Chapter 26 Galilee
Galilee
The light coming through the windows was noonday harsh. Galilee was clean again, wearing one of her oversize T-shirts from
her apartment as she sat in the bed, her legs folded under her. Leviathan had been in the shower for the last fifteen minutes,
and Lucifer was sitting on the floor next to the bed, one knee pulled up and his elbow resting on it as his fingers played
in his dark curls.
“Leviathan’s avoiding us,” he said.
Gali raised an eyebrow. “Y’all seem to have some history there,” she noted.
The Devil gave a ghost of a smile, tinged with sadness. “I betrayed him once,” he said. “I seem to be good at that.”
“You mean your plan for my soul?” Gali twisted her mouth. It had stung at the time, but it didn’t have the same bite now.
“First of all, I damn near killed you for that, so I’d say we’re even. Second, you used it to keep Michael away from me. It
all worked out, Luci.”
Lucifer huffed softly. “Fair enough.”
Gali stared at him for a bit, her eyes tracing over his hooked nose, his lovely mouth. “What happens now?” she asked.
Lucifer tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I suppose we should return to Hell,” he answered.
That stung to hear. Sure, she’d been planning to return to her own life, but that was before everything they had just shared,
and she had a good reason—her life had literally been ripped apart and inside out from this. Besides, Lucifer didn’t even
know she was planning to leave, and clearly it didn’t matter. He wasn’t even thinking of staying for her. He’d plotted for her soul, and now he was talking like this had just been a fling. Gali looked down at her hands and twisted her fingers, trying not
to be hurt that he could walk away from her so easily.
“Sounds good,” she lied.
“Shit, I hope not.” Lucifer frowned at her. “We should do that, but I don’t particularly want to. I doubt Leviathan feels differently.”
Gali’s eyes shot up to his, and the Devil grinned at the look on her face.
“Oh, so you do care if we stay or go.”
“Fuck off,” she said, but it didn’t have much heat to it. “Don’t you have things to take care of in Hell?”
“I always do. Doesn’t mean I can’t spend time topside.”
“Perks of being the king, I guess?” Gali was trying hard to sound casual, like the outcome of this conversation didn’t matter.
“Exactly.” Lucifer watched her, and the gold flecks in his eyes gleamed. “I want more time with you, Galilee Kincaid. I want
more than just a handful of hours stolen in the middle of a crisis. I want to learn all the small things about you that your
human friends already know.”
Gali watched him right back. “Even though I was just a weapon aimed directly at you?”
“So what? We were all made for something, to be pointed and loosed in a direction. It doesn’t make us who we are.”
“You should worry more about this,” Gali scolded. “I could’ve killed you.”
“And I could’ve killed you a thousand times over. And yet, here we both are, arguing about it.”
Gali shook her head and looked away. “Until we can understand what Deziel did to make me have this suicidal ass effect on
you, maybe we should—”
“Maybe we should what? Stay away from each other?” Lucifer’s gaze narrowed, his voice urgent. “Galilee, don’t you see? There is no magic here. All Deziel did was place our power in proximity and hope for the worst. She gambled. She rolled the dice. The rest of it is
just a story to make you believe that nothing else is possible, to make you distrust everything else.”
Gali couldn’t help scoffing. “Then how do you explain our connection?” She jerked her fingers in air quotes at the last word, contempt and doubt dripping.
Lucifer stared at her for an incredulous moment, then burst out laughing. Gali glared at him.
“It’s not that funny.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Our connection is normal, Galilee. It’s attraction and lust and interest and a fair amount of infatuation that’s to be expected when you meet someone
who’s not only incredibly hot but also incredibly powerful. That’s what Deziel was gambling on.” He wiped his eyes and looked at her with a deep fondness. “I hope we get the chance to explore
it more, but don’t worry, Galilee. I haven’t been enthralled by the seductive magic of your body.”
Gali blushed as Lucifer’s eyes roved over her skin.
“I mean,” he amended, “I’m absolutely enthralled by your body, but not in a this-was-engineered-by-your-evil-angel-of-a-mother
way.”
She threw a pillow at him, and he caught it laughing, but the mention of Deziel made her think of something else, something
important.
“Did Michael say what would happen to her?” she asked.
Lucifer’s laugh faded away and his eyes went somber.
“Apparently Deziel returned to Heaven and announced that their plan with the hellgate was successful. Michael denied his involvement, and she was judged for attempting to tear the veil between Hell and earth. She’s going to Fall.
” Sorrow twisted his mouth. “I wish she’d listened to me. I wish she hadn’t believed in him.”
“You tried to tell her.” Gali couldn’t quite summon up the same sympathy for her mother that he had, but then again, their
histories were different. She was trying not to think about the things they did have in common when it came to Lucifer. “Why didn’t she tell Heaven that Michael helped make me? He betrayed her. She coulda
gotten her lick back that way.”
Lucifer shook his head. “That’s a crime worth annihilation for her. It’s bad enough that they’re stripping her wings and dumping
her on earth. It could be much worse.”
“So she was smart to keep her mouth shut.” Gali exhaled in relief. “I really hate this shit, Luci.”
His eyes warmed as he looked at her. “I know, beloved. But you’ve got me and Levi on your side. We’ll do everything we can
to keep you off Heaven’s radar.”
Gali reached out, then caught herself and dropped her hand. “I appreciate it, Luci.” She thought of Deziel being thrown out
of Heaven, lost on earth among the humans. “Deziel’s just . . . broken now, isn’t she?”
A shadow passed over the Devil’s face. “Yeah. Heaven’s good at that.”
