Part Two | Exodus And it came to pass . . . Azrael
Part Two | Exodus
And it came to pass . . .
Azrael
They say that the Garden was perfect, but they lied.
It’s too green, too quiet. It smells like ripe things on the verge of rot. Too much sweetness and abundance. The air is thick with humidity. It clings to my skin in ways it shouldn’t—hot and wet, like a breath before a moan. This place is alive, verdant and hungry.
And he fits all too well here.
Lucifer moves through the Garden like temptation itself. Languid. Precise.
The shadows of the trees and the light overhead seem to shift around him. As if creation is bending in order to keep its eyes on him.
I know what that’s like.
I used to be the only one who looked at him that way, but now . . .
I stay out of sight, watching the way his mouth curves when he sees her—Eve. Soft and luminous, her body made of breath and bone and suggestion. She radiates innocence, unaware of how much she’s desired.
And he desires her all right.
What she and her temptation have to offer him.
He eases closer, and Eve’s head snaps in our direction.
“Who’s there?” she asks, soft, unafraid.
She doesn’t yet know what it means to feel fear.
Doesn’t understand the danger he poses.
Lucifer slithers closer.
“Little one,” he purrs, close enough I can feel the hum in his chest, though I’m still a few yards away. His eyes turn serpentine as he transforms into that damn snake.
“Oh, it’s you.” Eve blushes, smiling innocently, as Lucifer coils up the length of the tree.
She likes when he does that.
Like a child impressed by a cheap trick.
Lucifer transitions into his usual form, settling beside her, and tips his chin toward the sky as if to indicate who he means. “Do you know what He’s afraid of?”
Eve tilts her head curiously, smiling up at him.
Curious is dangerous in a place like this.
And he smells it on her.
Circles it like prey.
“That if you taste the fruit,” he says, his voice a slow drawl as he plucks an apple from the tree they stand under, “you’ll become more than what He made you. That you shall be as gods.”
Eve bites her lip.
A small gesture. But I see it.
And so does he.
Lucifer leans in, not touching her—never touching—his presence alone pressing against her.
Intimate. Suggestive.
He doesn’t need to do anything to claim her innocence.
It’s already his.
He seduces her with his breath, his gaze.
I watch his throat writhe as he speaks.
I know what it’s like to be captivated by him.
Know how it feels to sink my teeth there, in that soft hollow near his throat.
His wounds have mostly healed now. Flesh regrown. He wears the fading scars with practiced ease, but I remember how they looked before, remember the way he cried into my chest the first time I kissed one. The way he trembled when I touched him where his wings used to be.
Now he smiles, laughs.
Even if he still doesn’t believe he can be forgiven.
The realm that we built is ours, but it’s empty, save for the few of his siblings who’ve joined us recently, the ones who rebelled alongside him, but I think he could be happy here.
In Eden.
He stands in the Garden with Eve like it was made for him.
And suddenly I hate her for it.
She doesn’t know what he is, doesn’t understand what it cost him to become this—this beautiful, terrible thing. She just knows that he makes her feel something.
Warm. Daring. Alive.
Nothing close to what I feel when he’s with me.
He’s still talking. Something about awakening. Power. The fruit he holds between them a promise neither of them fully understands.
And then . . .
He glances over his shoulder.
At me.
I’m in the shadow of the trees, but I let him see me. Let my form shimmer just enough to tighten his breath. Remember who it is who holds him when he comes undone.
We don’t need Eve or the souls she offers.
The children she and Adam will have.
Lucifer turns back to Eve. His voice drops. Darkens.
I don’t hear what he says to her.
“Is it true?” Eve asks, pulling back, her fingers brushing the low branches of the tree. The Tree of Knowledge, as his Father calls it. “That we’ll die if we eat it?”
“You’ll die either way.” Lucifer turns back to me. “Death is already here.”
She follows his gaze toward me, her breath catching. Whether it’s from awe or from fear or that strange flicker of something she doesn’t yet have a word for—I can’t tell. But she recoils all the same. Pulling back into herself like she’s seen the future and it’s wearing my skin.
Lucifer smirks, watching her fear blossom.
And I let him.
Because I still want him to need me.
“You see him there, don’t you? Feel him?” Lucifer whispers, his voice coiling around her spine until she shivers. “That cold feeling? That’s Death.” And then, softer, “He’s the one you should fear most.”
He lifts the fruit between them with the reverence of a lover lifting a breast to his mouth.
Temptation in the shape of sweetness.
Sin dressed in sunlight.
Eve reaches out and takes it.
“Go on then,” Lucifer hisses, distracting her like he’s that damn snake again. He steps behind her, brushing the hair from her neck, and she sighs a little at the pleasure of it. “He only fears that you will become like Him.”
“Like you?” She glances over her shoulder.
Lucifer grins.
And then, she bites.
The sound that it makes—the soft crunch of innocence unraveling—shouldn’t feel so erotic. But it does.
Like the moment a lover’s lips part and don’t close again.
Her eyes change.
And Lucifer—fuck—Lucifer glows with something more than light as he moves in front of her.
I step into the clearing, silent as shadow, as Eve runs. “You used me.”
He smirks, closing the distance between us until I can feel the heat off his skin. “I needed you.”
“Not the same.”
He leans in, brushing his lips against the shell of my ear, not kissing, but close enough. “They need something to fear, Azrael. It’s the only way they’ll crave what I’m offering.”
I close my eyes.
I want to kiss him.
I want to tear his damn mouth off his face.
“You’re mine,” I growl, lower than I mean to.
He presses his forehead to mine for a breathless beat, his fingers curling around the back of my neck like I’m still his lover, not a weapon for his celestial use.
For the pain he so desperately wants to bring his Father.
The only thing he still believes he’s good at.
“I’m yours, yes. But so are they.”
And it’s that—that—that undoes me.
Lets me know that I’ll never be anything more to him than a deadly tool, because he means it.
He’ll touch the world.
And I’ll be what it fears.
And neither of us will ever be saved.