Chapter 21 Deziel
Deziel
I felt my mouth curve wider and wider, like a splitting fruit. “And here I thought you wouldn’t recognize me in this vessel,”
I said to the Devil. “It has been so long, after all.”
Lucifer was expressionless, his arms corded as he held the ward he was working over the gate. “You smell the same, Deziel.”
That was curious. “Still magnolia?”
“Always.”
“Strange. It must be one of my forms leaking through.” I looked around the vault and took a moment to appreciate the devolving
chaos. “Gorgeous, but I can’t focus in all this.” I drew a quick weave in the air, and though the gate kept screaming and
splitting, it slowed its breaking as it recognized Heaven’s patterns, my patterns. “There. Now we can have a conversation.”
Lucifer dropped his arms. “So kind of you,” he bit out, his nostrils flaring.
I smiled at his tone. “Anything for you, Morningstar.”
Galilee was looking between both of us, confused by the intimacy in our exchange.
My daughter, in the flesh, looking at me.
She had no idea I was the same woman who’d been at the party the night before—that had been a different vessel, a different skin.
I allowed her to gaze uninterrupted, but I kept my eyes on Lucifer, my former beloved.
We had not been this close since he Fell, since I stood at Michael’s side and watched the Morningstar plummet into the deserved dark.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Galilee lean toward one of Lucifer’s demons.
“Who is that?” she asked him in a low whisper.
She could not hear my name from another’s mouth first. We both deserved better. I turned to her, and the shredding portals
of Hell cast a reddened slant over us both.
“My name is Deziel,” I answered. “I’m the angel who tampered with Lucifer’s little gate.”
Galilee sucked in a breath. “You’re an angel?” I could feel her eyes taking account of me: the too bright of my eyes, the too long of my neck, the too wide of my smile.
“Why would you do something like this then?”
Another demon with discolored skin and yellow eyes scoffed. “You’re still thinking that angels are good,” he said, his eyes
flicking between me and Galilee. “Welcome to the real world, little one.”
Oddly, there was clear affection in how he spoke to her. I hadn’t expected that from one of Hell’s creatures, but I made sure
to note it.
Lucifer hissed behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. His eyes were void black and deliberate as he bared his teeth. “Get
away from her, Deziel.”
Menace radiated off him, and Galilee stared as the Devil’s body began to broaden in preparation for a shift. I held up a finger
and wagged it in warning. “No, no, Morningstar, you’ll let us talk. Move, and I’ll disembowel her right here.”
Galilee folded her arms and glared at me. She was doing a good job of pretending to be brave, but I could hear her little
animal heart racing in her chest, thudding prey muscles trembling in the presence of a predator. “Join the line,” she snapped.
“Seems like everyone’s tryna kill me.”
“I didn’t say I’d kill you,” I corrected. “I said I’d disembowel you. You’d probably survive it, since you’re not human.”
Galilee went a little pale. “What the hell is wrong with you? There’s no reason—”
“No reason to gut you?” I interrupted. “There’s an excellent one, Galilee. Because it would hurt Lucifer.”
The Devil took a step toward me. “Michael was right,” he said. “This really is personal for you.”
Wait. I turned slowly. “You spoke to Michael?” When had Michael come down? Why wouldn’t he have told me? He knew I was so close
to finally damning Lucifer.
The Morningstar’s mouth was hard and unforgiving. I’d seen it like that before, when the war started. “He knows what you’ve
done, Deziel. He told me you’re the angel who fucked with my hellgate.”
I frowned at him. “Well, of course Michael knows what I did.” My mind was racing now, trying to calculate why the archangel would give Lucifer that information.
I’d been planning to reveal it myself in the moments before the gate lost control. It would’ve been spectacular, seeing the
shock and despair in Lucifer’s eyes. Had Michael wanted that for himself?
Lucifer was watching me carefully. “What do you mean, of course he knows?”
“He said it was a good idea.” I shrugged. “He wouldn’t teach me any of his weaves to use, but it turned out mine were enough
on their own.”
One of the demons laughed, snakes animated on her skin.
I hissed in her direction. “Silence, creature.” Lord above, how did Lucifer ever get used to these foul things?
The Morningstar’s eyes were wide and dark. “Oh, Deziel,” he said. “Do you think Michael signed off on this?”
He was speaking like a fool, like he thought I was one too.
“I don’t need to think he did,” I snapped.
“I’m not like you, Lucifer. I follow the order of Heaven.
I couldn’t have done this if Michael didn’t permit it, but he did, and here we are.
