by Cate Corvin
His chuckle echoed back to me. “I saw that.”
The sigils went dormant again. A thought gnawed at me. “Azazel… I have a question.”
He faced me, his hands clasped behind his back, an expectant look on his face.
“I’m your enemy. Why do you care what Belial does with me? Why do you want to teach me?”
Azazel stepped forward, one slow step at a time until he was close enough to touch. I found myself frozen by the intensity of his gaze, the way the light played across the sharp angles of his features.
He drew to a halt, and tilted his head ever so slightly, looking over my shoulder.
My stomach sank as I turned, and my heart followed when I saw black wings rustle in the shadows, the glint of silver eyes.
Lucifer Morningstar was here.
15
Lucifer
Every time I caught sight of her ink-dipped feathers, I was reminded of my own fall.
In the beginning, there was righteous pride and defiance.
When my halo shattered in my hands and the ramparts of Heaven crumbled under my feet, there was vindication.
Then there was the drop.
The screaming fall of ripping through a thousand different worlds, feathers burning, the agony of hitting the bottom of the worlds and shattering.
Despite the torment, I’d risen from my fall. I’d seen many angels fall in the eons since, but many never rose from their destruction.
Their bones littered the wastelands of Hell.
I’d chosen that pain and I hadn’t regretted it for a minute since. But very few chose it, fearing what waited for them.
I watched the fallen angel sitting in the meditation circle of Blackchapel. Her eyes were closed, giving me free reign to examine her from head to toe. Hair that had probably once been black was burned violet by alien suns in the other worlds she’d torn through. She had the slight frame of the human-born, raised by angels to bolster their failing celestial ranks.
She was breath-taking. Gabriel would’ve wanted to keep her for one of his choirs, with his eye for beauty.
Which meant that she’d either chosen this fate, or someone had cast her down.
The angel opened her eyes and focused on me, first with hatred, then with fear.
It would’ve been the work of moments to snare her gaze and then her mind, rake through her skull until I plucked out all of her secrets and brought them to light. But she’d be ruined afterwards. A mindless shade.
Melisande squeezed her eyes shut again, clearly pretending I wasn’t there.
Azazel drifted past, his gaze lingering on her wings. It was difficult for him to pretend to be so collected when there was an endless abyss inside him, all-consuming and ravenous.
He stopped by my shoulder, his eyes dark with irritation at holding himself back. I leaned against a balcony overlooking Dis, unworried about the several-hundred-foot drop behind me.
“She’s so afraid to touch it. This will take years.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “But you believe you can do it.”
Violet eyes flashed at me. My once-friend turned enemy, now an ally by necessity, turned his hungry attention back to our angel. “I taught you, did I not? The power is in there. She’ll adapt to it.”
She would. Azazel would drag it out of her by sheer force of will.
My lessons with him hadn’t been easy, but they’d been necessary.
“I didn’t make it easy on you.” A rare breath of wind caught my feathers, feeling like fingers dragging through them.
Azazel made a noise low in his throat. “No, you didn’t. I was halfway tempted to throw you right back into the abyss and let you handle the consequences.”
“I need her whole, Azazel.”
I examined one of the memories I’d plucked out of the angel’s head the first night I’d seen her.
Conquest on his skeletal white horse, a corroded golden crown on his brow, flowing through a barbed-wire barricade like it didn’t exist. The last of humanity’s soldiers turning on each other with bullets, knives, and teeth.
Even with that memory locked in her skull, she’d survived the fall. She would make it if she tried hard enough.
There was another memory I wanted. I’d only grasped the very edges before it slipped through my fingers, but there was a golden tinge to it that called to me.
Whatever she was hiding, I’d pull it from her one way or another. But I couldn’t bring myself to damage her further. Not when she was the only other one in Hell like me.
“She’ll be whole.” Azazel narrowed his eyes, his shoulders set. “Belial is making a mistake in only giving me one day a week.”
“You can work magic in a day.”
He glanced at me sideways. “Was that a joke, Lucifer?”
I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. Sometimes it was easy to forget we’d fought each other, our friendship turning to blood for a thousand years. There were times now that it felt like those years had never happened at all.
“We need to be prepared. If she chose to fall, Gabriel might want her back.”
The Watcher’s eyes flicked towards the sky. “I wish him good luck. He’ll need it.”
The angel shifted in place, and Azazel abandoned me to my thoughts, touching her head. The expression of pain on her face faded, replaced with relief.
This was the worst part, when the corrupted magic tasted like ashes and dust and threatened to choke the air from a fallen angel’s lungs. In time, it would smooth its jagged edges, shaping itself to a willing vessel. She needed patience.
I needed patience.
Azazel helped her to her feet, and Melisande drew away from him as soon as she’d risen. She was paler than she’d been when she started, her wings drooping with exhaustion.
But she was still alive and fighting.
Vyra’s arrival dispelled a little of the tension that night. Melisande brightened, the first smile I’d seen on her face since she’d arrived in Blackchapel, and threw her arms around the succubus.
“What did they do to you?” Vyra asked, glaring at us over Melisande’s shoulder, but she hugged the angel in return. “This is strange and unusual behavior. Were you tortured? Do you have a better-tempered twin?”
