The world was teetering on a fine edge. Leviathan could taste it like salt on the inside of his cheek.
“Things have changed,” he continued. “And they can changeagain. The Devil kneels before you, dying, just to make a point while you torture him.”
A ripple passed through the storm. “It is not torture.”
Leviathan gave an unamused chuckle. “Lookat him, Galilee. You’re crushing the Morningstar under your heel. His power is going to go out. And you can justify it however you want, butlookat a true thing while you do it. You are making him suffer because youcan, because you have the power to.” To his surprise, Leviathan felt grief for all of them. “You are everything I feared you would be for him, you know that? A fresh damnation, and still he goes willingly.”
“And you?” the maelstrom asked. It was slowing now, and its hold on Lucifer had slackened, the tendrils of light pulling back slightly from the Devil’s body. “You will not raise your sword against me?”
“I’m not Lucifer. I’ll fight if you try to harm me.” The remnants of Lucifer’s power were refracted in the shards of the storm, and it was a painfully beautiful sight. Leviathan reached out a hand and touched one of the fragments. It was cold beyond belief, burning his skin. “But I changed too, Galilee. It is not an easy thing to admit. Lucifer fought us for you. He believed in a chance, and hedid not want you to die.”
The maelstrom’s light trembled and retracted into itself, just by a fraction. “And you?” it asked again.
Leviathan let the wonder and hunger he’d felt in the garden course through him again. It felt like surrender.
“I don’t want you to die, Galilee.” The words fell warm from his lips. “Doesn’t it feel a little like you’re dying now?”
The maelstrom’s voice turned brittle. “Yes. It is strange.”
“Our true forms can erase us unless we learn to inhabit them, to wield our power instead of being wielded by it. Deziel knows this.” Leviathan took another step, deeper into the storm. It felt intimate, like he wasright up against Galilee’s naked skin, their breaths tangling. “Do you understand, Galilee? Your mother knows there are many ways to kill you. Your true form can destroy you first. Killing Lucifer would break you away from yourself. The hellgate’s destruction will likely be all of ours as well. It won’t be contained to here; it’ll reach Salvation. Your family. Your friends.” He leaned closer urgently now, and her light pressed like blades against his face. “I want you to have a chance, Galilee.I do not want you to die.”
It felt like a momentous confession, and Leviathan accepted this, that he had been affected by whatever Deziel had designed Galilee Kincaid to be. It was fine. If it saved Lucifer and Galilee, then Leviathan would accept the shame of changing his mind.
There was a heavy pause, and then the maelstrom pulled out of Lucifer sharply. The Devil gasped and collapsed against Leviathan, but the prince didn’t dare shift his focus away from the storm that used to be Galilee—that wasstillGalilee, if he could help it.
“We can always change,” he told her gently. “I have lived since the beginning of time, and I can tell you this—it is never too late. There is nothing you cannot come back from.”
Softly, softly, all that burning light contracted in on itself, chiming like whispering glass until it slowly re-formed into a woman with honeyed skin and copper hair. Her eyes were still nothing but a storm, a roaring jagged white. Leviathan felt a wash of something fierce seize at his throat.
“Galilee,” he said.
She looked at him, but there was nothing in her face other than the chaos burning in her eyes. Lucifer was limp against his shoulder.
Galilee glanced over at the Devil. “Did I wound him too much?” Her voice was flat and empty.
Leviathan was almost certain she hadn’t gone too far, but he could feel the other princes still simmering in their true forms behind him, barely contained in their worry about Lucifer.
“We’ll let them look at him,” he said, taking Galilee by her elbow—she scorched his fingers with want—and gesturing to the others. “Shift back,” he told them. “Attend to the Morningstar.”
“I still think we should kill her,” Belial snarled. “Harming Lucifer is an act of war against Hell.”
Leviathan gave her a look. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get right around to that after Hell breaks loose.”
“Don’t be flippant,” Asmodeus chided, kneeling beside Lucifer. “Both you and Lucifer chose the girl over the hellgate. We will not forget that betrayal, Leviathan.”
“It wasn’t mutually exclusive,” Leviathan answered, watching Galilee. She’d stepped away from Lucifer and was walking toward the hellgate, which was still frozen in place from when she’d first shifted. The rest of the princes clustered around their king. Leviathan left them and walked up next to her.
“I did this,” she said once he joined her, staring at the static screams tearing through the air. “It’s not moving.”
“It got worse when you started shifting, but yes, your hold on it worked better than the wards. Better than Deziel’s, even.”
“Hmm.” Galilee cocked her head to one side, still utterly expressionless. Without warning, she shifted back into the maelstrom in a blur of blinding shards, swelling even larger than before. Belial cursed and started to move, but Leviathan held up a hand, curious to see what Galilee would do.
“Wait,”he ordered. “Just wait.”
Thick, pale coils of Galilee’s power wound into the gashes in the air and pulled them closed, erasing the inky screams. Leviathan felt reality itself distort as Galilee KincaidpushedHell back through the gate and sealed it shut. The howls turned plaintive and faded away slowly. The air where the artifact had been resting glitched and shuddered, and then the bronze mask appeared again, an ancient face looking up into the vault. It was pristine and intact, fully back in this reality, baring ivory teeth.
The whole thing had taken mere moments.