How does it feel to be so close to facing Heaven’s judgment again?
” I prowled slowly in his direction, wanting him to feel hunted.
“I’ve waited so long to see you brought to proper justice, you know. ”
The Devil didn’t seem concerned about himself. “Michael signed off on this but refused to share his weaves. I bet he wasn’t
anywhere near you when you worked on the hellgate, right?”
“He’s an archangel. He was busy.” I hated that I recognized the look on Lucifer’s face, puzzle pieces spinning around in his head, hurtling
toward a conclusion I couldn’t see yet. It almost felt like our old arguments before he Fell, and I hated it. I hated him. “Why did Michael come to see you?”
Lucifer frowned. “I’m not sure.” He met my eyes. “Michael said you defied him.”
A flush of blood stained my cheeks before I could stop it, and I cursed the tells of the flesh. “It was a long time ago, and
I didn’t defy him. I just disagreed on your punishment. It wasn’t harsh enough.”
“Questioning Heaven is defiance, and you know Michael takes that shit personally.”
“You weren’t there, Morningstar.”
“It doesn’t matter. But now he sees it your way? He forgave you for defying him?”
“He did.” I stared triumphantly at the Devil. “Michael agrees with me on what is needed.”
“Yes, yes, my new judgment and annihilation if the gate breaks.” Lucifer flapped a hand dismissively and leaned toward me.
“I want you to really think about this for a second, Dez. Michael forgave you?”
Ice wrapped its fingers around my heart. Eons ago, Lucifer and I used to joke that Michael never forgot, never forgave, just
always made sure he got his pound of flesh for every slight he decided to punish. But that was for other people. That wasn’t
for me. No one had worked with Michael the way I had.
“I’m not you,” I shot back. “I let it go when he told me to.”
“Dez.” For a heart-shattering moment, Lucifer’s expression was terribly familiar—that old, frustrated concern. “You didn’t let shit go, and neither did Michael. Don’t you see what’s happening? Heaven did not sign off on this. Michael’s setting you up.”
I hissed at him, my tongue unspooling with anger at his lies. “You have no idea the things Michael has done!” I shouted, and the cavern shook from my voice. “I am not alone in this!”
Lucifer spread out his palms, trying to placate me. “I know this is personal—” he began, but I narrowed my eyes at him.
“You do not matter enough for this to be personal, Lucifer,” I said, and it was barely a lie, not if I wanted to believe it enough. “You’re
a mistake that needs to be remedied, a tool for a lesson, that’s all.”
“And what’s the lesson?” the yellow-eyed demon asked, with an unacceptable level of contempt in his voice.
I snapped my head toward him and shrieked in response, a sharp, piercing sound filled with my revulsion. Galilee clapped her
hands over her ears.
“Do not address me directly, fiend.” He was a thing of Hell; he had no right to look upon one of God’s soldiers, let alone speak to me in that tone. My voice
was slippery with disgust, and in the warped reality of the vault, maggots fell out of the air and onto the floor, sliding
over and under one another in yellow loops. The demon’s face tightened, and Galilee looked like she was about to vomit, but
Lucifer remained unmoved.
“We’re not in Heaven,” he said. “You’re in our territory, Deziel.”
Ah, his voice! All ash and prophecy, how I’d missed it.
“I won’t believe your lies about Michael,” I answered. “You don’t know the truth.”
The Devil cocked his head and smiled sadly. “You know I don’t lie, Dez.”
That shocked me into silence momentarily, because it was true. But just because he believed something, that didn’t make it
true either. “Why would Michael set me up?”
“Why would you set me up with the hellgate?” Lucifer retorted. “You’re both playing the same fucked game.” He almost looked hurt, like I had betrayed him, like he hadn’t done it first.
“You really don’t know why this is happening to you?” I asked, and my question made the Devil laugh emptily.
“Because you hate me? Even after all this time, Deziel. Even after everything I’ve already lost.”
“Lost?” He couldn’t be serious. “You think we don’t know what you’ve been doing down in Hell? You really don’t get it, Morningstar.”
Lucifer simply looked confused. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You live,” I spat out. He was so close, so beautiful. “You exist. You draw breath like no traitor has any right to. You turned a sentence into a throne and surrounded yourself with princes,
you made them love you, when all you deserve is to be fucking annihilated!”
A cold wind lifted my hair off my neck, wafting it around my face. The walls of the cavern groaned and creaked, and Galilee
clutched the arm of the yellow-eyed creature in alarm.
“Did you think we would forget?” I continued bitterly. “You have no idea how deep this runs, Lucifer, for both myself and