As if summoned, the fear tore out of Lucifer’s chest, ripping through his skin and dilating his pupils. Michael laughed out loud.
“I’ll let you have her for now,” he said, his smile cruel. “She’s so bright, little brother. She can burn a little longer.”
The fear shouted over Lucifer’s head. Michael would kill Galilee. Michael wouldtakeher. His nails sliced into his palms as he forced himself not to move, not to fly at his brother’s throat. The only thing Lucifer could do to protect Galilee was finish the deal—claim her soul so she became the property of Hell and Michael couldn’t move against her without violating some very old treaties. The other archangels would never allow it.
“Are you done?” He had to force the words past his teeth. “You came here, you threw around some threats, you told me about Deziel—I fail to see what thepointof all of this was.”
Michael’s smile widened like a slit throat. “Maybe I’m here to offer some redemption,” he said. “It’s never too late, right?”
The very idea was sickening. “I shudder to think of what redemption could mean to you.”
The archangel took a step closer. “You could save Deziel, you know. Stop her from the last stages of the corruptionyouseeded in her.”
It had been so long, and yet guilt twisted easily inside Lucifer. “How?” he asked, not because he intended to, but because he wanted to know what new cruelty Michael was planning under his benevolent guise.
Michael shrugged elegantly, his large shoulders moving. “Break the hellgate.”
“What?”Lucifer stared at his brother. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Because it’s going to break anyway, Morningstar, unless Deziel fixes it. I pray that she does, before it’s too late, but you could take the fall for her, so to speak.”
Lucifer simply kept staring, disbelief written plainly on his face. Michael leaned in, and there was a fervent flame burning in his eyes, floating in his pupils.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to make amends? Youbrokeher, Lucifer. Give yourself as an offering, and she can be saved from the corrosion you tainted her with. I will make sure she is rehabilitated.”
There was a weighted pause, and then Lucifer burst out into laughter. “Are you trying totemptme,” he choked out, “with my own annihilation?” He wiped at his eyes and shook his head, taking a step back from the archangel. “No, Michael. I won’t condemn myself to Heaven’s judgment again simply because one of your favorites has gone rogue.”
Michael’s lip curled. “Then the gate will break anyway, and you will still be judged,Morningstar.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“Very well.” The archangel stepped back, mirroring the Devil. “When it happens, I will punish you, your princes, and your radiant girl, Lucifer. You could have taken this bitterness from their tongues, but you chose to drag them all down with you.”
Lucifer’s form trembled with fury.“Stay away from Galilee.”
Michael canted his head to the side and smiled with relish. “Oh, what sweet defense! You havenoidea, Luci.”
“No idea aboutwhat?” Lucifer snapped.
“Don’t worry about it.” Michael’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then snapped back in. “You’d better move, though. Those princes you left with the hellgate can’t hold it much longer without you.”
Then there was barely any time left. Lucifer unfolded his wings and glared at his brother. “You could stop this at any point. You could have mercy on Deziel.”
“Certainly,” Michael agreed, lightly and maliciously. “AndI could also tell you all the things I’m not telling you, but where’s the fun in that?”
The archangel flashed out his wings in turn, and Lucifer’s pupils narrowed into pinpoints at their brightness, eight blades of pure light that burned the air around them.
“I came here to offer you mercy, Lucifer. When your worlds end again, don’t forget that I reached out a hand and you chose to turn away.”
Before Lucifer could respond, the archangel’s wings flapped once, and then he was gone, a streak of light across the evening sky.
Lucifer stood among the flowers with unwelcome images of Deziel razing through his mind, a wildfire of magnolia and shock rising higher and higher. He had not thought of her in centuries, had relegated her to the place in his mind where all his memories of Heaven lived, a lost place, a place he could not return to.
Was it not enough that he’d Fallen? That he’d lost Heaven and everything there? Deziel and her side hadwon. She had stayed in Heaven, her position elevated through her betrayal of him, and yet it seemed she wanted more, pounds of his glimmering flesh. It choked Lucifer with a clutching bitterness, and he wanted it to release him. The first escape he thought of was Galilee, her honeyed voice and burning touch, sweet and hot enough to rinse the bitterness away. Deziel was of an age that had died when Lucifer was thrown into Hell, a time he could never return to, no matter how much she tried to haunt him now. Galilee was his clamoring present, gentle, with none of an angel’s cruelty. Lucifer wouldnotreturn to a place he had barely survived leaving—never in person, but certainly not in mind and spirit. He would move forward, and, eventually, his momentum would slough off the ghosts of his past.
It had to.
The Devil left the terrace of flowers in a burst of black wings, swooping around the side of the house. Michael was long gone in the horizon, and Leviathan and Galilee were walking up the pathway to the house—his lost salvation and his newly discovered one. They seemed to have banked their former animosity, and for a moment, they looked like old friends in silent companionship. Lucifer descended from the sky in front of them, gravel scattering under the draft from his wings. Something eased in his chest when Galilee’s face lit up at the sight of him, when she opened her arms in welcome like she would never need to forgive him for anything.
