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“Look,” Alice said in pure wonder.
So I looked. Wild monsters had gathered nearby in the hopes of feasting on the losers of this great battle. A sparkle of magic started at the center of the Sanctuary, spreading out from there in a wave of rainbow light. It passed through the storm clouds overhead, quieting them. When it touched the barren earth, wildflowers popped up all around us. And when it met the monsters, the feral fire in their eyes died out.
Arina strolled up to us, an arm wrapped around each of her twins. “I understand it now. The Guardians’ Sanctuaries on Earth were created by the clash of gods and demons. And when that happened, when the Sanctuaries fractured this realm, the beasts went wild. The weather of Earth turned wild too.”
I was happy to see Arina had come out of the Sanctuary with her two adorable children. They all looked so happy together. A family reunited at last. A tear slid down my cheek.
“But this act of balance, of breaking the Guardians’ Sanctuary, has accomplished something else as well,” Arina said. “It has balanced the Earth’s magic once more. The storms are gone. The monsters are once more tame.”
“Just as Cadence and I balanced the magic on another world, Interchange, in another great act of magic.” Damiel wrapped his arm around Cadence and their daughter, whose black-and-white wings were perfectly divine.
“In another great act of magic, like we performed here,” Cadence said. “An act of unity and perfect balance.”
Nero knelt beside me. He set his hand on our daughter’s forehead. “Everything all right, Pandora?”
I lowered my head to his shoulder. “Yes. Everything is perfect.”
“Not everything.” Ronan had one eye on his newborn child—and one eye on the Guardians’ army, which was still fighting us.
“Try not to kill them,” I pleaded with the Lord of the Legion. “They’re confused. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Now that the Guardians were gone, now that they were too far away to use the supernaturals’ deaths to gain magic, I was worried that the gods and demons would decide there was no reason to spare those supernaturals’ lives.
Ronan looked at me with an expression I’d never before seen on a god’s face: sympathy. Of course, he only felt sorry for me because he thought I was really naive.
But rather than scorn or pity, the god gave me kindness. “We will try to save as many of them as we can. They are powerful supernaturals, not people we like to waste.” He looked at Faris. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Ronan, don’t think I don’t see that scheming look in your eyes.” The God of Heaven’s Army drew his sword. “And I will not allow you to claim those supernaturals for yourself.”
Faris followed Ronan across the battlefield. I was pretty sure the Lord of the Legion had just done me a very big favor. He’d directed Faris’s attention to the supernaturals—and away from my daughter.
“Did we capture any Guardians?” I asked Nero.
He frowned. “No. But we did find a female Guardian dead in one of the buildings.”
“I bet it was the same one who had Meda try to kill me last month,” I said. “In doing so, she acted against the others’ wishes. The Guardians don’t strike me as the kind of people who tolerate dissension in their ranks.”
“Right now less than ever,” Nero agreed. “Now that their Sanctuary is gone, they will only survive if they all act together as one. When packing up to leave, they’d have left behind anyone who didn’t follow the Guardians’ hard line.”
“How did the Guardians escape?” I asked.
“They had an escape route already planned out,” Damiel told me. “They went through a special one-time-use magic mirror. Their trail dissipated quickly. It didn’t even leave a trace, or I would have followed them.”
Now that he possessed all the active and passive magic abilities, Damiel could teleport. It was kind of annoying when he just popped up out of nowhere. Annoying but cool. I wished I could do it too.
“Wherever the Guardians are, our efforts here have weakened them,” Nero said. “And they’re on the run. But they’re not done.”
“No, they’re not done,” I agreed as I watched the Guardians’ abandoned supernaturals continue to fight our forces.
I simply did not understand their fierce loyalty to the Guardians, though the wicked light in Faris’s eyes as he spotted those he wanted to add to his Orchestra certainly wasn’t helping to make us look trustworthy.
Ronan was trying to woo the supernaturals with the truth, but they outright refused to believe the Guardians had taken them in only to sacrifice them.
“That’s the problem with blind faith,” I said.
Grace, the Demon of the Faith, winked at me. “I will try not to take offense at those words.”
The demon’s forces closed in behind her. I had a lot of people on my side, people I knew would all fight to their last breath to protect me, but Grace’s horde was even larger. And they were all powerful demons.
