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19

Miracle

The Angels’ Court took a recess for lunch, and we returned to the garden library. I glanced up as the door to the library opened, but it wasn’t the kitchen staff with the food I’d ordered. It was Leila and Basanti.

I stood, surprised by their appearance, but glad to see them. “What are you doing here?”

Neither Basanti nor Leila answered. Their faces were blank, like they were trying to keep some really bad news from me.

“Are those burn marks on your jacket?” I asked Basanti. “Has there been an attack on Storm Castle?”

“No,” she replied. “For the past few weeks, Leila and I have been running some experiments with magic and the weather at Storm Castle.”

“We’re trying to figure out if we can calm the weather and magic in the Earth’s wild areas,” Leila added. “Just as Cadence and Damiel did on the Interchange. And in doing so, they wiped out all the monsters on that world. It’s simply a matter of balancing the planet’s magic completely.”

Cadence smiled at her former protégé. “To accomplish that, Damiel and I had simply just absorbed the powers of sixteen immortal daggers, realizing our destiny as Keepers, the most powerful of the Immortals. And we had just died and been reborn in a pool of boiling lava. The magic from all of that happening exploded from us and balanced the world’s magic once more.”

“I’m no scientist, but it doesn’t sound like those are conditions we can easily repeat,” I said.

“No,” Leila agreed. “True, we don’t have sixteen immortal daggers at our disposal, but the principle of using magic to balance the Earth’s wild magic remains the same. Without the benefit of all that Immortal Keeper magic, we’re going for precision over power.”

Leila laughed strangely. Uneasily. She sounded weird, kind of mad-scientist-like. She was definitely not her usual straight-talking-soldier self.

“Experiments, you say?” I said. “So what happened? Did you two nearly blow yourselves up or something?”

“No,” Leila said, distracted. “Well, maybe we blew ourselves up just a little.” She gave her hand a casual, dismissive wave. “But our injuries were minor.”

I arched my brows at her. “And now you’re hanging out with us because…”

Basanti said, “After the accident—”

“The nearly-blowing-yourselves-up accident?”

“Yes,” Basanti answered me. “Afterwards, Ivy was looking us over. And she found something else.”

I waved my hands around. “Don’t leave us hanging, girls.”

“We’re pregnant,” Leila declared.

So not bad news, but certainly surprising news.

“Congratulations,” I said. “Which one of you?”

“Both of us,” Leila said.

My eyes grew wide. “Both of you? At the same time?”

“Yes,” Basanti said.

“To the day,” Leila added.

“Not to sound indelicate, but…”

“You are rarely delicate, Leda Pandora,” Leila told me.

I smiled and shrugged.

“The babies have no father,” Leila answered my unasked question.