The glowing manacles circling Gabriel’s ankles came free without warning. As they clattered to the bottom of the pool, Gabriel rushed from the water. Drenched but fully healed, her torn robe was as heavy as her heart. She scrambled around, willing the watery view to come back to life as the rippling settled. Her breaths grew faster despite how still she crouched by the edge. She refused to let herself blink.

“Oh, no.”

The deal she made that she expected to be the one to suffer for was not what she had hoped. Imprisonment, tormenting pain, even having her wings burned from her back would be better than this. Tears burned behind her eyes and she fought to hold them back. Fought to keep her view clear as what her vow had bought delivered in a horrific event.

Below, she no longer glimpsed the camp filled with a growing army of red-eyed monsters. The screams of men and sight of spurting blood as they were beaten to unconsciousness no longer plagued her ears and eyes. This new view of a land so far away, where the moon rose high in the night sky instead of falling at the sun’s command, was somehow infinitely worse.

Lucifer stood atop a crumbling chunk of dirt and rock. Cuts marred his body, streaking his once bronzed skin silver-black. The gaping space around the platform revealed darkness and fire. Heat waves rose up as if ready to devour any life it could cling to. The wild look as Lucifer had battled Michael was gone, giving way to that old defiance she knew all too well.

After all that had happened and all that threatened him at this very moment, he still would not repent. He would rather fall than admit defeat—admit he was wrong.

Her heart broke as the shaking ground trembled with renewed force. What was set to happen was her doing. Like the time she had agreed to imprison Lucifer, she had chosen his fate and set something unstoppable in motion.

Michael stood by with the angel sword ready. Remiel’s hand at his side shook with the land—until he snapped his fingers shut.

The core holding up Lucifer’s crumbling platform collapsed.

Lucifer fell.

Powerless to save himself without his wings, the earth rattled and closed behind him, cutting off the sight as he plummeted for a fiery lake. With her view of him stolen, Gabriel’s panic remained. Michael had not lied to her. A place worse than Earth did exist. And now Lucifer was there, falling to his death.

“The fall will not be his end.”

Reminded that she was not alone, Gabriel tore her eyes away to see God’s brilliant light pulse with his unspoken words. The sphere that encompassed him once again hovered above the looking glass, rippling the water as the tendrils of light spun faster.

“You have your wish. The Morningstar will survive this.”

But he may wish he hadn’t… God’s previous words whispered through Gabriel’s mind from her own memory, and then his coiling form expanded before imploding into pure nothingness. A shiver crawled up her spine, bringing a chill to her drenched body. Gabriel knew her deal had delivered Lucifer to the one place she had visited him to try to prevent. In saving his life, she had condemned him again. And there was nothing she could do to change that. The deal was done. Lucifer was gone.

Hanging her head, her tears fell freely—until a faraway voice caused her to sniff them back. “It is time we end this. Those monsters must be stopped.”

Brushing the haze from her eyes, she stared through the water once more. Michael had been the one to speak. His deep and deathly serious voice was unmistakable. The look on his face matched his words, an intent of harmful means to end the plague Lucifer had begun on Earth.

Remiel looked less convinced, face lifting skyward as if waiting for further instruction from God. Still glowing with God’s power, his knees appeared weak, wobbling slightly. All power, whether physical or in the choices made, had its setbacks. Gabriel knew that all too well as she grappled with what she had done and what she felt she must do.

Her view below shifted, returning her to the red-eyed army that marched to evade the rising light.

Lucifer had created monsters out of God’s humans. He had turned men, good and bad, into beasts of their once former selves. From the good King that led the army…all the way to the young soldier she had fought to save. At the back of the line, the boy stumbled on, fear alive in his reddened eyes and lips moving with words she could not hear. Many had been men of God. Humans who believed in their maker and lived with honor. She had failed Lucifer as surely as he had failed himself, but these men did not deserve to pay for his mistakes. “They could be saved.”

The words slipped out, and Gabriel clamped a hand over her mouth.

She had already asked too much of her maker. The repercussions, if she let herself dwell on them, where too much to stand. Yet she could see the outcome now. At Michael’s clear intent to use Remiel’s God-gifted power, there had been no reaction. God would let these men die, he would let Michael do the dirty work and then hand out his punishment for unordered actions later.

But there was another way.

“You judge too quickly, messenger of mine.”

Gabriel cringed at the sharp words that bounced through her skull. She scrambled back from the looking glass. Her hands came together and her face lifted to the infinite light above.

God’s glowing light did not reappear, but all around she could feel his presence. It hummed through the air in invisible waves. When he spoke again, his power caused the surrounding pillars to tremble as the pool rippled with currents. “Redemption is offered to all who seek it. Even to those who do not.”

Gabriel bowed her head, sweat sprouting at the struggle to speak as the echo of his words pummeled her mind. “Forgive me. I was wrong, so very wrong.”

“And yet you were correct.”

God’s rebuttal shocked her as much as the lack of pain she felt to hear the words in her mind. Face lifting, her joined palms fell to her lap. “My God?”

“I have a task for you. An offer to deliver that will result in either my forgiveness or evoke my vengeful wrath.”

Dread and stubborn hope twisted through Gabriel. She didn’t know what God wanted from her. A tiny part of her prayed, despite how unlikely, that it would somehow affect Lucifer and where he had ended up. The rest of her knew what God was proposing was more likely linked to Michael’s intentions and Lucifer’s creations. A glimmer from below caught her eye. Babylon—where Michael and Remiel had suddenly traversed to. If her suspicions were correct, one thing was clear. Falling from above took time. “I will never make it.”

A blinding flare of light speared down from above, striking through her chest to her heart. Gabriel glowed like a star, the intensity stabbing at her eyes.

The resounding words that filtered through her mind were unwavering. “Yes, you will.”