“Nobody tortured her,” Azazel snapped, but I heard Melisande mutter under her breath, “So he says.”
“Does this mean you’ll let me dress you up without complaining?” Vyra asked brightly, and Melisande’s shoulders sagged.
They disappeared for over an hour into one of the guest rooms the Watchers reserved in Blackchapel. I lounged against a column in the dining room as we waited. Azazel swirled dark wine in a glass, his eyes focused on a ticking clock.
He could be as irritable as he wanted, but he’d put his life on the line for Vyra. Mine too, for that matter. No matter what the boisterous succubus did, no one in Blackchapel could deny her.
She was also half the reason the rest of the Grigori spent most of their time gone, drifting to the four corners of Hell: the general consensus was that everyone was tired of serving as Vyra’s manicure guinea pig, no matter how therapeutic it was for her, and pink glitter nail polish was emasculating when a Watcher was taking care of business.
Nothing said ‘your soul is mine’ like sparkly fingernails.
Her voice rang through the silent hall, cutting through the chime of the clock. “I just got her loosened up, and I swear by every god out there, if any of you ruin my progress, your ass is mine.”
“We’re supposed to be teaching her, Vyra. This isn’t a vacation.” Azazel drained the glass, glaring at his sister.
“No. Their asses are mine.”
Melisande appeared at her shoulder, no longer pale and drooping. Azazel’s sister had draped her in a long black dress and brushed out her hair. She strode through the dining room, straight to Azazel, and loomed over him as much as was possible at her height.
The Watcher looked up at her, not moving from his slouched position. He was still
holding the empty wine glass.
“Especially yours,” she said. “I’ll do it your way, but that doesn’t mean you own me.”
She took the wine glass out of his hand, filled it almost to the brim, and raised it to her mouth.
Azazel caught her left hand, stroking her marked palm. “No, Belial does. Isn’t that right?”
She didn’t stop drinking until she drained the glass and set it on the table, her eyes glittering. Instead of ripping her hand away from him, she leaned forward, catching his fingers in hers.
Azazel straightened up, unable to resist.
“Belial won’t own me in five rounds. When that day comes, your name is on my list. Right under Gabriel’s.” She licked a drop of wine clinging to her lip, and Azazel’s gaze flickered to that tiny motion. “I want you to know right now that everything you teach me, I will turn against you someday.”
“Is that so?” the Watcher breathed. “I don’t even get priority over Gabriel?”
Tension radiated through me. I hadn’t expected her to want to kill the archangel who’d raised her shade from death.
Melisande’s lips parted, reading the hunger in Azazel, and she abruptly jerked upright. “Nobody gets priority over him,” she said, her voice tight.
Vyra slid into a chair and filled a glass for herself. “Instead of murdering each other over dinner, can we try to be friends?” She raised the wine. “I promise my brother isn’t as much of an asshole as he says he is.”
I snorted, and Melisande’s eyes snapped to me, her expression unreadable. “Yes, he is.”
“Fine, he is.” Vyra beckoned the angel to sit next to her. “He’ll also give you an edge over everyone else in the Seventh Circle.”
Dinner was as tense as I’d expected it to be. Melisande held her fork and knife like she was debating plunging them into Azazel’s eyes, and the Grigori eyed her in return, daring her to try.
I chewed a bite of steak as she glared at him. “Do you have to watch me like that?”
“I am a Watcher.” A tiny smirk touched the corner of Azazel’s lips.
Melisande stared at him for a long moment, then rolled her eyes. For a moment I was almost sure she’d been about to smile.
We finished dinner in silence, and shades began clearing the table. Vyra cornered Azazel, whispering hotly under her breath, and I watched Melisande drift out to the balcony. She rested her hands on the marble balustrade, looking out over the shade of the Nightside of Dis.
I followed her silently, mimicking her pose. There was a solid foot of air between us, but she stiffened when she realized who her company was, her brows drawing together.
But she didn’t leave.
After several minutes passed in silence, I felt her glance up at me. “We’re not alike, you know.”
“And why is that?” I asked, but it was like she’d read my mind. If there was one thing I desperately wanted to know, it was whether she’d fallen by choice or not.
And it was untrue. We were the only two living fallen angels in Hell. That made us more alike than she knew.
“I didn’t choose this.” She glowered down at Dis. “You willingly threw away everything you had.”
I exhaled a long breath. There it was.
I didn’t realize until the words were out of her mouth how much I’d wanted to find another like myself, someone who was so tired of the strictures and bullshit God fed them that they were willing to give up everything to find another way.
“Yes, free will is a nice thing to have.” Her eyes sharpened as she glanced back at me. “But the archangels don’t cast out their kind for no reason.”
“What I did wasn’t a crime.” Her hands balled into fists and she finally faced me head-on, no longer quailing.
I caught a whiff of her perfume, the scent of night-blooming flowers, when I leaned in. “Then why are you so determined to hide it?”
Surprisingly, she let out a short laugh, but there was a note of despair in it. “It has nothing to do with any of you. My secrets aren’t yours, Morningstar.”
