“You can take the bed back. I do not require it.” Luc tried to appear cold,rather than pained. He withdrew into the comfort of his superiority. Settled back in his bones like he’d never been wrenched from them by a single cutting glance from a lowly carpentry student.
Costas furrowed his brow. None of the other graduates would have made such a bold request.
“Take it back where, sir? It was made to your specifications. But if the design is not quite right, let me know, and we can adjust?—”
“Let me be clear.” Luc strode across the room, his back to the carpenter, signaling that he did not intend to waste time arguing. “I do not want it. I don’t care where it goes, but it can’t go in this house.”
“But it is already here.” Costas chuckled. “A fine piece of craftsmanship?—”
“I said take it back!” Luc snapped, rounding on him.
The older angel looked like he might argue—if Luc had still been a student, he would have scolded him—but in the end, he bowed his head and acquiesced.
“As you wish, Master Lucifer.” He waved at his fellows, and they dragged the bed out again. In that single collective movement, Luc felt, for the first time, the weight of his newly acquired power. A tiny thrill rushed through him, dulled by Lila’s absence but still pleasant.
Luc stood, his lips pursed in a thin line, in the center of the vast, empty room until only he and Costas remained. Now that they were alone, Luc remembered something about him—despite his skill, he’d been passed over more than once for positions as an instructor and a guild council member. This was the kind of information Luc gleaned from spending too much time in the Library, listening to the older angels whisper among themselves while he buried his nose in ancient scrolls.
He’d never cared much for gossip, but he couldn’t deny the advantage of it now.
“Wait,” he said, following Costas to the front door as the carpenter ventured out with the odds and ends of the bed frame. “There’s a newly graduated couple. Eva and Adrianna. Do you know them?”
Costas’s eyes lit up.
“Why, yes. Eva, I know very well.”
Luc nodded.
“Take the bed to them. And don’t mention where it came from. I’ll besure to recommend you for that council position in the woodworking guild.”
Costas’s face brightened even more.
“Yes, of course, Master Lucifer. Thank you, sir. Thank you.” He bowed, and authority surged through Luc’s being, filling the spaces Lila had left behind. A hollow comfort, but it would do. He did not dislike the taste of it.
“As I said”—Luc smiled tightly—“don’t mention it.”
In the brightnessof the Great Hall’s atrium, Luc waited for Hadri to join him for his tour.
The culinarians were cleaning up after the graduation festivities, the cart between them laden with half-empty gold goblets and silver plates. During the celebration, an industrious someone had rigged the teal fountain to dispense wine instead of water, and a few masons and blacksmiths were crowded around it, talking over each other as they worked to set the fountain to rights.
Luc took a heavy breath. He wanted to collapse on one of the cushioned marble benches and stare up at the far-off painted ceiling until the servers carted him away too. He hadn’t slept—he slept little, but this time, not at all—and he hadn’t eaten since before the ceremony. Lila’s admonishments kept ringing in his brain like a maddening bell, asking questions he couldn’t answer.
And, by the aether, he was supposed to have answers!
He was in no mood to act like he did.
Luc had always embraced his favored status like it was a cloak he could hide behind. As if he could become what he was meant to become by pretending to be that thing long enough. He’d thought if Lila believed in him—if she believed that he could do anything—then he reallycoulddo anything. He knew Lila wouldn’t tell him he was special or his ideas were good because everyone else thought so or because he’d beenchosenfor an unknowable task of grandiose proportion. It was why he’d picked her to help him with Earth’s design. But then he’d fallen in love with her, and look at the mess that had created.
He’d thought Earth was the answer to the conundrum that was his purpose, but Lila had blown that notion apart. Not because she didn’t love Earth as much as he did, but because she’d designed it as much as he had. He had ideas, sure, but any idea he’d ever shared with Lila, she’d found its flaws and improved upon it.
The instructors called her a lesser angel, but she was more than him. So much more, it shook him. Which begged the question—why was he considered special when she was not?
An oval mirror set in an ornate frame of wrought gold hung next to one set of brass double doors leading into the Banquet Hall. The doors were closed at present, and Luc stepped up to the mirror. His unkempt blond hair hung limply around his wan face. In his tiredness, he slouched, as he never did. A wisp of himself, his frame faded into the sparkling aether.
Was this really him? Did others see what Lila saw: a head full of impossible dreams and a position he hadn’t earned?
What if he wasn’t the brightest angel because he’d been a smart student, because he was a brilliant architect?
He was beautiful? So what? All the angels were beautiful.
