by J. L. Myers
Lucifer squinted, seeing the grove he had taken flight from—and the discarded fruit that littered the tree he had sprouted. The same tree Adam and Eve had been positioned under.
Gabriel gasped. “My dear God. No,” she breathed the words out like a desperate prayer. Her hands came together, to which she pressed her lips.
“Gabriel?” Lucifer had wanted to be the one to speak, but the terror across her face had turned his tongue to stone in his mouth. Instead, it was Remiel who addressed her. “Pray tell, what is wrong?”
Gabriel shook her head, her hair swaying back and forth over her quivering shoulders. When she looked at Lucifer, silver streamed from her eyes. “I delivered His message. I warned Eve about the rosy fruit.”
Lucifer felt ill, his stomach turning like an ocean tide. “Fruit?”
“It was forbidden. The only thing in Eden they could not partake of.”
“Mayhap the humans did not understand your message,” Azrael suggested, sharing a strange look with one of the two other female angels across the pool.
With her returned glance to Azrael fleeting, Ariel added shyly, “Mayhap their freedom blinded them?”
A ground-shattering blast erupted below from Michael like a beacon, cutting off anyone else’s assumptions. Adam and Eve crumbled to the ground—as did the bordering waterfall and protective mountains that contained their paradise, collapsing in a rumbling quake that leveled the land. Eden was unprotected, now open to the entire outside world. All that was safe and eternal within its walls was not anymore. It was exposed and open to ruin.
Michael appeared through the slow settling dust as animals fled. His pointed arm was a direction that needed no words, and Adam and Eve crawled upright from their knees to stumble away from what had been their paradise. Their safe haven.
Lucifer and Gabriel stayed in their positions by the looking glass for the longest time. Gabriel sobbed, trapped by sadness and a look of guilt that must have been caused by her message failing.
“Though it was not Gabriel failing that cause this destruction—was it, Lucifer?”
Lucifer cringed as God’s voice punched into his head. At the same time, he was glad for the pain, the internally delivered words that only he could hear. Because God was correct.
Knowing the truth and what he’d set in motion, Lucifer could only stare. He knew what had happened, what had caused the irrevocable damning of Eden. He had. In his thoughts and in his actions, he had undermined the message Gabriel was sent to deliver by placing that fruit—the ones he had sprouted through his cravings for her—into Eve’s very own hands. Lucifer hadn’t known it would be forbidden. He had called it an apple. How could he have known?
“Knowledge is not your burden, Lucifer. It is mine. Now you must learn before it is too late.”
Before Lucifer could even think to question the meaning behind God’s telepathic words, the levitating sphere glowed brighter.
“Control must be learned. Through suffering, you will become stronger. Do not react…” God’s light burst open, raining upward with his departure.
And then, every muscle in Lucifer’s body contracted so tightly around his bones he was sure they were about to shatter. Already on his hands and knees, he clenched his teeth and braced against his forearms. The instruction had been explicit. Do not react.
With sweat sprouting as he swallowed the agonizing cries that threatened to rip from his throat, Lucifer felt torn in two, but not solely because of his punishment. Gabriel’s quiet sobs had broken through the pain. She was suffering, and that knowledge hurt a thousand times more than the physical torture he was enduring. Feeling his desperation rising, he wanted to curve his bulging arms around Gabriel. He wanted to console her, to tell her she was not at fault, to dry her streaming tears and put an end to her sorrowful sobs. He wanted to—
Michael appeared with a blast of white light. His massive wings remained extended as his chest heaved from his necessary flight back after expelling all God’s gifted power below. “You are responsible for this.”
Lucifer ratcheted his fusing neck up with a crunch, noticing that all the other angels were gone. Only he and Gabriel remained.
“I know it was my failure.” Still distraught, Gabriel struggled to her feet, seeming weak with distress.
Lucifer jumped up as she stumbled, his knees popping and making his movements messy as he caught her body that was so much smaller than his. Steadying her on her feet, he cracked his jaw open, forcing words to rasp from his throat. “No. This is not your—”
“Release her!” Michael’s voice boomed as he marched around the looking glass. He snatched ahold of Gabriel and tugged her back, his face becoming even redder with fury.