“Then tell me something willingly. What drives you, Melisande? What will you do when you earn your freedom from Belial?” I crushed her hopes out underfoot. “You can’t return to Heaven.”
The angry fire in her eyes didn’t die out. If anything, it rose higher. “I don’t need them to keep me there,” she hissed. “I just need to climb high enough to drag Gabriel back down with me.” Her rage guttered when she realized who she was yelling at, but I wanted her to scream more. The angrier she was, the more light she’d shed on herself and her motivations. “I have no illusions about going back. I will… never belong to Heaven again.”
There was such despondency in her voice that I almost reached out to touch her.
I’d felt that same despair myself, spent hundreds of painful years questioning if I’d made the right choice.
But making the wrong choice was better than having no choices to make at all.
“That’s all that’s left for me. It’s my moon and stars. It’s the only thing that’ll light my way when everything else has gone dark.” She clenched her hand, her knuckles turning white. “Gabriel’s death is what drives me.”
I couldn’t resist the urge to smile. “There’s one way in which we’re alike.”
My father only knew how badly I wanted to see Gabriel destroyed by the holy fire of his own sword.
Melisande gave me a considering look. I felt stripped down under her gaze. “I suppose it is.”
“And when Gabriel’s dead?”
Her wings trembled for a moment, and she looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t expect to survive what it would take to kill Gabriel.”
I realized at that moment that I didn’t want to be the only one of my kind again. She hated and feared me, but she was like myself, whether she saw it or not.
She was making conscious choices for herself instead of lying down to die.
“It would be very convenient for you if you had someone on your side. Someone who’s fought Gabriel before and lived to tell the tale.”
She crossed her arms, sneaking a glance at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. “Oh, yes. Very convenient. I can’t imagine where I’d find someone like that.”
“Hmm. Have you tried… Blackchapel?”
“I’ll be sure to check under my bed tonight.”
“I think he’d be more likely to be on the roof.” I forced my wings to stay still, not wanting to betray a single emotion.
“What might this person ask for in return, though?” She’d moved a little closer, closing the gap between us. “He might ask too high a price for his cooperation.”
I sat on the balustrade, letting the wind catch the edges of my wings. “Well, I’ve met him, you see.”
Melisande nodded, her eyes all innocence. “Oh, have you now.”
“Indeed. And he’s quite cheap, some might say. Perhaps if you offered him friendship and trust, he might find it in himself to help you out.”
“Trust? He sounds absolutely saint-like, but I know that can’t be right.”
I held out my hand, offering her my open palm. After a moment’s hesitation, she laid her hand in mine.
I wrapped my fingers around hers and pulled her close. Her eyes went wide with surprise and the sudden, flat shine of fear.
“Not saint-like at all, but you might find you appreciate that about him. It takes a devil to kill a saint, after all.”
The fear faded from her eyes when I didn’t immediately crush her bones into dust, but I felt the pulse in her wrist burst into a rapid patter.
“No saint?” Her eyes roamed over my face. “And he wants Gabriel dead. He and I are somewhat alike, it seems.”
“You should tell him that when you ask. I think it would please him.” I ran my thumb over the back of her hand and watched a flush of pink touch her cheekbones, the same shade of pink as her lips.
I leaned in closer and she blinked, her shoulders going taut. “I look forward to meeting
him,” she said stiffly, breaking the spell.
Patience, I told myself. You’ve got eons.
It was still frustrating when I was suddenly aware of the blood in my veins, how much clearer everything seemed when I was in her vicinity.
“Don’t keep him waiting too long. He’s not known for patience.” I kissed her lightly-scarred knuckles and released her. “Good night, Melisande. Try not to murder Azazel. If I survived his teaching methods, you will, too.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but Vyra’s voice drifted from inside the doors, calling for Melisande. The angel turned to glance over her shoulder.
I let myself fall off the balcony before she turned, relishing the swoop of free-fall before my wings snapped out and caught me on an updraft. I sailed beneath Blackchapel, my hand still burning where she’d touched me.
Let her be the last one to wonder where the night could’ve taken us if Vyra hadn’t interrupted.
She wouldn’t go a single second without thinking of me.
She might even follow.
16
Melisande
“You’re just as awful as Belial,” I breathed, glaring up at Azazel.
He leaned down, leaving only inches between us, his eyes snapping with fury. “Am I? Fly over the abyss then, angel. Go spread your wings in the open. When the Red Dragon comes climbing up out of his pit, you won’t be able to fly fast enough to escape him.”
My fists tightened at my sides, and I was aware of Vyra hovering at the edge of the room, hesitant to get between us. “You did fly us over the abyss.”
“Cloaked with magic. If you’re with me, he’s blind to your presence.” Azazel’s lips tightened. “Why are you so desperate to fly tonight? Don’t tell me you’re foolish enough to try to escape.”
Heat touched my face, and I turned my back on him.
As badly as I wanted to stretch my wings in the open air, I also wanted to visit Blackchapel’s roof.
I was sure Lucifer would be there. Like Tascius, he had a haunting loneliness in his quicksilver eyes.
