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She laughed. “That Fever cycle was a bust, but oddly I had the Fever again last month. And that was a success.”

“How often does it happen that two Fever cycles fall so close together?” I asked.

“I’ve never heard of such a case before,” replied Captain Singh.

“Nor have I,” Lieutenant Jones chimed in.

I looked at Cadence.

She shook her head. “It just doesn’t happen.”

Just as I’d thought.

“And you had the Fever last month too?” I asked Lieutenant Jones.

“I did.”

“So did Cadence.” I chewed on this new information. “Don’t you think it’s kind of odd that we all had the Fever at the same time, especially when the fertility of Legion soldiers is so sporadic and infrequent?”

“It is indeed odd,” Captain Singh agreed.

“You think it means something?” Lieutenant Jones asked.

“I certainly don’t trust a coincidence like that,” said Cadence. “Especially, when it’s completely unprecedented.”

“But it’s not actually completely unprecedented.” I thought back to the legacy charts Colonel Fireswift had made me memorize. “Twenty-four years ago, many children of angels were born in the same month.”

“That’s when you were born,” Cadence said to me.

“Right. There were so many Legion brats in my initiation class. At the time, I didn’t realize how unusual that was. But now I know just how weird it really was. They aren’t ever that many Legion brats in an initiation class.”

“No, there aren’t.” Cadence’s face was contemplative. “One or two at most, from the luckiest, most fertile years. Not eight like in your initiation group.”

“You think this is about me?”

“Like I said, I don’t trust coincidences. This isn’t random. And you are the link between both occurrences of this phenomenon, Leda,” Cadence said. “Back then as one of the children born. And right now as a pregnant angel.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Why were so many angels and wives of angels pregnant both times? And what did I have to do with it?

But there were no obvious answers, and there was no time to contemplate this now anyway. We had work to do, the work Nyx had set me.

I already had Nerissa working on the initiates’ survival rate, but that was only one piece of the puzzle. We still had to convince people to join the Legion of Angels. We had to make them trust us. We had to make them willing to risk everything, to put their lives in the Legion’s hands. Because even if a way could be found to make more initiates survive the Nectar, they would still be risking their lives as Legion soldiers. This war would not be bloodless. Hell, there was already blood everywhere, on many worlds.

“I assume Nyx sent you here to do more than be pregnant?” I asked Captain Singh and Lieutenant Jones.

“Indeed,” Lieutenant Jones said cheerfully. Her pleasantness must have been the universe’s way of balancing out her husband’s unpleasantness. “The First Angel instructed us to assist you in your mission in whatever ways you required.”

“Did she tell you what we’d be doing?”

It was Captain Singh who answered this time. “Our goal is to boost the Legion’s recruitment numbers. A worthy undertaking.”

“It is,” I agreed. “But this isn’t simply about fulfilling the First Angel’s wishes. It’s about nothing less than changing the future course of human history.”

“Then let’s get started,” Lieutenant Jones said brightly.

“How did a nice person like you end up married to someone like Xerxes Fireswift?” I asked her seriously.

Her brows lifted.