Chapter 20 Lucifer #2
he knew Deziel still hated him for being something other than what she expected. For being himself, too questioning, too challenging.
There was no panacea for that, and Lucifer had accepted it as part of the cost of his war—she was not the only angel he had
loved who loathed him now, not the only one who would sabotage him if they could.
“She placed a warp on it, a reversal,” Michael replied, resuming his stroll amid the flowers. “You’re likely not familiar
with the weaves we use in Heaven these days.”
No fucking wonder nothing Lucifer did had been working. A warp woven from Heavenly power could only be unraveled by Heavenly
power, and these days, Lucifer’s batteries were firmly of Hell.
“Obviously,” Michael continued, “her actions were not sanctioned by Heaven in any way.”
That made no sense. Deziel was deeply loyal to Heaven and especially to Michael, clinging to him in the aftermath of leaving Lucifer’s
side.
“You’re lying,” Lucifer said softly. “She would never do something like this, not without permission.” Michael’s pace slowed,
and Lucifer took a prowling step forward. “Did you give her permission, archangel?”
“Of course not. That would violate our treaty,” Michael replied smoothly. “Besides, I only seek her salvation. As I did yours,
little brother.”
Lucifer laughed sadly. “You never wanted to save me, Michael.”
The archangel’s eyes filled with what Lucifer might have almost believed to be grief.
“I tried my best, Morningstar. But you took it too far. You always take it too far, and then you leave me no choice.” There was a hidden weight in his words, but Lucifer couldn’t begin to guess what he was talking about.
“The Deziel I knew would never touch a hellgate,” he said instead.
Michael pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “When will you understand the extent of the damage you have caused,
Lucifer? The Deziel you know died in the war. You could have stopped it. You did not.”
“I believed in the humans. Even now, you insist it is such a sin!”
The cordial mask his brother had been wearing dropped for a second, turning Michael’s face into a thing of harsh lines and
unforgiving shadows. “Even now, you hold your position,” he snarled. “Have you learned nothing, Lucifer? You corrupted the angels—you made them think they could question God!”
Lucifer tilted his head. “Question God, Michael? Or question you?”
Something wild and furious leaped into Michael’s eyes, but then it was gone just as quickly, wiped smooth and cold. “You know,”
he said, “Deziel questioned the leniency of your punishment.”
“Oh, you must have loved that. Undermining your decisions? Your favorite thing.” Lucifer knew he was needling his brother shamelessly now and that
it was probably a dangerous course of action, but with entities like Michael, their violence was always going to bear down
no matter what you did. At some point, it stopped making much of a difference whether you thought you’d provoked it.
Michael’s eyes stayed flat. “I thought her defiance was a symptom of your corruption. But you, Lucifer, there will never be
enough punishment to get you in line, will there?”
A cold streak skittered up Lucifer’s spine. He knew that tone of Michael’s voice, that unsheathing of a flaming sword, that
ringing condemnation, and suddenly, Lucifer remembered why Michael had come down in the first place, because a girl had become
a pillar of light in the garden.
His mouth went dry. Galilee was his weak spot. If Michael wanted to punish him again, it would be easy. Please, Leviathan, he whispered to himself. Keep her hidden.
“You have been punishing me for eons,” he managed to say. “You still have a thirst for more, I see.”
Michael’s gaze pressed in even closer, as if it was stripping secrets off Lucifer’s skin. It burned.
“You are afraid I’ve come for your pet,” the archangel said.
As if summoned, the fear tore out of Lucifer’s chest, ripping through his skin and dilating his pupils. Michael laughed out
loud.
“I’ll let you have her for now,” he said, his smile cruel. “She’s so bright, little brother. She can burn a little longer.”
The fear shouted over Lucifer’s head. Michael would kill Galilee. Michael would take her. His nails sliced into his palms as he forced himself not to move, not to fly at his brother’s throat. The only thing
Lucifer could do to protect Galilee was finish the deal—claim her soul so she became the property of Hell and Michael couldn’t
move against her without violating some very old treaties. The other archangels would never allow it.
“Are you done?” He had to force the words past his teeth. “You came here, you threw around some threats, you told me about
Deziel—I fail to see what the point of all of this was.”
Michael’s smile widened like a slit throat. “Maybe I’m here to offer some redemption,” he said. “It’s never too late, right?”
