Chapter 20 #3
Michael took several panting breaths and slowly lifted both palms, facing outward in a gesture of placation.
Fighting was never going to work; Luce was too strong.
His only hope was to try and reason his way out of this.
His broken wrist itched and throbbed as the bones tried to mend themselves, and Michael winced.
“I’m not here to ‘take’ anything—or anyone. People are not things to possess. Isn’t that what you believed, even... in Eden?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
The room—no, Michael suddenly flipped upside down.
His head swam, a pulse of heat and pain spiraling out from where he had knocked it against the floor.
The air above him became dense and pressed him flat on his back, damaged wings splayed awkwardly, with his chest going slightly concave under the weight.
At the edge of his vision, feet approached. Confident, heavy strides that brought designer loafers to a stop inches from his trapped form.
“Fuck you,” Luce hissed, stroking the air roughly, and the force on his body increased.
A mortal would have either blacked out or died from a lack of air by this point, and Michael shuddered. Luce was willing to kill him. Something cracked within him, and he wasn’t sure if it was the fragile shell of his heart, or one of his ribs. The radiating ache suggested the latter.
The fight flickered and faded in him. Michael nearly resolved himself to die on this floor. Maybe he welcomed it. Let someone else deal with the mess they’d all stumbled into. No more pressure to conform or betray his ideals. No more grief or regret over what used to be or could’ve been.
But something stubborn and angry pushed back, and he saw Mags’s broken spirit in the Garden, Christos bleeding on his father’s dining room floor, Uriel’s arm dangling shattered and useless. He couldn’t betray them by giving up now.
The weight abruptly vanished, and Luce crouched down beside him.
“No, I won’t kill you, Michael,” he murmured softly, stroking his fingers from the blond’s temple to his jaw. “I can’t say I find you worthy of being put to death by my hands.”
There was something glassy and alien in his eyes, and Michael would have recoiled if he’d had anywhere to move.
“I swear,” he forced the words out with considerable effort, his entire body aching and reluctant, “I am not here to kidnap Mary. I came…to beg for your help.”
Luce blinked down at him, expression unreadable. Michael would have called it longing, if not for the haunted, sharp gleam in his eyes.
“For my help,” he repeated quietly.
The breeze stirred again, papers rustling as they were pushed and swept across the stone floor. The curtains fluttered, letting shards of sunset pierce the room. The light played unusual shadows across Luce’s face, obscured his eyes behind a reflected gleam.
“We always made a good team,” Michael continued cautiously. “You are the only one who could dream of rivaling your brother.”
“Rivaling… my brother.” Luce continued to repeat the words, as if he needed to hear them aloud to make sense of them. Slowly, a look of comprehension dawned in his eyes, but it was quickly chased away by dark suspicion. “No. I’ve been down this road before, and I won’t play the fool again.”
Michael’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Every time you’ve suggested we work against my brother, I end up taking the fall—quite literally, in fact.”
He was utterly lost now. “Forgive me, as I know this isn’t going to gain me much favor, but I have only wavered in my loyalty to your brother one time before now.”
The words hung unspoken between them, but they both recalled a cold throne room, a moment’s hesitation, and a cry of broken-hearted pain.
Unconsciously, Luce’s fingers skimmed a familiar path along Michael’s smooth jaw to ghost over soft lips.
There was a foreign intimacy in the touch, an echo of something old and primal that neither of them had ever been able to replicate in other partners.
Luce’s expression twisted, and he gripped Michael’s face firmly, carefully manicured nails cutting crescent moons into his jaw.
“You lie,” he hissed, tightening his grip. “I should cut that lying tongue from your poisonous mouth, but then I suppose you’d just lie with your hands.”
A phantom memory bloomed of sturdy palms that curved over sharp hipbones and tangled in long hair; the slide of hot skin and fervent whispers, both of them so young and drunk on each other.
“My silence may have been complacence, but I never lied to you and I won’t start now,” Michael countered, summoning the strength—and courage—to pull himself up to a sitting position.
His aching wings drooped, falling around him like a makeshift shawl.
“I should have spoken for you that day, but I was too blinded by your betrayal. I impugned my honor by allowing it to color my judgement.”
Luce scowled. “I never betrayed you. What are you talking about?”
“You really don’t consider seducing Eve to be a betrayal of...what we were?”
“What?!” Luce recoiled, annoyance transforming to horror. “I looked upon Eve and Adam as one might a child. A child, Michael! I would never.”
“I saw you!” He beat his balled fist against his palm, brows furrowed and mouth set in a snarl. “I saw you, in the Garden, with Eve in your arms. As much as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to erase that scene from my mind. I know what I saw.”
The look of horror mingled with disgust. “I don’t know what you saw that day, but I can assure you, it was not me.”
“How so?”
“Because I wasn’t with Eve in the Garden that day, Michael. I took your advice and went to the Garden, yes, but I was planning for the rebellion with Adam.”