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“I’ll promise if you do.” Kylie pulled my socked feet into her lap.
“Only the deepest love will persuade me into matrimony,” I said, quotingPride and Prejudice.
Kylie cracked a smile. “Maybe you’ll end up as filthy rich as Elizabeth Bennett too.”
I snorted. “I’m not counting on it.”
Three
Nathaniel
My knives cutthrough the air in front of me, heat sizzling in their wake. The demon simulation ducked my strike and jabbed at me.
“Not today.” I grinned as my blade sliced through its arm and it dissipated in a shower of sparks. Not quite what it felt like to kill a real demon, but close enough.
I sensed the second simulation behind me and spun, coming face-to-face with a partially transparent figure. It looked human but felt demonic. Not just demonic.Powerful. The simulation was a greater demon, maybe a duke or prince of Hell.
I swung, but the simulation was faster. It danced back, making it halfway across the training room before I finished my strike. I rocked on the balls of my feet, catching my balance.
I was just about to charge forward when movement caught my eye. A girl. She had the same transparent quality as all simulations, but the feeling I was getting from her was all kinds of different from the demon.
She washuman.
I didn’t train with a lot of mortal simulations. Earth wasn’t really my favorite place to hang out. It was too crowded and reeked of humans. I didn’t have anything against mortals as long as I didn’t have to spend too much time surrounded by them.
If there was a human simulation in the training room, it meant one of my brothers was messing with the controls.
I cursed under my breath. The demon had noticed the human girl too, and every bit of angelic duty that flowed through my veins demanded I protect her. Damn that pesky vow to protect the human race.
The knife flew from my hand, hitting the demon squarely in the chest. The demon broke apart with more sparks. The human looked at me with a startled expression, and for a second I forgot where I was, forgot that she wasn’t real. The only thing I was aware of was wide green eyes staring at me as if I were something to be afraid of.
“Nathaniel.” A calm, measured voice broke the spell.
I turned toward Micah just as a talon sank deep into my arm. I hadn’t even noticed there was another demon. Dammit. I was off my game, and of course Micah was here to witness my slip.
I hissed as the simulation burned my skin, creating all the pain I would feel if this were a real wound.
Micah waved a hand, and the demon blinked out. Training session over apparently.
“What’s up?” I asked, slipping the knife I still held into my boot. I bit back a curse as a flare of pain shot through my arm at the movement. I wasn’t really injured, and I had no intention of showing Micah that I was in pain.
“We need to talk. I have a job for you.”
I crossed to where the knife I’d thrown had landed and tucked it into my other boot like I had all the time in the world, like I wasn’t a slave to whatever Micah was about to tell me to do. “A job?”
He turned around and walked out of the training room, leaving me to follow like a loyal puppy. Self-entitled prick.
Micah’s study looked more like a smoke room than an office. Leather couches and armchairs were scattered around the room, tables between them. There were an absurd number of bookshelves lining the walls, and a giant wooden desk dominated one side of the room. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, and the artist in me couldn’t help admiring it.
Micah walked over to a bar stocked with crystal glasses and bottles of various liquor. “You want anything?”
“You tell me.” I dropped onto one of the couches, lounging back in an utterly fake display of nonchalance.
He poured two glasses and set one on the table closest to me on his way to his chair behind the desk.
“An angel was killed last night,” he said without preamble or emotion.
I took a slow sip of my drink. “Which order?”
