Lucifer couldn’t help but notice as Gabriel spent less and less time around the looking glass. When she wasn’t in the scribe vault scribbling down her findings or delivering her written words, she retreated to her garden. Gabriel seemed at ease in her solitude, finding solace in the confinement from the other archangels. Unless otherwise directed by God to venture below to deliver his words of significance, she resided therein.

Lucifer had wondered on many occasions if she was now steering clear of him. She never sought him out anymore, and no more feather messages had arrived. Yet of all the times he shadowed her, those times when God was occupied with a slew of incoming souls, she had to have sensed him lingering. She never looked out for him though, and she never uttered a word to make it evident she knew of his presence.

Now, as Lucifer materialized above after witnessing all the destruction and death below, his need for comfort grew. Before he could think to stop himself, he was marching away from the looking glass and his watchful brothers—especially Michael who narrowed his eyes—and down the corridors, heading to the only place that could relieve the growing despair within.

Before he knew it, the invisible door to her secret place appeared in front of him. Lucifer hesitated. A war was raging below—as well as inside of him. Gabriel would not be anywhere else. She had not been alongside the looking glass. More than that, he could feel her therein. The persistent flickers of bright light revealed the passing of many souls from Below to Above, souls that would take much time to envelop into Heaven. It was the perfect time. The longest stretch to see her, to maybe even speak to her…

Tendrils of fear filled him with doubt. If she had caught him spying, would she look at him with disgust? Would she demand he leave her alone forever?

“Perhaps I should let her be. Leave her alone.” Lucifer sighed, hurt by his own words. It all sounded so easy, and if she had ever demanded as much, he would go to the ends of the Earth to honor her request. The fact that she had never said the words brightened even his lacking hope—hope that maybe she felt something for him too. But then he shut that emotion down. What he should long for was not reciprocation, but forgiveness. Concealed from God or not, his intent and his actual reason for being here were not pure.

Lucifer’s hand fell from its place amidst the tingling dead end. He began to turn away.

But then he froze.

His torment from Below accompanied by any desires paled suddenly to something so much stronger.

Grief.

Though not his own, the source was not a mystery. Like Gabriel’s tears, her strong emotions called to him, drowning him with worry. “Gabriel…”

A tingle of another angel’s presence spiked without warning. Lucifer glanced back up the bright corridor. Not a soul appeared, and not knowing if the sensation was her within or another angel incoming, he stole inside before he could be spotted.

Little did he know that the sensation was someone getting a bit too close. Someone who knew where he was going and why had been watching him.

Inside the garden, Lucifer ambled away from the tree, relishing the soft blades of grass underfoot. The smell of never-dying blooms somehow filled the unmoving air. Brushing his hands over luminous rough bark as he weaved through trees, Lucifer ventured closer and closer, hesitant yet eager to disprove the sensation he’d felt outside her garden. The sound of plunging water reached his ears before he saw the waterfall. Then he stalled, not to spy from the non-existent shadows, though that had been his intent. Another sound broke through all the whooshing and crashing water.

Sobbing.

On the other side of the rippling pond, Gabriel was on the ground, her long wings retracted along her back and draping over wild blossoms. With her legs folded beneath her, she held her hands clasped together in prayer. “Please, please stop them.” When she peered up, he saw twin streams of steady silver rushing from her reddened eyes and down her cheeks. “This cannot be your way.”

“Gabriel.” Compelled by the sudden fear that she was hurt or injured, Lucifer rushed through the trees and wildflowers before he could think to stop. The sight of her pain broke something inside of him, and all his learned control was like it had never existed. Any thoughts on being followed or other sensations fled with his spiking worry. Gabriel’s head jerked in his direction, and she sniffed back tears and tried to stand as he ran around the pond toward her. When her legs gave out, he caught her in his arms and lowered her gently to the ground. His eyes frantically scoured every inch of her for the cause of her agony. “What ails you? I cannot see—why can I not see?”

“Lucifer, stop.” Her voice was an emotional whisper, yet she pushed out of his hold and managed to stand. “Why are you here?”

Lucifer reared to his feet, rocking back as if she’d slapped him. “I…” His eyes continued to roam over her body and robe for a lethal wound that would require healing in the water of the looking glass. “I heard you, and then I saw… You are not injured?”

Gabriel sighed, her small shoulders slouching with her exhale. “Not in body, no.” She took a further step back from him. “Why are you here, Lucifer?”

With light still flickering across the glowing sky, Lucifer didn’t know how much longer he would have with her. He decided to be honest, to not let duty and his angelic station get in-between them, to not let her hurt at his avoidance and his fear of rejection push him away. “I am always here, at least…when I can be. You know that, Gabriel. You sense me as I do you. You know I watch you.”

Gabriel bit her bottom lip, using her white teeth to toy with it in a way that challenged Lucifer’s resolve not to think about intimately taking her mouth with his. “I do.”

“You have never told me to leave. To never come back.” Lucifer cringed inside at what he had to ask her and at the possibility of her response. “Is it your wish for me to leave now? To forget I know of your secret place? Is it me that saddens you so?”

Gabriel remained quiet for the longest time, her watery gaze shifting to the rippling pool.

Lucifer nodded, reading the answers in all that she refused to say but that was clear across her distraught features. Unwilling to cause her pain for a second longer, he turned to leave. “I hope one day you will forgive—”

“Please stay.” Gabriel lowered to the edge of the pond, submerging her bare feet below the glowing surface. Her hand patted the grass beside her. Lucifer moved to fill the space before she could change her mind, the mist from the tumbling water cooling his hot face. Plucking a flower up, she began to strip the yellow bud of its petals. “I want to show you something.”