The very idea was sickening. “I shudder to think of what redemption could mean to you.”
The archangel took a step closer. “You could save Deziel, you know. Stop her from the last stages of the corruption you seeded in her.”
It had been so long, and yet guilt twisted easily inside Lucifer. “How?” he asked, not because he intended to, but because
he wanted to know what new cruelty Michael was planning under his benevolent guise.
Michael shrugged elegantly, his large shoulders moving. “Break the hellgate.”
“What?” Lucifer stared at his brother. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Because it’s going to break anyway, Morningstar, unless Deziel fixes it. I pray that she does, before it’s too late, but
you could take the fall for her, so to speak.”
Lucifer simply kept staring, disbelief written plainly on his face. Michael leaned in, and there was a fervent flame burning
in his eyes, floating in his pupils.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to make amends? You broke her, Lucifer. Give yourself as an offering, and she can be saved from the corrosion you tainted her with. I will make sure
she is rehabilitated.”
There was a weighted pause, and then Lucifer burst out into laughter. “Are you trying to tempt me,” he choked out, “with my own annihilation?” He wiped at his eyes and shook his head, taking a step back from the archangel.
“No, Michael. I won’t condemn myself to Heaven’s judgment again simply because one of your favorites has gone rogue.”
Michael’s lip curled. “Then the gate will break anyway, and you will still be judged, Morningstar.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“Very well.” The archangel stepped back, mirroring the Devil. “When it happens, I will punish you, your princes, and your
radiant girl, Lucifer. You could have taken this bitterness from their tongues, but you chose to drag them all down with you.”
Lucifer’s form trembled with fury. “Stay away from Galilee.”
Michael canted his head to the side and smiled with relish. “Oh, what sweet defense! You have no idea, Luci.”
“No idea about what?” Lucifer snapped.
“Don’t worry about it.” Michael’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then snapped back in. “You’d better move, though. Those princes
you left with the hellgate can’t hold it much longer without you.”
Then there was barely any time left. Lucifer unfolded his wings and glared at his brother. “You could stop this at any point. You could have mercy on Deziel.”
“Certainly,” Michael agreed, lightly and maliciously. “And I could also tell you all the things I’m not telling you, but where’s the fun in that?”
The archangel flashed out his wings in turn, and Lucifer’s pupils narrowed into pinpoints at their brightness, eight blades
of pure light that burned the air around them.
“I came here to offer you mercy, Lucifer. When your worlds end again, don’t forget that I reached out a hand and you chose
to turn away.”
Before Lucifer could respond, the archangel’s wings flapped once, and then he was gone, a streak of light across the evening
sky.
Lucifer stood among the flowers with unwelcome images of Deziel razing through his mind, a wildfire of magnolia and shock
rising higher and higher. He had not thought of her in centuries, had relegated her to the place in his mind where all his
memories of Heaven lived, a lost place, a place he could not return to.
Was it not enough that he’d Fallen? That he’d lost Heaven and everything there? Deziel and her side had won. She had stayed in Heaven, her position elevated through her betrayal of him, and yet it seemed she wanted more, pounds of
his glimmering flesh. It choked Lucifer with a clutching bitterness, and he wanted it to release him. The first escape he
thought of was Galilee, her honeyed voice and burning touch, sweet and hot enough to rinse the bitterness away. Deziel was
of an age that had died when Lucifer was thrown into Hell, a time he could never return to, no matter how much she tried to
haunt him now. Galilee was his clamoring present, gentle, with none of an angel’s cruelty. Lucifer would not return to a place he had barely survived leaving—never in person, but certainly not in mind and spirit. He would move forward,
and, eventually, his momentum would slough off the ghosts of his past.
It had to.
The Devil left the terrace of flowers in a burst of black wings, swooping around the side of the house.
Michael was long gone in the horizon, and Leviathan and Galilee were walking up the pathway to the house—his lost salvation and his newly discovered one.
They seemed to have banked their former animosity, and for a moment, they looked like old friends in silent companionship.
Lucifer descended from the sky in front of them, gravel scattering under the draft from his wings.
Something eased in his chest when Galilee’s face lit up at the sight of him, when she opened her arms in welcome like she would never need to forgive him for anything.
“There you are,” she said fondly.
Lucifer could barely form words in response. The ground was sure and solid under his feet, but not as certain as her body