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“I don’t believe that any evil is necessary,” I declared.
“Yes, that’s very noble of you, dear. And very naive.” Inali folded her arms over her chest like a shield. “You wouldn’t even be here today if not for the necessary evil that Grace and Faris committed.”
“That doesn’t mean I need to follow in their footsteps.” I turned to Indira, demanding answers. “Why did you kill all of those people?”
“Because, as my sisters have explained to you, there is great power in death,” Indira said. “And in life. But there’s also a pretty tight magical balance between life and death. So I had to trade all of those deaths for life.”
“What life?”
“The life of your child.” Indira looked at Nyx. “And yours.” Her gaze panned across Cadence, Leila, Basanti, Andromeda, and Alice. “And yours. And yours. And yours. And yours. And yours.”
“Wait, so you killed all those people to create this life? So we’d all have children?” I said.
“Making children of angels is a tricky thing. You’re so…” Indira frowned. “…infertile. Usually, anyway. It’s even worse with the gods and demons. I’ve never met such a barren bunch. That’s what comes from drinking all of that poison all of the time. It gives you power, sure, but it also doesn’t make it easy for you to pass on that power, to have children. In order to counteract all that infertility, to create powerful new life, it required a lot of deaths. Specifically, a lot of powerful deaths. Because we’re not just talking about one baby angel. We’re talking about several, all at once. Since the laws of magic and nature just don’t work that way, I had to bend them.”
“That’s why you killed two angels,” I realized. “And all of those Legion soldiers and supernaturals too.”
“Many people on many worlds.” Indira said it like what she’d done didn’t bother her at all.
“Why Silvertongue and Spellsmiter? Why those two angels?” Nyx asked her.
“Because I could lure them out to the Sienna Sea, far away from anything,” Indira said.
“By removing the ruins of Darkstorm’s fortress,” Nyx said. “How did you do that?”
The First Angel was clearly assessing her enemy, determining what they could do and how they did it.
“I did that,” Rosette said.
“You can teleport away whole buildings?” I asked her.
“Of course. You didn’t think teleporting was just for people, did you? There are so many larger uses. In fact, I once teleported an entire spaceship to—”
“They don’t want to hear about that,” Indira cut her off.
Actually, I wanted to hear all about it. Anyone who could teleport whole spaceships was not someone to be taken lightly. I wondered what else Rosette could do. Or what the rest of her fellow octuplets could do, for that matter.
“Why did you later return the ruins of Darkstorm’s fortress to the Sienna Sea?” Nyx asked Rosette.
“Because we’d already gotten what we needed from them,” Rosette replied. “And they were taking up a lot of space in my storage unit.”
I wondered how big of a storage unit a djinn like Rosette had.
“Ok, there you go. Now you know. Don’t give me that look, Nero Windstriker,” Indira snapped at him. “You owe us your daughter’s life. If we hadn’t killed all those people, I couldn’t have traded the power of their deaths for your daughter’s life.” Indira looked at all the other expecting parents here. “And the same goes for all of you. I’ve given you all a great gift. But if you’d rather I took those gifts away…” She lifted her hand in the air.
“No,” Damiel said quickly.
Nero had moved in front of me, shielding my body with his. Colonel Fireswift’s sword was drawn. A fiery halo had completely engulfed Colonel Dragonblood. Even steadfast Nyx had set her hands over her flat belly. Everyone else looked like they were two seconds away from kicking Indira’s ass.
“Angels understand sacrifice,” Damiel said.
Gods, his voice was so cold that my lungs were practically freezing in my chest. A layer of frost had actually formed on the floor.
“You will not harm my child,” Nero told Indira.
“Any of our children,” Nyx said with an even mix of fury and fear.
Indira smiled pleasantly. “Then we’re all in agreement.”
