“You don’t need to take the complete magic blocker,” he told me. “There are potions selectively crafted to block out only one kind of magic, or several kinds, or even all magic except for one. Blocking out your major talents allows room for the minor ones to grow.”
Ronan pulled a vial of potion out of his jacket, holding it out to me. “This will silence all your magic—except the power of telekinesis. Your psychic potential is buried deep down inside of you, suffocated by all your other magic. The potion will allow it to grow so you can build up your telekinetic resistance. It will prime your magic. And in time, if you train hard enough, the Nectar will do the rest.”
I considered the vial of sparkling silver-blue liquid. Drinking the potion would make me mostly human again. It would make me weak. Ronan wouldn’t just crush me in a fight; he would annihilate me.
His dark brows lifted. “Scared?”
I grabbed the vial. “Don’t bet on it.”
I popped the cap and gulped down the potion. A hint of chocolate chased the taste of peppermint across my tongue. The potion slid down my throat like a frozen river, like a breath of winter. My pulse slowed, my blood chilling. I shivered. I felt as though death had just kissed my shoulder.
The familiar fear took root inside of me, that same unwelcome feeling I’d had before Nero’s trials. Except it was so much worse now. This time, my magic had abandoned me all at once, vanishing between one moment and the next. Instinctively, I reached for my magic, grabbing, panicking, but it was gone. Just gone. I could feel only the imprint of its departed warmth, the hollow echo of my magic torturing me, mocking me with its absolute absence.
But there was something hiding in the magic void, a weak pulse blinking in the distance. It was a tiny spark of magic that I’d never felt before. I reached for it, pulling with savage desperation to have it, to hold it. It was weak and undeveloped, but it was magic.
Ronan hit me with a telekinetic blast. I pulled the weak flicker of my magic around me like a blanket, a thin layer of protection against the cold. His spell hit the blanket and fizzled out. I blinked in surprise. The little spark of magic pulsed in appreciation, growing a bit stronger.
This was the whisper, the hint, the precursor to Psychic’s Spell. After all these months, I could finally feel it. It was in there after all. It had just been too weak for me to find, buried as it was under all that other magic. Ronan was right. It had been hidden, blocked off from me.
But no longer.
Ronan punched me with his psychic magic again, his attack harder this time. My little spark of magic ate it up and grew a little stronger. It was only a weak trickle of magic, but at least it was magic. And it was all I had right now. I grabbed that magic by the horns, determined to make it mine.
Ronan swung a punch at me. I deflected his strike, magic twitching on my skin, an intermittent buzz like a downed Magitech power line. The spark ignited when it hit Ronan, dazing him for a moment. I took advantage of the brief lapse in his attacks and swung a kick under his legs. He hit the floor.
He bounced back to his feet immediately, a hint of shock marring his perfect composure. “You never fail to surprise, Pandora. You used telekinetic magic before you drank the Nectar of Psychic’s Spell.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I was right. Your other magic was blocking your psychic power. Your strongest powers lie on the opposite side of the spectrum from telekinesis,” he said. “But it also means something more. You possess innate magic, magic from your ancestry—not just magic you gained from the gods’ gifts. Your telekinetic magic isn’t the only thing suppressed inside of you. There’s more magic, and whatever that magic is, it’s just waiting to be unleashed. The question is what you will become when it is finally unlocked. There’s a bite to your magic, an eagerness, an explosiveness. It is not content to fade quietly into the crowd. Good luck, Leda Pierce. You’re going to need it.”
Then he was gone, just like that, like he’d never been here at all.
13
The God of Heaven’s Army
My training session with the God of War had been productive. For the first time, I’d tasted a hint of psychic power. Though the fight itself had felt like running through water with chains of weights dangling from every limb. I could never go back to being human again.
I stretched out my body. Now that the potion had worn off, I was fast again, spry, agile. My muscles felt warm, buzzing in appreciation of the good workout they’d received. My magic muscles felt the same way. I’d frozen a god with my telekinetic magic, if only for a second. I took a moment to stand there and let that sink in. Maybe I wasn’t a hopeless case for Psychic’s Spell after all.
Hope hardened into determination. I would get this. I didn’t care how many telekinetic training sessions I had to endure.
I left the gym and walked through the dark halls back to the room I’d been assigned for the night. A quick check on my phone told me that the snowstorm was still raging over the Field of Tears. I didn’t have an update from Jace either. He was probably asleep like every other sane person was at this hour.
I didn’t regret staying up. The training session had been a real breakthrough. Thanks to Ronan’s potion, I’d finally made it past that wall blocking me. I’d never have guessed it was my own magic that was standing in my way, blocking me from developing my telekinetic powers.
But the training session had also left me with more questions than before. What was I? That question was even stronger in my mind now. Did Ronan know something about me? And what about my magic ancestry? Was he holding back information?
The gods had so many secrets. They weren’t on the same plane of existence as the rest of us. They didn’t think like we did; they considered themselves above us. And they delighted in playing games, even a god like Ronan. He might have been our ally, but he was still a god. A god didn’t do anything out of chance, or for the sake of mere curiosity. Everything had a reason. Everything was calculated.
The same went for Ronan’s lover Nyx. I liked the First Angel, but she was a demigod, a born angel, the daughter of a god. I had a sinking feeling that Ronan had only told me about Nyx’s past—about her prior turmoil of dealing with the very same moral conundrums that were tearing me apart—so that I saw her and him as more human. So that I saw them as people I could trust, people I could confide in.
But I couldn’t. Not totally. I had to tread cautiously. Gods, I hated that I needed to be so paranoid, that I couldn’t just trust people anymore. When had life grown so complicated?
It’s always been complicated, my rational side told me.
I’d had to read into things, even back before I joined the Legion, back before I played war with angels and gods. As a bounty hunter, I’d tried to get into people’s heads, to see things from their perspective. I needed to figure out how they ticked, how they thought, in order to predict their movements. If I could determine where and when they’d be, I could catch them.
Were things really so different now? Was I any more cynical than I’d been back then?
I made it to my room. You know those hotel rooms that aren’t bad but aren’t anything special either? That’s what this room was. The Legion only brought out the red carpet, hot tubs, and canopy beds for angels.
I headed into the connected bathroom and took a two-minute shower to wash off the sweat—and to clear my head before bed. All these mind games were as exhausting as having my ass handed to me by the God of War.
After drying off, I fell into bed. The mattress was surprisingly soft and comfortable considering the hard, cruel angel in charge of this office.