Lucifer tensed all over. A new burning emotion even stronger than pain flooded through him. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”
“It is not me who will hurt her, Lucifer. You must know by now that I know. Or do you think I am that blind?”
“Blind? Hurt?” Despite her size, Gabriel ripped her arm from Michael’s stronghold. The sight of his handprint imprinted on her skin maddened Lucifer, but her question as she faced him kept him from reacting. “What in Heaven is going on?”
Unwilling to give Michael the satisfaction or let Gabriel suffer in guilt any longer, Lucifer cracked his jaw open once more as he struggled to stay on his feet. The torture receded at once—a reprieve to do what needed to be done? To reveal his mistake? “I followed you below. I watched as you delivered your message.” He took a recovering step closer, wiping the silver stream from her cheek with his thumb before he could think not to. Seeing Michael clench his jaw and fearing further punishment, Lucifer dropped his hand. “Though I did not hear what you delivered, please believe me, for it is true.”
“I would never distrust you, Lucifer.”
“Yet you would be wise to,” Michael barely held back from snapping as he reached around Gabriel’s folded wings to rest his large hands on her shoulders. “What Lucifer fails to speak is that—”
“I created the fruit, and then I handed one to Eve.”
“You…did?” Gabriel stepped closer to him, forcing Michael’s hands to fall away from her. She collected Lucifer’s tightly clasped fists and separated them, holding each one in her own. “Why? How?”
The lack of judgment in her eyes stunned Lucifer. How could she look at him like that after what he had confessed? After ruining Eden? “It was not through malice or intent. I knew not that the fruit was forbidden.” Lucifer stopped himself before he could admit to what he had imagined when, in lustful thought, he had unintentionally grown that fruit.
“Now Eden is no more. Utopia on Earth is no more.”
Gabriel turned to face Michael who’d spoken and she reached out to touch his arm. His hard exterior softened so minimally it was almost unnoticeable. Almost. “I delivered His word. His message. Adam and Eve used their gift of choice. Lucifer did not force them to eat the fruit. He is not to blame for their actions.”
That total hardness returned to Michael’s features, and he bared his clenched teeth. “If you only knew…” He glanced over Gabriel’s head to Lucifer, brows raised and eyes narrowed. It was a look of promise—a warning of revelations if Lucifer failed to control himself.
Lucifer dropped his head, staring at the luminous floor as Michael stomped through the corridor that led to the scribe vault. If you only knew… Those few words held so much promise and so much danger. If Gabriel ever found out, she would never speak to him again. The look of understanding and acceptance across her face would morph into disgusted disbelief. But how could he keep it all hidden inside? How could he lie to her?
Gabriel’s silky soft fingers touched his chin, and he allowed her to tilt his face up. When his eyes remained downcast, she sighed. “Look at me, Lucifer. Please, look at me.”
Unable to deny her request, he blinked up fast, refusing to let his gaze sweep over her mouth for fear of getting stuck there. Her eyes were now dry, and the emotion in them resona
ted in him as profoundly as her gentle hand cupping his jaw while her thumb caressed his cheek.
“Eden is not your burden to carry. You are not to blame.”
“You cannot truly believe that.”
“I do. And you should too.” Gabriel’s touch fell from his face. She collected his hands again, holding them together as she raised and held them close to her heart. “I know you, Lucifer. I know your soul as I do my own. We were born of light, and we live for His cause. Your total devotion has never wavered. Not now, and not in the eons before the Earth came to be. Like me, you have always followed His plan. If you were not meant to create that fruit, why would God send me to warn Adam and Eve?”
With the total belief in her eyes, Lucifer could not help but see the world as she did. Perhaps he had merely been a pawn in God’s game, a soldier to act without the need for instruction. Still, her belief did not change the facts. He knew that much as invisible agony shot back through his bones.
“You see it?”
