“To the looking glass. At once.”

God’s telepathic summons punched into Lucifer’s head as he materialized in the warm ambiance of the Realm of Light. His heart stopped momentarily, then thundered back to life. He braced, expecting a sudden dose of pain to floor him in the glowing corridor outside his chamber, to punish him for his impure thoughts down on Earth. When no pain came, he quickly scanned ahead and behind himself, worried he would encounter Gabriel. With not a single angel in sight, he breathed through his mouth and followed the order toward the looking glass, keeping his guilty face down while wondering if somehow his musings had gone unnoticed.

Any thoughts on escaping retaliation for his misdeeds stalled as he came through the thick towering columns that ended the corridor.

She was here.

His gaze was like a magnet that could not stop from settling on her. Though the second Gabriel felt his presence and looked up with relief on her beautiful face, Lucifer glanced away. Keeping his head down, he ignored the other ten angels as he took his spot beside her, desperate to look at her and afraid to do so at the same time. He could not control his thoughts, maybe not even his actions, when it came to her.

“You were not above when I returned.” Had she not sensed him below? Gabriel leaned closer to him and the scent of her, like fresh blooms in spring, overwhelmed him, preventing him from uttering a word. There had been no accusation in her tone, only happiness mixed with wariness, but he was certain she could see the guilt all over his face. Her hand that she leaned into slid closer on the ground between them. To touch him? To show how grateful she was to be near him? She stopped before she could graze his knee, seeming to notice the rigidness that suddenly froze Lucifer’s body. If only she knew what ran rampant through his mind… “I have missed you, Lucifer.”

For the second time today Lucifer’s heart stopped, then it lurched back to life, drumming exponentially faster. His mouth parted to utter a lame reply, but the clearing of another angel’s throat stopped him. Glancing up, he found Michael glaring at him from across the looking glass. His tall arching wings and his arms crossed over his bulky chest made his expression even more formidable. A directive to abstain from any physical or even verbal contact with Gabriel. Or was the look induced by knowledge of Lucifer’s sins?

The angels alongside his angelic brother looked up too, frowns taking shape in confusion of their silent interaction.

Lucifer relented first, as always, glancing down through the still water over the concaved looking glass. His eyes slammed shut as a sudden beacon of light flared into existence to center the gathered circle. Vision adjusting, Lucifer blinked as God’s voice shook the realm and his racing heart. “You are all gathered here on this day to bear witness…”

A strike of humming light shot from God’s glowing sphere—right into Michael.

All eyes trained on their heavenly leader as he went down to one knee with gritted teeth. The light subsided, leaving a brighter glow that haloed his muscular body as he pushed back up to his full towering height—to set his intensely silver eyes back on Lucifer.

When all remained silent, Remiel questioned from beside Michael with open interest, “Witness to whom or what?”

Fearing he already knew, Lucifer held Michael’s narrowed gaze, watching as the angel brimming with God’s infinite power brought his fingers together. “To this.”

Michael vanished with a click of his fingers, but when the Angel of Death pointed, “down there,” all the remaining angels followed Azrael’s view down through the water as a location appeared. Eden. There among the serene landscape with its plunging waterfalls and bordering mountains to keep the rest of the world out was Michael. Infused with God’s power, the travel below had been instant. Adam and Eve were there too, and they both hastily stood from their reclined place against a tree at his arrival, ditching items from their hands.

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 resonated 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.