful who you call ‘dirty’,” she replied in a biting tone. “I have questions for you. If you answer them, I’ll give you something.”