Molars clenching and the muscle along his jaw ticking, Lucifer fought to keep secret the agony that ripped through him. His response was a lie, one he had to tell to end this encounter. “I do.” When he let his focus sharpen from its blurry haze to return to her, he almost stumbled. And not because his legs were about to fail him. Gabriel’s smile hit him like a bolt of lightning, somehow making her infinitely more stunning, despite the notion being impossible. The first smile he had ever seen—and it was directed at him. His struggling heart that felt like God’s hands were squeezing tight around it stumbled then roared to life, racing like it never had before. In words he’d never imagined possible, he felt sensation inside of him that was forbidden and raw. In spite of the renewed strike of pain that had sweat attacking his brow, Lucifer could not stop from reaching out to touch her breathtaking face, a face that looked at him with unending hope and acceptance.
Color heated Gabriel’s cheeks and she shied away.
Lucifer’s lips parted, but he choked back the words he could never say out loud. The words that formed and solidified in his mind to encompass all of what he felt for this ethereal woman standing before him. The words that, if God heard him utter, would damn them both.
I love you.
Chapter Seven
Alone in the scribe vault, Gabriel breathed in sharply. A stirring sensation coiled through her like a curling wind of jagged stars. Only one angel had ever affected her in such a dramatic and uncontrollable way.
A way that was heavenly with a touch of pain.
Lucifer, the one angel she longed to see, was near.
Rising up from the glowing platform, Gabriel rushed from the scribe vault—and came face to face with Lucifer. Startled by her suddenly barreling into him, his downcast eyes shot up as he caught her arms and spun them both around. Letting go as suddenly as if her touch had burned him, he stumbled back. The log that sat before the platform crowded with stacked tablets stopped his retreat. And the look on his face—it was the saddest thing she had ever seen, worse even than witnessing a young deer ripped to shreds by a lion.
Loneliness ruled his crestfallen face.
And it broke her heart.
“Lucifer, I am sorry.” She reached for him as she steadied herself, her long robe swaying around her bare feet.
Since that day by the looking glass, and with Michael switching their rotations, Lucifer’s avoidance had not only continued, it had worsened. Now he evaded not only her but also all the other angels too. Every time she crossed his path, he shied away, not so much as speaking a word to her. Days had turned into weeks, weeks into months. Every day without him felt like a lifetime. Enduring another? She did not think she could do it. Not for herself…and especially, not for him. Looking at him now, his heavenly ambiance seemed even duller than only days ago.
Desperation to bring the light back to his eyes, and to feel the spark that warmed her entire body at his touch, made her step forward. “You have stayed away…”
Words caught in her throat as his eyes darted away from her and he sidestepped as he if were trying to escape a burning room and she was the fire. It reminded her of the way his eyes cast down after settling on her appearing form in any location. His rejection sliced through her as if he had impaled her with the angel sword. Though she was sure the only weapon that could end her instantly and permanently could never hurt so much as the loss of her oldest and dearest friend.
And to know he had no one, that he was alone by choice? It took her broken heart and ground it down to dust.
“Lucifer, please wait.” When he abandoned his escape, Gabriel shook the hurt and sadness away, forcing it deep down as she let her hope resurface. She would not accept this. Not now. Not ever. The Realm of Light may have been infinite, but so was her faith in him. And this day, he would not refuse her efforts. She was through with letting him push her away. “We do not need to talk about it. Please…” Gabriel noticed for the first time that he was dressed in common brown attire. “You are descending below on an Earth mission?”
Lucifer remained frozen like a beautiful statue, but his eyes betrayed him, traveling up her body and to her face where they stayed. A smile tugged at one side of his lips, and his golden locks fell forward as he tilted his head to one side.
“Lucifer.” Gabriel started forward, desperate to remove the space between them before the reserved yet welcoming look on his face could change. “I have missed you.” In so many ways, she thought, feeling like maybe, maybe she could get through to him now.