Lucifer’s heart was already drumming, torn between fear and anticipation, and it pounded harder by the second. “Anything for you—”

The words he should never utter cut off as the water plunging over the rocky cliff froze in perfect form as if it had suddenly turned to ice. The crashing sound vanished and the pond stilled around her dangling feet. Dropping the flower, Gabriel’s hands pressed together in front of her and as she slowly spread them outwards, the unmoving water dropped its glow, giving way to a far away view.

Another looking glass.

In all the times he had spied her, had Gabriel only glimpsed Below after his departure? Because she’d been too focused on her silent watcher to do her duty? The possibility had his palms sweating.

Gabriel sniffed and wiped at her damp cheeks. “Mankind does not value their lives. They hurt each other without care or regret. All those souls.”

Lucifer was reminded of the constant flashing as he glimpsed below to a raging war. From up here, the battling men looked like ants, but as he let himself see clearly, the bloodshed and carnage was as gruesome as it had been below. Among the living were the dead and dying, some lying in eerie stillness as morning mist swept over them while the rest clung to life with dying breaths. Opening himself up, he felt what must have been affecting Gabriel, her despair at the death of God’s humans.

“It is the way of the below. They live and they die. Remember the lion and the deer?”

“This is nothing akin to that. This is not killing to survive and grow. Young ones, good ones, men and women that believe in God, they, they…”

Lucifer felt rocked by the crack in Gabriel’s undying hope. She had never questioned God or his plan for them or the Below. She had always accepted every order and result with unyielding trust. Feeling her total despair like a black sea that crashed over him, he reached out before he could think to stop, placing his large hand over her clenched one in her lap. With a tingle ripping up his arm and striking into his heart, he spoke faster than normal. “They are being welcomed into His Heaven above, to life above.”

Gabriel shifted and Lucifer retracted his hand at once. With a frown, she pulled her feet free, causing the water to ripple as it dripped from her toes. The hold she had on the view faded and renewed water crashed down into the pond, reviving that cooling spray. Angling her body to face him, he saw that her eyes were now dry. “That is why I need you, Lucifer.” She glanced down at the hand he had touched that now lay palm down against the grass, propping her body up. “Remembering how I felt about everything when you were beside me has become more difficult with each passing day.”

Lucifer’s heart tripped over itself, then roared on faster again. Was this the clue of her returned feelings he had been hopeful for and yet terrified to receive? “Gabriel?”

“I watch from here when you leave. When I know you are gone. I know not of what I did to make my presence so damning to you. Now I stay away out of fear,”—Gabriel’s voice fell to a whisper—“of how lonely I feel without you. Of fear that this can never be mended. You mean as much to me as Heaven and Earth combined, and I would give anything to go back to what we were to each other. I…I still miss you, Lucifer.”

After learning of all he had imagined doing to Gabriel, this reaction was the last thing he expected from her today…or any day before or thereafter. Though despite her knowledge, it was clear right here and now that she had forgiven him for his wrongdoings. She still accepted him and welcomed his presence, even desired it and needed it. In all the time he had kept himself away, he had never once considered how much doing so would make Gabriel feel. Yes, he had stayed away from all the angels as to not single her out. Still, he had never imagined that she would blame herself for his avoidance, especially when he felt like it was so clear to everyone that all he truly craved was to be close to her.

“You have never wronged me, Gabriel. It is my own self that hurt us both.” Glancing up to look into her eyes, Lucifer wanted so badly to touch her face. He wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her close. And he wanted so much more that he could not now nor ever let himself put into words or actions. He looked away, letting his gaze turn hazy over the moving water. “I did this to us. Not you.”

“Then why, Lucifer?”

Now it was time to confess, to finally be honest. “I wanted more than was mine to want,” he whispered truthfully. As he dared to meet Gabriel’s gaze again, her lack of judgment allowed him to breathe. There was a glimmer of surprise in her wide eyes and parted lips, but no rejection. Accepted and not shunned, a sense of peace he hadn’t felt in so long withdrew the burdening weight from his shoulders. He released the tight retraction of his wings and thought of the many times he had watched her lay awake under the draping trees behind them, always desperate to know what filled her thoughts. Angels never slept, so he knew her quiet moments were ones of thought. She always seemed so peaceful then, so content and free of heartache. Lost in memories of how they had once been? Unsure, and with the flashes overhead easing off, Lucifer reclined on the soft grass. “If I slumbered like a mortal man, you would be my first thought upon waking, and my last thought before sleep claimed me each and every night.”

Gabriel’s cheeks flared as red as her parted lips, and Lucifer committed the sight to his many other memories of her. Their time was fleeting, and he didn’t know when their next face-to-face encounter would be. He almost hoped for another war to keep God out of his mind and unaware of his actions, but at feeling a stirring sensation, he cut off the thought as his head snapped up. The broad tree over the pond and across the field was free of movement. Free of angelic life.

“What is wrong?”

Gabriel’s hand on his forearm was heavenly, drawing his eyes down to her. “It is nothing.” He hoped. Though he hated to, Lucifer accepted their time was up and rose to his full height, his great wings towering around him. “I must be away…” When Gabriel’s lips curved down, he added, “Until we meet again.”

Her smile made his heart soar. “Until we meet again, my Morningstar.”