The chaos stopped, and everyone gaped at me.
My hand stung from where I’d slapped Knox across the face.
His jaw dropped open as he touched the red fingerprints that were already visible across his cheek.
“That’s my girl.” Sadie clapped loudly and pumped her fist.
Her support was not appreciated.
Rina snarled. “How fucking dare you touch him? He is one hundred times the angel you’ll ever be,” she spat. “You can’t even fly.”
The snowbank.
Straining for hours.
Failing.
Malum let out an unholy noise and moved like he was going to hit Rina. I grimaced and flung myself in front of him to stop him. “Whatever,” I said, “she’s not wrong.”
“I’m going to kill her,” Scorpius promised as he stood up. Orion pulled him back down.
“Why did you do that?” Knox asked as he fingered his cheek.
Malum shifted in front of me and blocked my view of the angels. Flames leaped across his skin protectively. Whiskey and tobacco tingled across my senses.
“Why?” Knox asked again.
My gut told me saying, because I’ve wanted to hit one of you ever since the Legionnaire Games probably wasn’t the best move.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said weakly. “Adrenaline overwhelmed me, and I acted before I could think.”
There was a long moment where I tensed and prepared to fight to the death.
Knox said crisply, “It’s fine. Let’s move on. You’ve been suffering of late because of your overwhelming failures to fly. I forgive you.”
Pompous prick.
“Don’t talk to her with that tone.” Flames leaped higher off Malum’s shoulders, and he cracked his neck back and forth menacingly. “Your legion can focus on the oldest and largest infected during battles. Everyone else will handle the rest.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded in agreement.
“However,” Jinx said, “questions about a cure should be directed to the High Court.” She pointed toward the enchanted tablet on the table. “The organization that is making all of us fight in this war. Save your ire for the people who deserve it.”
The angels sulked but didn’t say anything. They slunk to the back of the room.
Jinx, Malum, and I turned back to our strategy board and started over.
With no windows to filter light, there was no sense of time.
We projected weapons onto the board and rough renderings of the compounds we’d plundered. We wrote down our numbers and estimated the number of ungodly waiting for us in the third location. We counted how many soldiers on average were lost guarding the perimeters and where we needed them positioned.
At one point, Jinx created a math equation that calculated the odds of finding a cure for the infected.
Chalk symbols and letters covered every inch of the chalkboard.
Malum and I updated the equation where she made mistakes, and all three of us solved it for quality control.
We all got the same result.
There was a .07 percent chance of finding a cure, assuming the High Court was already working on one, and a 342 percent chance the ungodly would murder millions if they expanded into other realms and infected people.
Jinx smirked condescendingly and turned around, brandishing her chalk to the room. “This is why your position is idiotic,” she spat at the angels.
No one responded.
I rubbed grit out of my tired eyes.
Everyone was asleep.
Jinx hobbled over and smacked her crutch against Rina and Knox until they woke up. “See why your idea was asinine.” She pointed at the board.
The angels squinted sleepily at the board with confusion. “What are we looking at?” Knox asked as Rina said, “I just see letters and symbols. What is this?”
Jinx let out a small scream of frustration and hobbled back to the board while Malum shook his head like he too was disgusted with their mathematical incompetence.
The angels went back to sleep.
I grimaced at Jinx. Poor girl had forgotten for a second that other people were genuinely simpleminded and useless. She’d learn with age.
Either I was hallucinating, or she didn’t look like a child anymore. She looked like a teenager.
Her limbs were long and lanky like she was going through puberty, and her face had lost baby fat.
“How old are you again?” I asked.
Jinx ignored me as she stared at our equation. “I don’t have time for this. We need a plan if the angels refuse to fight because they’re cowards.”
I winced.
We sounded like monsters.
They weren’t wrong for not wanting to kill the innocent infected; sun god, neither did I. However, this was war.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel so good about our position. Maybe we should do something to try to save— “No.” Jinx cut me off like could read my mind, which she very well might be able to. “No. We know the facts and the numbers. If we’re going to win this war, we can’t worry about the fate of the few in the face of real, assured destruction.”
I tried to nod in agreement, but my neck muscles cramped.
My chest knotted with regret.
“She’s right,” Malum said as he tapped the tablet and flipped through the different projections. “We’ve thought through every angle and calculated the odds. We need to stay level-headed and not be swayed with emotion. The three of us are effective strategists because we make decisions based on hard facts.”
Silver eyes looked melancholic.
The chalk in my fingers froze solid and dropped. It shattered across the floor in thousands of little pieces. For the first time, I noticed the similarities between Malum and me.
The heartlessness.
The learned cruelty.
We adapted and survived.
He looked at me and whispered, “We’re different because of our analytical abilities. We recognize that this is war. We understand the stakes.”
I exhaled.
“Here.” Malum walked across the room and dragged over the angel’s tea cart. He looked ridiculous wheeling the little silver trays filled with flower-shaped cakes.
He sat down in one of three leather chairs and gestured to Jinx and me.
“Um,” I said awkwardly as I stared at a chair, then back at him.
Pink stained his cheeks as he cleared his throat and waited. A yawn climbed up my throat as I sat in his offered chair.
“Thanks,” I said.
His blush intensified. “Anything for you.”
All three of us sat.
He leaned toward me, and I pretended not to notice navy painted nails twisted a curl that had come free from my bun.
He casually played with my hair.
My spine hurt.
Jinx reached for the cups, and Malum stopped her.
“I got it,” he said gruffly, then held a flaming finger under the kettle to warm it.
When he was satisfied with the temperature of the water, he packed strainers with tea leaves and placed them over each of our cups. He took painstaking care pouring the liquid.
It felt like a fever dream.
After he was satisfied with the state of our tea, he grabbed little plates and piled them high with cucumber sandwiches and cakes.
Pink became scarlet as his blush deepened under my scrutiny.
“You both need to eat more,” he said as he pushed the overflowing plates in front of Jinx and me.