After she ventured a few hurried steps closer, that teasing smile fell from Lucifer’s handsome face. As she felt a change in the warm air, he folded his arms over his chest, drawing her eyes to multiple red spots across his inner arms before they were cut off from view. A hard edge morphed his expression, shutting down the invitation she had felt from his eyes and turning it into something of anger and sadness. His nostrils flared, his lips pressing together tight as his silver-blue eyes glared over her shoulder. “Michael,” he spat with a nod, utter distaste rolling off his tongue.
Gabriel froze at the archangel’s spoken name. His presence, the change she had noticed and ignored, too consumed by Lucifer, now bellowed around her like a dark, suffocating cloud. She could not speak.
Right at her back, Michael’s arms brushed along the edges of her wings, causing her to stiffen as if she were committing some unknown sin. His fingers were gentle as they curled over her shoulders. His voice at her ear was not. “I must share words with you.” Lucifer stepped back, closer to the wall of pigeonholes that would lead him around them to the exit, and Gabriel, though she could not see Michael’s face, could imagine what expression he wore to elicit such a reaction. “Alone.”
“I will come and find you thereafter.” Gabriel’s voice was steady, and although she did not often make insistences, she refused to lose this moment with Lucifer. She refused to let him go when this disturbed interaction with him had been the most promising revelation between them since that last day so long ago. She kept her pleading eyes on Lucifer, giving him all of her attention even as Michael’s broad hands curled even tighter around her shoulders. “I wish to speak with Lucifer.”
Lucifer did not react in any way to her refusal to Michael. He did not even look at her when she spoke his name, keeping his narrowed gaze fixed on the commanding angel behind her. “There is nothing to speak about.”
Not saying another word, Lucifer’s nostrils flared as he nodded once and turned away. The gentle glow that haloed his body dimmed right before her eyes. Gabriel stared helplessly as he strode around her with a wide birth. Tears prickled her eyes as she watched his bronzed body disappear beyond the open doorway, followed by his draping white wings that brushed over the glowing floor. That insidious pain returned to her insides, manifesting like a stabbing blade twisting to gouge a hole in her heart.
Michael spun her around slowly and tilted her dropped face up with a finger under her chin. “It would be wise of you to leave Lucifer t
o his distance. It is for the best.”
Gabriel jerked back, confusion straining her features as Michael’s hands fell from her shoulder and chin. “Best for who? You cannot convince me that this is best for Lucifer, or for any of us. We are God’s angels. We are meant to be here for one another. One mistake does not make Lucifer worthy of this separation, whether it is enforced by you or himself.”
With his arms at his sides after her retraction from him, Michael flexed his fingers as if chasing away a cramp. “His actions in Eden are only the tip of his wrongdoings. If you only knew, Gab—”
“Then tell me, Michael. Tell me what is so damning that Lucifer should be treated as an outcast in his home, that he should accept such separation and even enforce it on himself. All the angels avoid him. They look at him differently.” They look at me differently too, she mused in her mind. “Tell me why?”
Michael’s broad hands clenched into fists. “The why is not of importance. The result is. If Lucifer felt he was worthy of belonging and acted like the pure being he was created to be, we would not be standing here now and speaking in this way. He knows what he did. He judges himself more harshly than we all do. So leave it alone. Leave him be. Only he holds his fate in his hands. You cannot help him.”
With those last rushed words, the soft glow surrounding Michael intensified until he too was gone with a gentle click of his fingers.
Confused and so very alone, in being and in her need to make this festering situation better, Gabriel made a choice.
Striding with purpose from the scribe vault and down the corridors, she reached their private rooms and pushed through the glittered drapery into Lucifer’s chamber. More tablets than the last time clogged up the area, spilling over in tall stacks from the writing platform and covering the floor all the way across to the steps. Gabriel thought to neaten things up, to perhaps read some of what Lucifer spent his endless hours and days etching away, but as she collected and shifted a few tablets to begin a new stack, she paused. Below the scattered stone blocks, a slip of cloth peeked out. An unfinished work stared up at her from the platform. The fact that it wasn’t written words in stone caught her eye first, but as she cleared the rest of the tablets off of the light-infused surface that resembled flat, hardened water, she gasped.
