Bonbon grinned wickedly. “Isn’t it, though?”
“Oh my God.” Oriak? clapped a hand over her girlfriend’s mouth. “You aren’t allowed to talk anymore.”
Galilee turned to Leviathan and slid her hand in his. “Did you hear? Luci’s staying for a long time.”
Leviathan’s eyes widened as he looked to Lucifer, and the Devil shook his head.
“Years,” Lucifer clarified. “She hasn’t adjusted to eternity yet.” They were toying with the possibility that Galilee would have an angel’s lifespan, but there was no way to know for a while yet.
“What’s a long time to you?” Galilee asked.
“Millennia,” Leviathan replied, deadpan.
Lucifer chuckled at the look on Galilee’s face. “I could arrange for longer,” he said gently. “If you don’t age, we might have to move out of Salvation.”
Galilee blushed like she always did when any of them talked about this as a permanent thing, something long term, something committed. Lucifer and Leviathan were careful not to scare her off. Decades were nothing, but for someone who’d been raised to think they were a lifetime, the stakes were different.
“I’ll take the years.” Galilee laced her fingers with his, and Lucifer watched as she shoved any uncertainty behind her.
“You might get decades,” he warned.
Leviathan leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Maybe we’ll get a house,” he said, and Lucifer snorted as Galilee almost choked. Leviathan grinned wickedly. “It doesn’t have to be right now, little angel. We don’t want to come on too strong.”
Lucifer smiled at his prince. “I’ll get us a house whenever you want, Levi. As many as you want, in whichever countries you want.”
“Oh my God, just propose to each other already.” Bonbon poured syrup over her pancakes and rolled her eyes.
Galilee flapped her hands at Lucifer and Leviathan. “Enough of this.”
Leviathan winked at the Devil, and Galilee kept a hand on his thigh, a burning reminder that wrapped around both his flesh and his heart. Lucifer was never going to get tired of her searing him, of watching her get stronger and stronger and even more terrifying, of seeing her come apart under his and Leviathan’s hands. He loved them both, even if neither of them was ready to hear it yet. As soon as he could get them alone, he planned to bring them to their knees before him, slide into their throats, feel their slick hold on him so they could all remember that what they’d crafted together had gathered in weight. They had built a solid certainty that left Lucifer in awe of how much possibility could still be found this far into his existence, and he would hold that certainty up like a roof over their heads.
He could do decades. He was the Devil.
He was the son of the morning.
0.
Deziel
The porch of the Kincaid house was painted haint blue. Old oak trees cast long shadows around the mansion, and the woods whispered, never far away. Galilee sat on the front steps, leaning against a post, while Darling Kincaid rocked slowly in a chair, dark liquor lapping in a glass in her hand.
Her grandmother looked out into the sunset. “Where’s your Devil?” she asked. “And the other one?”
“Back in the city,” Galilee replied, her hair loose around her shoulders. “They’re moving my things into the new house.”
“Hah.” Darling’s silver braids shone in the light. “You weren’t sure they’d be welcome here. Coulda asked.”
Galilee shrugged with an easy smile. “After y’all found out the truth, shit,Iwasn’t sure I’d be welcome here.”
Her grandmother hummed disapprovingly in the back of her throat. “You always welcome here. Don’t you dare doubt it.”
“Tell that to Sage and ’em.”
Darling scoffed. “Don’t worry about that. What don’t come out in the wash comes out into the rinse.”
Galilee frowned but let it go. She had returned fewer and fewer times,thanks to the suspicious glances from too many of her own family, creeping at her heels like bitter hounds. She still had Darling, Collette, and Celestial, but when the Kincaids had found out who exactly her mother was, even Leah and Zélie had given her a wide berth. Turned out that being unknown was less terrifying than the truth of what she was, but these were the costs paid for power.
Darling fixed her dark eyes on her granddaughter. “You gotta take your home back,” she said. “Can’t let them push you out, little girl.”
