Chapter 11 Galilee
Galilee
Gali sat up slowly. “He wants to kill me?”
She’d caught only a glimpse of the man with yellow-gold eyes before Lucifer’s wings had snapped out around them, but it had
been an unforgettable glimpse: a hard sculpted face, an unforgiving mouth, and spills of vitiligo paleness over his skin.
He made her skin shudder.
Leviathan.
“Why does he want to kill me?” she asked, looking down at Lucifer, who was sprawled out naked on the sheets next to her. Her
pulse was still thudding because, holy shit, she’d just fucked the Devil himself, but there was no time to process that. Part
of her was trembling and overwhelmed, but right now, Gali couldn’t stop thinking about how cold the light pouring off Leviathan’s
sword had been, how shocking it was in comparison to his beauty—nothing like Lucifer’s, but just different.
Lucifer sighed and draped an arm over his eyes. “We’ve been over this, Galilee. You’re not human, you burn me; they don’t
like it.”
Gali rolled over on her stomach, her forehead still wrinkling in a frown. “Yeah, but you said you believed me.”
Lucifer’s voice rumbled low in his chest. “I do, beloved, but they don’t.”
She shrugged. “So just call them off, right?” He was the King of Hell. He commanded them. He had all the power here.
Lucifer lifted his arm away with an exhale and pulled himself up till he was sitting next to her on the bed, his hair tousled
and damp with sweat. Gali felt her body throb in response as she looked over his walnut skin, the dark hair curling on his
thighs, his semi-erect cock lying slick across a hip.
“My princes and I don’t work that way,” he explained, absently sliding a hand over her back as if he couldn’t bear to not
be touching her. It sent spikes of pleasure down Gali’s spine, and she wriggled a little, watching Lucifer’s eyes drift over
to her ass.
“Don’t they obey you?” she asked.
Lucifer was still stroking her, his eyes now hot and distracted. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” he murmured. “Don’t worry about
it, beloved.”
A gust of wind whirled in from the open balcony doors and fed Gali scents: lavender and salt, damp wood and pine needles.
She pushed herself up, kneeling on the bed as she opened her senses wider.
“Galilee?” Lucifer was watching her, but she didn’t reply. The wind was warning her, and it felt like Celestial was standing
right next to her, whispering in her ear. How could they have found her so fast?
“Lucifer, you got this house warded?”
He laughed softly. “It’s inhabited by the Devil and the princes of Hell. We’re the ones you ward against.”
Gooseflesh raced up Gali’s arms. The first thing she’d done when she’d moved into her loft was ward it very specifically against
her own family so they couldn’t spy on her from afar, because the Kincaids were nosy as fuck. What people often forgot was
that those women couldn’t have lived out that deep on the land for that long without becoming very, very good at hunting.
Lucifer slid a hand around Gali’s elbow. “What is it, little demon?”
She sat back on her heels, her mouth twisting. “They know.” Goddammit.
“Who knows?” He sounded patient, and it made her heart plummet. She was going to have to beg him to spare them, and yet, she was still sure they could harm him in some way. She didn’t know how, exactly, but that didn’t stop the knowledge from sitting heavy and weighted behind her sternum.
“My grandma’s hunting you,” she said. “She’ll have my momma with her . . . and my cousins and aunts. They probably started
when you took me from my apartment, and now . . .” A bitter hand clenched around Gali’s stomach. She hated how much information
her family could steal about her, from her. “Now they know we slept together.”
Lucifer leaned forward and pushed some of her hair behind her ear. “How do they know this?” he asked gently. “Because they
are favored?”
He didn’t really understand, and Gali couldn’t start explaining the exact range of what Kincaid women could do. She didn’t
even know the full scope of it herself, and she was fairly sure that was deliberate on her family’s end, so she simply nodded.
“My cousin warned me. They’re afraid of you. Of who they think you are.” Gali met his gaze reluctantly and saw the moment
when Lucifer understood at least a part of it.
“Ah,” he said. “I’m the monster.”
There was no emotion in his voice, but still, she reached out and cupped his jaw in her hand. It was easier to be touching
him when she told him what he had to know, but God, it felt fucking shitty to say.
“They’re not gonna think it was consensual,” she said, hating the words as they fell off her tongue. “They’ll think you forced
me.”
