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When he speaks the name, some of the mask falls away from his expression, revealing a fragile nostalgia. His eyes watch something I can’t see, and for an instant, there’s a genuine smile on his face.
“Everybody liked Uriel better. That was his strongest talent. Making people like him enough, trust him enough, to tell him anything. My father used to joke that Uriel could walk into an enemy encampment, whip up a pot of coffee, and have the generals spilling their war plan in minutes.”
Lucas glances at me, seeming to remember that I’m in the room with him and his memories. He clears his throat and shifts to a less casual position in his chair.
“He was my brother. We each held different talents, but equal in power. Close enough to equal that it would have been difficult to call, anyway.” That’s a lot of past tense language he’s using. A subtle dread settles over me as Lucas’s face darkens. “I don’t have many regrets. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn to learn from your mistakes and let them go so they don’t eat you alive. But asking my brother to speak to my father for me? That’s one regret which will keep me up nights for the rest of eternity.”
He falls silent for a while, and I can’t look away from the hard lines of his face. Ineedto know what happened, but I’m afraid to ask. He looks like a man standing at the edge of a bottomless pit, staring down into the abyss and contemplating the fall.
“Uriel waited until I was gone,” he says quietly, finally speaking again without any prompting from me. “He thought he’d have more luck if Cephalus wasn’t paranoid about me hanging around, listening in. I went off with our best to pick a fight on Heaven’s border—see, the original plan was for me to get the fighting started there, draw all of their attention to their own gates, wait for them to call for reinforcements, then signal to the troops on Earth to take the reinforcements from behind as they retreated to do battle at the border.”
Lucas’s rich amber and brown eyes darken with fury, and I rest my elbows on the table, setting my fork on my plate.
“That’s not what happened,” I guess out loud.
He shakes his head, “Cephalus made a tactical error. It should have been impossible. We had everybody, all active fighters, in position on Earth. Waiting for Heaven’s army to call for backup was essential, because the troops who were intended to take that backup apart were already within fighting range. Uriel… he was a solo operator. A spy, an assassin, a ghost in the night. Cephalus decided to go in for the kill. With the forces of Heaven and Earth simultaneously distracted, he thought he could send Uriel straight to the heart of Heaven’s court.”
“Oh, no,” I whisper in something that’s less than a breath. I don’t even mean for it to come out, but the shock and horror of anticipation draws it from my lips.
Lucas nods, pressing his lips together in a thin, grim line.
“Cephalus told no one. It had to be a top-secret mission, he insisted later. I think he just knew that we would stop him. Since no one knew, no one knew when the plan went wrong. We went about our business, fought until it was unfeasible to continue, then I called our retreat. Before we could move, we were all stricken blind by a vision.”
His hands shake as he curls them into fists.
“They forced us to watch them execute him.” His voice is raw with pain, his mask is gone, and an unfathomable grief lines his every feature. “My brother—mine to protect. They killed him, and I could do nothing.”
Grief makes him look so human. If anything like that had happened to Cassidy—if I’d been helpless, and forced to watch? God, I don’t know what I would have done.
Mine to protect, he said.
I know that feeling like I know the feel of air in my lungs. If my mother was the one to put Cassidy in that kind of position, I think I might have killed her. At the very least, I would have left her side, breaking ties with her completely and refusing to help her at all.
“I gave him one chance,” Lucas says softly, pulling me from my thoughts. “One chance to convince me that Uriel’s death was worthwhile. One chance to tell me, once and for all, what it was all for—to convince me that my brother’s life meant something to him.”
“That’s more grace than I would have given him,” I murmur darkly.
He huffs a breath through his nose that could almost be a laugh.
“Don’t misread me. It was purely selfish. If he could give me a reason, I could accept Uriel’s death and work through it on the battlefield. I could channel my grief to fuel my power and end the war once and for all. He gave me nothing, and so I gave him the same in return.” He glances my way, his expression open and almost vulnerable. “What else could I do? Uriel was my brother.”
His voice is almost defensive, as though he’s expecting me to call him a coward or something for leaving his post and abandoning his father’s war. As though my opinion means something to him.
“Lucas,” I begin, but I can’t find the words to tell him that I understand. That, in his position, I would have done the same. I want to give him comfort, but how could a person comfort Lucifer himself?
Drawn to him, irrationally and irresistibly, I rise from my seat and go to his side. I take his face in my hands and gaze deeply into his eyes.
Mine to protect.
His words echo in my head as I think back to how he saved my life earlier tonight.
This man has confused me, intrigued me, surprised me, and thrown me off balance since the first moment we met.
But he also protected me.
Over and over again, he’s shown me that I’m his to protect.
He grabs my wrist just before our lips touch, a flash of red bursting through the amber in his irises, as if his demon form is so close to the surface that it’s bleeding through.
