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“The pit,” the Tyrant said.
“No. She built the pit, but it wasn’t for him. Remember, other angels felt the same way he did, and had planned to help him shut down Heaven. God had all those angels loyal to Lucifer captured, beaten, broken, and thrown into the pit… and she made him watch.”
“Watch?” Helena asked.
“She chained him to the mouth of the pit and forced him to endure the pained cries of his followers, of his own kind, to watch as they were hurled over its edge. There he sits, unable to help them, forever listening to their pleading, to their pain. His punishment wasn’t to be thrown in, but I’d say what he ended up with was worse.”
Silence filled the room again. My heart almost couldn’t handle what Micah was saying, but it knew he wasn’t lying, too. I was a Lightbringer, an angel cut from Lucifer’s own cloth. Part of me had come from him, and that part had—for an instant—tightened up as if it had just feltpain.
Hispain.
It made me dizzy, made the room spin. I felt physically sick and immediately had to sit down on one of the chairs around Helena’s dining table. Helena turned her head to the side and grimaced, a crack in her otherwise perfect composure.
“How can I believe your words?” the Tyrant asked, his voice tearing through the silence.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” Micah said. “I have no reason to lie to you. You wanted to know if it was possible Lucifer had a hand in what had happened to God… and I’m telling you it’s not, because he was chained up.”
“Is he still there, now?” I asked.
“I would say so,” Micah said, “But after the Burn… I don’t know.”
“Are you saying he could have escaped?” asked the Tyrant.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
He advanced on the small boy. “You don’t know, or you don’t think so? Which is it?”
Micah didn’t shy away—he stood up to the Tyrant, puffing out his chest. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have a link to Heaven anymore, do I?”
“So… we don’t know if he escaped,” Helena said, “And that means we don’t know if Medrion was telling the truth or not.”
“Exactly.”
“Which means the only way for us to know for sure is to… go and take a look?”
The Tyrant scoffed. “Impossible.”
“No…” I said, shaking my head. “Not impossible.”
“Heaven is closed to us,” said Helena. “If we knew how to get back, we would have tried it by now, which means all of this is pointless.”
“Unless Archangels have the power to go back.”
Micah shook his head. “If I don’t, neither does Medrion.”
“Then hewaslying,” the Tyrant spat out. “He was trying to stay Sarakiel’s hand by filling her head with nonsense, and it worked.”
“I said I couldn’t get back to Heaven,” Micah said. “Not that I didn’t knowhowto get back.”
I stood up abruptly. “You know how to get back to Heaven?”
Just as abruptly as I had stood upright, the door to Helena’s grand hall burst open, sending a push of warm air into the room and setting the birds into a chirping frenzy. It was Azrael. She stood at the door, her coal-colored wings tucked behind her back, her sword drawn, her chest heaving.
She scanned the room, her eyes wide and filled with urgency. “We have company,” she said.
A cold wave of dread filled me.
Medrion.