Depending on how much the wind had told Celestial, or how much Celestial had told Nana, or which aunt had divined what, it
was possible that they could even know worse details, like how he’d come inside her or how she’d been crying first—fragments
without context, but enough for the Kincaids to run bloody and amok with. Gali didn’t mention that part, though. A corner
of Lucifer’s mouth had turned down, but he was still listening. He’d covered her hand with his, remaining quiet as he gazed
at her, and Gali kept talking because she didn’t know what else to do.
“They see me a certain way, Luci, always have. They wouldn’t think . . . they don’t think I could—”
“They don’t think you could want me.” There was a sheen of sad amusement in Lucifer’s eyes, slicked between the flickering
gold, but he didn’t sound sorry for himself at all. “They have no idea who you are, do they?”
Celestial’s words echoed again in Gali’s head. “They might. And they don’t.” She sighed and leaned her forehead against his.
“It’s complicated.”
“Family always is,” he replied.
“I know you don’t care, but I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry they found us. I never wanted any of this to be twisted
into something ugly.”
Lucifer dropped light kisses on each corner of her mouth. “I don’t need your apologies, Galilee. You are not them. Your family
can hunt me if they want.” He shrugged, and Gali pulled back, her heart in her throat.
“You can’t hurt them,” she said. “And you can’t let your princes hurt them either.”
Lucifer looked genuinely surprised. “Is there some impending showdown that’s about to involve my princes?”
Gali stared at him. “Have you been listening to anything coming outta my mouth? I just said my family’s coming for me and they know where I am.”
He tilted his head. “Galilee, they’re just humans.”
Well, now she was pissed off. “And a human can’t stand a chance against you or your princes, huh?”
To his credit, Lucifer stopped and gave the question serious thought. Instead of answering, he took in Gali’s simmering expression
and nodded slowly.
“You said they were favored. Exactly how powerful is your family, Galilee?”
It was a question with an answer almost as intangible as who she was, but Gali found the words coming to her tongue. She wasn’t
supposed to know this—it was tangled with the secret Celestial held about her; it had been buried deep but was now resurfacing
as a half-blurred memory.
“They bargained for me.” Gali said it slowly, but she met Lucifer’s eyes. He’d given her a gift: the borders of what she was, some parameters of her power. “They were powerful enough to bargain for me, so they gotta know what I am. Right?”
The bargain was true, because there was the sharpened memory at last—a young Galilee walking in the woods, looking for her
cousin. A young Celestial sitting on the bank of a creek with Nana Darling’s arm around her. Their grandmother was speaking
softly, her voice running alongside the birds and the water.
“You must take care of her, Celestial. She’s ours.”
Celestial’s black eyes had flickered. “Done deal,” she’d said. “Cut it on the creek bed.”
Nana Darling had simply nodded. “Yes, you know. The creeks are yours, baby girl. You guard the Kincaid bargains, and Galilee
is our most important one.”
“But you paid the cost,” Celestial had replied.
“Yes, high as it was.” Nana Darling had pressed her mouth into a hard line. “She was worth it.”
A twig had cracked loudly under Galilee’s foot, and Nana Darling’s head had snapped up. She saw Galilee, and tenderness covered
her face as she stood up and walked away from Celestial, reaching her arms out. Galilee had stepped into her embrace, and
Nana Darling had brushed a hand over her brow.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she’d whispered, and that was where the memory ended.
Gali blinked in Lucifer’s room, still naked on his bed, tears salting unexpectedly into her eyes.
“I think . . . I think my grandma is keeping a really big secret from me,” she said, hurt thickening her voice.
Lucifer pulled her into his arms, pressing his mouth to her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, cradling her against him.
“Why would she do that?” Gali was fighting to make sense of it, too many vines tangling inside her, a forest eating her up. The memory had intruded on her mind and it remained there, clear and sharp and truncated. “Why did they decide I couldn’t know anything?”
“Perhaps it’s for the best that they’re coming here, then.” Lucifer kissed her temple. “It seems like you have some questions
they need to answer.”
Gali shook her head. This wasn’t about to be a friendly little family conversation mediated by the fucking Devil.
“They want war, Lucifer. I need you to take it seriously.”
“I know, I know.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I have met hunters before, you know. It’s just that they usually have different motives, not quite because I made their little girl
scream my name.”
Gali smacked his arm even as the memory thrilled through her. God, she wanted to touch him again and again, for days and days
and more. She couldn’t let herself think back on what it had felt like to have him sliding in her with all his power scraping
against every surface. “I’m trying to be serious,” she said instead.
Lucifer sighed and straightened out his face. “I promise not to kill your family, Galilee.”