Leviathan couldn’t wrap his head around it. Meremomentsto fix what Lucifer and the princes had been working on forover a month. Galilee shifted back into her human form, and there were dark circles gouged around her eyes.
Leviathan turned to Galilee slowly. “What did you just do?”
She was swaying on her feet, her face gray. “If Deziel designed me to break the hellgate, I figured I might be able to heal it. So, I tried.” Galilee turned to look at him, and her iced-white eyes thawed out into their human color. She looked exhausted beyond words, and her voice wavered. “Like you said, Levi. Things can change.”
Leviathan was still staring at her with wonder exploding in his chest when Galilee’s eyes fluttered shut. He caught her in his arms as she collapsed, a world intact in her wake.
24.
Galilee
Gali woke up in a bed that smelled of smoke and cacao. Her hair was pressed under her cheek, and she was curled up into a fetal ball under a heavy duvet, her hands clenched and her fingernails digging into her palms. Soft early-morning light poured through the window.
She had dreamed of the vault with the hellgate; of Lucifer crumpling at her feet again and again and again, his face twisted with pain; of the princes in their true forms, scales and wings and furious slavering mouths. She had dreamed of Deziel. Hermother.
Looking back, it was clear to see how easily the angel had manipulated Gali until Gali was overtaken by shock and rage and betrayal, by grief for Gifty Williams, until the stinging ache she’d always carried had turned her inside out and dissolved her into fracturing light. Lucifer had paid for it, and Gali had feltnothing. She’d watched his power dim and dim some more, and all she’d done was dig more light into him just like he’d taught her when he thought she’d stay innocent. All it had taken to change that was intent, and Gali had truckloads of that now—furious intent, murderous intent, betrayed and heartbroken intent. She sat up slowly, every muscle stiff and painful, but it was her heart that hurt the most, a throb that hammered against her ribs.
“You’re awake.” A silken voice interrupted her thoughts, and Gali snapped her eyes up. Leviathan was sitting in the window seat, his locs gathered at the nape of his neck, dressed in loose pants and a linen shirt.
Gali tried to say something, but her throat felt clogged with sourness. The prince of Hell stood and brought her a steaming cup, lifting it to her mouth.
“Drink this,” he ordered, and Gali obeyed. It was hot ginger tea, sweetened with honey and spiced with cayenne.
She had no idea why she felt so cold. Her power should have been burning her up from the inside, but instead a chill had crept deep into her marrow. Levi laid the back of his hand against her cheek and frowned.
“Your human form’s crashing from using that much power,” he explained. “You’ve been out for a few days, but perhaps you should sleep more.”
Gali shook her head. “I can still feel it,” she said. “My power, it’s right there.” It was burning inside her, filling the hollow she used to have. She couldn’t feel the stinging ache that had been her companion all her life, andthatfelt strange and foreign, to not be empty.
Leviathan’s eyes narrowed. “You feel like it might overwhelm you?”
“Nah, it’s fine.” It was resting, watching her with one wakeful eye, and Gali was grateful for that. When Levi had talked her down in the vault, her power had been a beast of its own, and controlling it had taken everything she had. She’d let it off the leash to close the hellgate, but Gali was beyond tired, beyond drained. She tried not to think too hard about what it meant for her human body to fly apart into light and then come back together again. What it meant to be so finally, irrevocably inhuman.
The pillow next to her smelled of smoke, and Gali smoothed her hand over it. “Lucifer was here,” she said. Her voice was still hoarse and unrecognizable.
“He stayed with you as long as he could, but then Michael arrived.” Leviathan’s lip curled, and Gali’s stomach sank.
Michael.He may have helped create her, but he wasn’t her father. She’d rather choose the fisherman who Deziel had killed before she chose the cruel archangel, and that would make her even more of a Kincaid, to be fathered by a stranger who wasn’t allowed to stay on Kincaid land. Maybe Gifty Williams’s spirit would rest easy somewhere, knowing that the daughter he’d loved had grieved his loss. But if Michael was here, then he had come to tie up the loose end.
“Is—is Lucifer going to turn me over to the archangel?” Gali had to force the words out of her mouth. She was terrified of the answer, but how could she blame the Devil, after what she had done to him?
Leviathan looked mildly appalled by her question. “Of course not! Galilee, we would never let Heaven have you.”
She looked down at her hands. “I don’t see how you could stop them.”
“Hey.” Leviathan waited until she met his gaze again, then smiled. “Luci has a plan.”
Gali glared at him. “Yeah, I heard. But I didn’t give him my soul, and I’m not gonna.”
“Michael doesn’t know that.” The prince of Hell stretched out in the window seat. “When you tortured Lucifer, you ran him through with your light. It left a... residue. Something an archangel can detect. Something the Devil can use to claim a bond with you, proof of a deal for your soul.”
Her jaw dropped. “He’sbluffing?”
Levi shrugged. “What does Michael know of Hell’s deal logistics? Luci’s betting that he won’t risk the treaty by coming after you, especially since the hellgate didn’t fail after all. Michael’s not in a great position to move against us right now.”
Gali was getting a headache. “I thought Michael could do whatever he wanted.”
Levi laughed. “Luci may act like a little brother, but he’s theKingof Hell. In Heaven’s bureaucracy, Michael’s just an archangel. He’sgot power, sure, but he answers to other ranks of angels.” The prince grinned. “Even an archangel can Fall.”