Gali knew he was thinking about his own Fall, and even though she wanted to ask him about it, she kept her hands off his skin
and just let herself sit with him. The light shifted across the room. It was quiet and they were together, the King of Hell
and the angel’s child designed to kill him.
The shower had stopped, but Leviathan still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom. Lucifer was about to leave, and Gali stood a
few feet away from him, twisting her fingers.
“I wish I could hug you,” she said softly. No matter how much she wanted to touch Lucifer, she just couldn’t stop seeing him in the vault, dying with her power piercing him while his princes screamed in despair, and his eyes glazed over with acceptance.
Lucifer nodded, his eyes gentle. “However long it takes, Galilee. I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”
When he left, the room rang with his absence.
Galilee walked into the bathroom and found Leviathan sitting in the bath that she’d never used, his bone-white locs trailing
over the edge and down to the stone tile. He turned his head to look at her, and his yellow eyes flickered.
“Has he left?”
Gali pulled up the teak bench and sat next to the tub. “Yeah, like five minutes ago.”
Leviathan exhaled, and his gaze pulled away from her.
Gali reached out and smoothed her hand over his forehead. “It hurts you to be around Luci,” she said. “You love him that much?”
The prince’s jaw twitched. “It’s a long story.”
“He said he betrayed you.”
“He did nothing that was out of line with who he was.”
Gali couldn’t even begin to guess at how old the pain buried in those words was. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me about it,”
she said instead. “When you’re ready.”
Yellow eyes tracked back to her. “You speak like we have a future.” He said it carefully, and Gali decided to take it as a
question. She’d decided not to try to return to her old life—it didn’t exist anyway. It had been burned away in a storm of
light, and no matter how much that ached, Gali knew she could never get it back.
“We could.” She slid off the bench and leaned over the tub, kissing the hurt prince lightly on his lips. “If you wanna try
it.”
The pale corner of Leviathan’s mouth rose. “Why, little angel, are you asking me out?”
Gali laughed and the bathroom echoed it. “Shit, maybe I am.”
He searched her eyes. “Are you a package deal?”
She sucked in a breath. Was that why he’d retreated and hid in here, all wounded? Gali could have pointed out that it was
Levi who’d invited Lucifer to stay, that they had millennia of baggage between the both of them, and if anyone needed reassurance
about not being the third wheel, it would most likely be her—but Gali also knew that wasn’t really the point, not right now.
“No, I’m not.” She cupped his face in her hands. “You stood against your team for me. You gave me a chance when no one else
thought I could be anything other than what I was made to be, not even Lucifer. Whatever our thing could be, Leviathan, it
would be ours.”
Gali hoped she was making sense. Leviathan and Lucifer were a thing. Galilee and Lucifer were a thing. She was just trying
to explain to this unexpectedly sad prince that they could be a thing as well.
“Maybe I’m just greedy,” she added, reaching into the water and taking his hand. “I like you, Levi. Clearly enough to forgive
you wanting to literally murder me.”
Leviathan twisted his wrist to bring her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss against the damp skin. “I like you too, Galilee
Kincaid. I would like a thing with you that was just ours.” He sat up, and water splashed over the edge of the tub, spilling
on her T-shirt. The prince of Hell slid a hand behind her neck and pulled her into a devouring kiss.
“Maybe,” he said into her mouth, “I’m just greedy too.”
Galilee wanted to go home. Leviathan offered to fly her back to her loft, but she made him drive her with one of the cars parked behind their house instead.
She laughed at his grumbling the whole way, and he kissed her again in front of her building.
When she watched him pull away, it was like a whole world retreated with him.
Suddenly, the human world returned, and Gali saw the regular people walking past her with their dogs and conversations and normal lives.
The park across the street sat like a quiet pool of green.
She smiled at her doorman and asked for her spare key, then went upstairs and let herself into the loft.
It looked offensively and exactly the same as it had a few days ago, when Celestial had called her, when the girls had shown
up, when Lucifer had stalked through her window. Gali paced slowly around the space, wondering if she was imagining the faint
trace of cacao from when Levi came to get her clothes. There were scratches on her windowsill, claw marks that smelled like
smoke. Her phone lay thrown to the side, still turned off.
Gali turned it back on, and it exploded with notifications from the Kincaids, from the girls, and even a text from Lucifer.
I’ll see you soon, it said. She went into the group chat she shared with Bonbon and Oriak?, then hit dial. It barely rang twice before they
both picked up, their voices clamoring over the phone line. Gali was surprised by how relieved she was to hear them, how quickly
tears sprang to her eyes.
“Y’all wanna keep yelling at me or y’all wanna come over?”
There was an immediate lull. “We’ll be there in ten,” Oriak? said, and then they both hung up.
Gali looked down at the phone and decided not to call the Kincaids, not yet. She was thinking of them, though, and of the
large house by the blue bottle trees, of the creeks and the forests and the bones they had to find in there. It could wait.
It was heavy, and it could wait. She climbed the stairs to the roof instead, and the bees rose in a great swarm at her arrival,
coating her arms and body with a loud buzzing welcome.
“Yeah, yeah. I missed you too.” She sat on the edge of the roof, dangling her legs over. “We got a few minutes before my friends
get here.”
The sun was beginning to set, and warm golden light spilled across the horizon. Galilee Kincaid let herself be cloaked in
hundreds of small bodies, and it felt like home.
“I don’t feel like a person,” she said, when the girls had arrived and they were all curled up on her couch together. “I feel
like a weapon. That’s all I was made for.”
Bonbon leaned over and took both her hands. “Does it matter how you were made or what you were made for? It doesn’t make you less real or less of a person. This is still your life. You’re Galilee Kincaid. Only you get to decide what you are.”
Galilee broke into sobs, and her friends held her as the sky outside drained into darkness.