Lucifer snatched at the Trumpeter, the herald of Wrath, and lifted the sleek, rounded tube to his lips. It was neither cold nor heated. It just was.
He parted his lips. All Lucifer need do now was exhale.
A talon, like a curved pink diamond, curled around Lucifer’s fingers where they were pressed against the bars of the cage. He was bleeding, but it was not the creature who harmed him. His own blade had cut his skin, a light flow of blood running down its length. He lifted his head to find the simurgh close. It’s head turned so one topaz eye could regard him.
Lucifer drew in a breath. And the simurgh held his gaze. The world quietened, the Exarch’s nefarious mutterings lost in the warmth of an enveloping silence. The talon at his hand was gentle. And all the while the simurgh’s astonishing colours drained away, flowing from the tips of its tail with all the grace of a river’s current.
‘I have to stop this,’ he whispered, or perhaps simply thought such things. ‘I am sorry, truly. But I must let you go.’
The delicate crest upon the creature’s head lifted, the feathers had been mauve a short time ago. Now they were the grey of dirty snow.
The simurgh’s long golden beak dipped downwards. The creature blinked.
And Lucifer knew he was losing his mind. For he imagined he saw a flicker of something familiar in those topaz depths.
He closed his eyes and exhaled, blowing into the Trumpeter.
The summoning of Wrath was silent.
The simurgh mewled and its talon slipped free of Lucifer’s fingers. The creature fell to the bottom of the cage, landing on its side, the top wing splayed like a shroud over its body, a streak of grey feathers amongst the brighter hues.
Azazel stared out from the obsidian, his face a ghastly mix of feverish delight and greed. ‘You have failed, Lucifer. It is over.’ His laughter was ripe with cruel amusement. ‘Seraphiel’s creature, the Primordial Flame it holds, shall turn the Severance War, and White Mountain will fall.’
And while the angel laughed, the first raindrop fell. A tiny perfect bead of liquid that landed on the back of Lucifer’s hand.
Another joined it. Then another.
The raindrops became a sun shower, magnifying the fading colours of the simurgh where it lay.
Azazel’s chants hitched, and for the first time he lost his rhythm. ‘What have you done?’
‘What I should have done some time ago.’
‘You stupid, wretched bastard.’ Azazel’s eyes were cold and blue as pole ice. But that was all the colour about him. The angel was beyond pale, every vein greener than holly leaves, stark against his skin where his arm reached forward. ‘A pity you did not do your duty sooner.’
The Exarch lunged, his face contorted with his fury. He reached. And his fingertips spliced through the obsidian. Out into the rain. Lucifer cursed as he watched the water spray off the angel’s skin.
Fucking gods.
Lucifer hurtled to his feet, and wrenched his vestige free. He’d been focused on the cage when he should have been destroying the blasted mirror.
The Exarch was using the power of the simurgh, the flame it held, to bridge the worlds.
If he stepped foot in this conservatory he was but a cockaigne away from the world that held Samyaza’s halo.
Far more than the patter of rain was needed here. Wrath was taking its sweet bloody time.
Lucifer lunged forward, vestige held aloft. He was fully prepared for this to be the last blow he ever struck, but called on the gods to make it Azazel’s last fight too.
He loosened a battle cry as the Exarch overstepped the boundary between Elyssiam and this small cockaigne. Azazel was up to his elbow in the Faelands now. A brass-coloured cuff at his wrist shone with runes, its edges trimmed with tiny diamonds. Lucifer would wager the entire collection of his vast libraries that the cuff was the Exarch’s halo.
The runes lit up.
‘No,’ he screamed.
And struck.
His blade aimed true for the angel’s wrist.
