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“Yes,” she agreed. “It truly is.”

There were lounge chairs and sofas positioned throughout the room, intermixed with the plants. Cadence took one long look out of the large window that covered one side of the room, then she sat down on a cozy sofa.

“Hey, Angel!”

My very large cat was resting on another sofa. She came out of her catnap just long enough to glance at me, then she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

“Nyx made sure my cat came along,” I said. “She really does love me.”

“The First Angel loves that Angel is a powerful accessory to your magic,” Cadence said.

Angel helped me channel more magic than I could otherwise handle. The cat was very useful—and very cuddly.

“Cadence, have you and Damiel discussed baby names yet?”

“Not yet. It’s quite early.” Cadence poured herself a cup of tea from the steaming kettle on the coffee table.

“Nero brought up the topic of names,” I said.

“Did he?” Cadence smiled. “I’m glad he’s so excited.”

“He truly is. He once told me that he wants lots of children.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re both immortal. The Fever doesn’t come around every month, you know.”

“Good thing too. If mine did, Nyx would keep me safe in this fortress forever.” I looked around the garden library. It was very nice, but it was still a cage.

“Try to think of it as a vacation, Leda.”

Cadence picked up the newspaper on the coffee table and opened it. The front cover had a big story about the Angel of Chaos and General Windstriker, the First Angel’s righthand angel, expecting a child. There was an accompanying picture from our wedding.

“You know what, being a prisoner makes me hungry,” I commented.

But before I could raid the snack bar, two Legion soldiers stepped into the room.

Both were female, one tall with golden hair and one short with dark, nearly black, hair.

The tall soldier was a lieutenant. I knew that from the metallic emblem of a paw print pinned to her uniform. She had rosy cheeks and a long, blonde braid. Every strand of the braid was picture-perfect, braided with machine-like accuracy. My braids never looked that good. I wondered how long it had taken her to perfect her braiding technique. Despite the precision of her braid—and the crispness of her uniform—there was a warmth in the woman’s eyes, a warmth that her time serving the Legion hadn’t managed to cool.

The shorter soldier’s psychic hand insignia told me she was a captain, a Legion soldier of the sixth level. She was also a dead ringer for another soldier I’d once met: Selena Singh. Except, Selena Singh had been a major in the Legion. And she was dead now. She’d died in the battle at the Magitech barrier at Memphis, victim to a particularly nasty Venom bullet.

“Who are you?” I asked the two soldiers.

“Lieutenant Alice Jones,” the taller woman said.

“You look familiar, Lieutenant.” I hadn’t met her before, of that I was sure. But there was something distinctly familiar about her face.

She smiled. “You know my son. He looks a lot like me.”

“Your son?”

“Jace Angelblood.”

So this was Jace’s mother. But that meant she was also…

“You’re Colonel Fireswift’s wife.”

“I am.”