The knock at Luc’s front door was so timid that he almost missed it between the noise of his hammer and his distracted thoughts. But when he’d set the sword to cool, the knock rang out, unmistakable.
Was it Braun? But he heard no boisterous ‘Master Lucifer!’ Surely, the other warriors hadn’t arrived with orders to destroy the last of his house. They would have burst in, breaking the door down.
All the same, Luc crept to the door with caution. He cracked it open.
To his shock, the knock belonged to Lila. He swung the door wide, and she stood there, shuffling her feet and asking if he minded a visit from an old friend.
An old friend? Lila?
Lila, for whom secrecy was the footnote to every facet of their relationship.
But there she stood in front of his house. In the middle of the main thoroughfare for all to see.
Granted, most everyone had gone to the feast, but still, this wasn’t like Lila. It was reckless. He wondered what she wanted.
When Luc didn’t answer, Lila slipped through the door he held open. He shut it, and she entered his study, tall and graceful in her flowing robes. A glint of her old curiosity surfaced as she surveyed the room.
Sometimes she appeared there in Luc’s dreams. In the half-lucid moments before he woke. She knelt beside the chaise and told him, with a wry smile, to get back to work. She’d never appeared while he was awake, though, so her sudden presence confounded him nearly as much as his vision had.
She wasn’t there to…spyon him, was she?
Luc dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Lila hated the Council. Even if he didn’t know how she felt about him, that much had always been true.
Besides, he could push everyone away, but not her.
Not her.
“What do you want, Lila?” he asked.
“What do I want?” Crossing her arms, she turned to him. “Shouldn’t you offer me tea? Or, I don’t know, a chair?”
Luc gestured to the chaise lounge, and she sat.
“I don’t have tea.” Luc braced his back on a worktable. “So what is it? You must have a reason for visiting. It is yourfirstvisit, after all.”
Lila touched her wrist in a self-soothing manner, the way she did when flustered. Her mannerisms were the same, after so long.
“Well…” she began haltingly, “I went down to Earth, and I wanted to say you outdid yourself. It’s lovely.” A tiny smile surfaced. “And I’m sorry that you’re stuck here. I suppose that’s my fault. I gave you the idea to go behind the Council’s back.” She glanced down at her lap.
“I don’t blameyou.” Luc frowned. “You were right, back then. I shouldn’t have asked the Council about us. I shouldn’t have trusted them.”
Lila met his eyes in surprise.
“What? You don’t think I can admit when I’ve been wrong?”
“I didn’t think you were self-aware enough toknowwhen you’ve been wrong.”
Luc laughed. He’d missed Lila’s bluntness. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed it until he’d seen her at their old meeting spot.
As a student, he’d counted on Lila to always tell him the truth, and he liked to think he could still trust her, even if he couldn’t trust anyone else. She was the only angel who’d ever responded to him with complete honesty. With no agenda. Other than the one she’d spelled out for him once when he’d been a young angel who’d wanted nothing more than to kiss her as often as he liked.
And she was there, after so much time. She’d come back.
He still thought there was a reason he’d been drawn to her; she even had her own vision, apart from Castor’s, though he didn’t want to reveal it to her. Not yet, knowing she would expect him to know about his own.
At any rate, he needed to get back to his sword, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to test her.
“Do you remember when you accused me of being obsessed with the Void?”
