“Oh, Morningstar.” Michael dropped his arms and resumed his stroll through the flowers, letting his gaze drift slightly off Lucifer. “You act as if there is no compassion in Heaven. What if I told you salvation isalways possible, even at the final moments, a redemption like an unexpected dawn.”
The archangel glanced at Lucifer as he said the last few words, and bile gathered in Lucifer’s throat. “I’d say you were a fucking liar as always,” he answered, forcing his voice to be steady.
Michael gave him a sorrowful look. “Deziel doesn’t have to end up like you,” he said, and an ocean fell out of the sky and crashed onto Lucifer’s head, roaring around his ears.
“Deziel?”
The name choked him in a cloud of magnolia, a helix of light exploding in his memory, a sparkling laugh haunting his sleep. The knife in his chest twisted again with a serrated determination, and he could form no other words. Michael was watching his shocked reaction with a cruel hunger hidden not far beneath the falsely solicitous look he was wearing.
“Oh, that’s right. You used to be close, yes? Before the war.”
Lucifer couldn’t respond. Deziel, his love, his viper, his comrade. Deziel, who had stretched through the universe with Lucifer, only to stand behind Michael to watch the Morningstar’s Fall, with angelic ichor splashed on her armor and absolutely nothing in her eyes. Even between his screams, Lucifer hadn’t recognized her. The Deziel he’d known, the one he’d loved, she was bright and effervescent and curious. She’d followed him down to earth and taken bodies because she wanted to know what it was like to be made of flesh. They had been lovers, companions,friends, and though Michael would never admit to the sin of envy, Lucifer knew he’d coveted that. He’d seen the way Michael looked at Deziel, and when Michael finally had her, when she turned to the archangel and helped him throw the Morningstar out of Heaven, Lucifer had also seen the fierce flash of possessive satisfaction in Michael’s face with Deziel by his side.
Before then, Lucifer had thought he was safe with Deziel: safe to share the thoughts he was having, the questions he wanted to bring to God like burnt offerings.Here,he’d wanted to say,you made us, and wewould like to talk to you, truly talk, about the things we are instructed to do and the humans you want us to kill with all this water.Lucifer had considered it reasonable worship, to engage in this way. Michael had thought it was blasphemy, and Deziel—his lovely wondering angel—she had drawn the line and she had drawn it in flame. She’dtoldMichael the things Lucifer shared with her in confidence, and whether she admitted it or not, a war had spawned because she didn’t hold her tongue.
“Dezielis the one fucking with my hellgate?” It made more painful sense than Lucifer would have liked. Even from the pits of Hell, he knew Deziel still hated him for being something other than what she expected. For being himself, too questioning, too challenging. There was no panacea for that, and Lucifer had accepted it as part of the cost of his war—she was not the only angel he had loved who loathed him now, not the only one who would sabotage him if they could.
“She placed a warp on it, a reversal,” Michael replied, resuming his stroll amid the flowers. “You’re likely not familiar with the weaves we use in Heaven these days.”
No fucking wonder nothing Lucifer did had been working. A warp woven from Heavenly power could only be unraveled by Heavenly power, and these days, Lucifer’s batteries were firmly of Hell.
“Obviously,” Michael continued, “her actions werenotsanctioned by Heaven in any way.”
Thatmade no sense. Deziel was deeply loyal to Heaven and especially to Michael, clinging to him in the aftermath of leaving Lucifer’s side.
“You’re lying,” Lucifer said softly. “She would never do something like this, not without permission.” Michael’s pace slowed, and Lucifer took a prowling step forward. “Didyougive her permission, archangel?”
“Of course not. That would violate our treaty,” Michael replied smoothly. “Besides, I only seek her salvation. As I did yours, little brother.”
Lucifer laughed sadly. “You never wanted to save me, Michael.”
The archangel’s eyes filled with what Lucifer might have almost believed to be grief. “I tried my best, Morningstar. But you took it too far.You always take it too far, and then you leave me no choice.” There was a hidden weight in his words, but Lucifer couldn’t begin to guess what he was talking about.
“The Deziel I knew would never touch a hellgate,” he said instead.
Michael pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “When will you understand the extent of the damage you have caused, Lucifer? The Deziel you know died in the war. You could have stopped it. You did not.”
“Ibelievedin the humans. Even now, you insist it is such a sin!”
The cordial mask his brother had been wearing dropped for a second, turning Michael’s face into a thing of harsh lines and unforgiving shadows. “Even now, you hold your position,” he snarled. “Have you learnednothing, Lucifer? Youcorruptedthe angels—you made them think they could questionGod!”
Lucifer tilted his head. “Question God, Michael? Or question you?”
Something wild and furious leaped into Michael’s eyes, but then it was gone just as quickly, wiped smooth and cold. “You know,” he said, “Deziel questioned the leniency of your punishment.”
“Oh, you must havelovedthat. Undermining your decisions? Your favorite thing.” Lucifer knew he was needling his brother shamelessly now and that it was probably a dangerous course of action, but with entities like Michael, their violence was always going to bear down no matter what you did. At some point, it stopped making much of a difference whether you thought you’d provoked it.
Michael’s eyes stayed flat. “I thought her defiance was a symptom of your corruption. But you, Lucifer, there will never be enough punishment to get you in line, will there?”
A cold streak skittered up Lucifer’s spine. He knew that tone of Michael’s voice, that unsheathing of a flaming sword, that ringing condemnation, and suddenly, Lucifer remembered why Michael had come down in the first place, because a girl had become a pillar of light in the garden.
His mouth went dry. Galilee was his weak spot. If Michael wanted to punish him again, it would be easy.Please, Leviathan,he whispered to himself.Keep her hidden.
“You have been punishing me for eons,” he managed to say. “You still have a thirst for more, I see.”
Michael’s gaze pressed in even closer, as if it was stripping secrets off Lucifer’s skin. Itburned.
“You are afraid I’ve come for your pet,” the archangel said.
