Page 50 of Wicked Angel
“You should eat something,” Levi said, breaking the silence. He nodded toward my untouched toast. “We need to keep our strength up.”
I managed a small smile. “Pot, kettle,” I replied, gesturing to his own full plate.
He acknowledged the point with a slight tilt of his head, then pushed his plate aside entirely. “I'm not hungry.”
“Me neither.” I abandoned the pretense of breakfast, wrapping my hands around my coffee mug instead. “Do you think?—”
My phone buzzed on the table between us, the screen lighting up with an incoming message. The number was unfamiliar, but something about the sequence caused my heart to skip a beat.
“What is it?” Levi asked, instantly alert to the change in my expression.
“I don't know,” I murmured, reaching for the phone with a strange reluctance. “But I have a bad feeling.”
The message was brief, just a few lines, but my blood ran cold as I read it:
Ariella.Come to Elysium alone. The central square. Tomorrow at dawn. Your mother and sister's lives depend on your compliance.
No tricks. No allies. Just you.
— Rhodes
I stared at the screen,my fingers tightening around the phone until my knuckles turned white. Levi gently pried it from my grip, reading the message with a darkening expression.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled, his eyes flashing with anger. “He's using your family as bait.”
“It's what I would do, in his position,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady despite the storm of emotions raging inside me. “He knows I'll come.”
“You can't seriously be considering this.” Levi set the phone down with careful control, as if afraid he might crush it otherwise. “It's a trap, sweetheart. He's not planning to let any of you walk away.”
“I know.” I picked up my mug again, but the coffee had gone cold, bitter and unappetizing. “But what choice do I have? They're my family, Levi.”
“And he's counting on that. On your loyalty, your willingness to sacrifice yourself for them.” Levi ran a hand through his hair, frustration clear in every line of his body. “If you go alone, you're dead. And then he'll kill them anyway, because why wouldn't he?”
I knew he was right. Rhodes wasn't offering a genuine exchange—he was trying to eliminate me, the one person who knew the truth about his plans, who had the allies and the will to stop him. My family was just leverage, a way to force my hand.
“I'm not going alone,” I said finally, decision crystallizing in my mind. “But I am going.”
Levi studied my face, searching for something. Whatever he saw there must have convinced him, because he nodded once, his expression grim but resolved. “Then we plan. We gather our allies. And we make damn sure that when you walk into Elysium tomorrow, you've got an army at your back.”
I reached across the table, taking his hand in mine. “Thank you.”
He squeezed my fingers lightly, careful of his strength. “Don't thank me yet, sweetheart. We've still got to figure out how to pull this off.”
Over the next hour, we reached out to everyone—Lacey and Abbie at the Great Eternity Hall, Farrah and Wyatt, Erin and Rey and the other demon hunters, Aspen and Boise, and finally, Kadriel and the Lost Legion. By early afternoon, we'd arranged to meet at the warehouse to plan our next move.
I left Rhodes's message unanswered. Let him wonder, let him worry. It was a small act of defiance, but it gave me a sliver of satisfaction in the face of his threats.
* * *
The warehouse was crowdedwith allies by the time Levi and I arrived. Lacey and Abbie had set up a makeshift command center with the crates, spread with maps of Elysium that Kadriel had provided. Farrah and Wyatt stood nearby, deep in conversation with Erin and Rey. Aspen and Boise were examining what looked like small glass vials filled with a shimmering golden liquid—the elixir made from the lilies, I realized with a surge of hope.
And in the corner, standing slightly apart from the others, was an angel I recognized—the one who had guided us to the Lost Legion's hideout in the mountains. He straightened as we approached, offering a formal nod.
“Ariella,” he said, his voice deep and resonant. “Leviathan.”
“Didn't catch your name last time,” Levi said, his tone carefully neutral. Since his transformation, he'd been even more guarded around the angels, as if afraid they might see the demon lurking beneath his controlled exterior.
“Tarek,” the angel replied. “Commander Kadriel sent me to represent the Legion. The others are making their final preparations.”
