Lucifer returned to his chamber much later and alone. He stalled inside the twinkling entry with a deep sigh. Wandering the endless maze of illuminated corridors after his short venture below had passed the time, but not even his slip into the scribe vault to deliver a stack of his recordings had cleared his mind. Every time Lucifer blinked he saw that expression on Gabriel’s face, the one he had instilled in her the second he’d verbally refused her. She had looked physically wounded by him, like he’d punched through her ribcage to her heart and squeezed with the might of God. The pain he’d inflicted on her with his actions and those few words haunted him.

He never wanted to hurt anyone. Especially not Gabriel.

That was the reason he kept himself away. Why he resorted to hiding in the edges of the blinding light. Why he had abstained from connecting with any of his fellow archangels. He did not want her to feel she had done anything to warrant his avoidance. He wanted her to believe that he simply was not interested in being part of their elite group, to accept that he liked his solitary life.

But she knew him too well. She saw right through his mask of uncaring to the deep pain that grew within him with each passing day.

Being away from Gabriel was ruining him, changing him more than their development of flesh and bone and heart.

Now redressed in clean white, Lucifer fisted the material of his robe, pressing his knuckles hard against his pounding heart. “Damn me.” Stepping between the clutter of scattered tablets that dominated the glowing floor and dulled the ambient light, he could not stop his thoughts from returning to his time beside the looking glass this day. He now had a word for what he’d felt on witnessing that physical act between Adam and Eve. Jealousy. The feeling had been growing stronger inside of him each passing day as he watched God’s humans down below. They, as individuals, answered only unto themselves. Although they were not all-powerful or immortal or protected by Eden’s walls, they were…free.

Something Lucifer could never be. Never in the way he desired.

“Stop it,” Lucifer chided himself, fighting to push all he felt deep down somewhere that it could rot and die. “Stop…”

Lucifer’s voice trailed off. Someone had been inside his chamber. His chiseled recordings, despite their disarray, had shifted ever so slightly. But the real proof revealed itself in the slight electricity that lingered on the unmoving air. “Gabriel.”

At the instant thought of her, he shook his hope away. Anger replaced it as he stomped over and around stone blocks, shoving them aside with knocks that would bruise his ankles and shins to get to his writing platform. “Michael the spy.” He ripped tablets off the bright surface, sweeping them away with a resounding crash. “He has no right. I have kept to myself—” Lucifer’s words cut short as a feather—his feather—swooshed off the desk with the last few blocks he shoved aside. Catching it mid-air, his breath caught, and his powerful hands turned soft as they cradled the feather across one large palm. “Gabriel,” her name graced his lips again as static emanated from the feather and warmed his palm. She had been here, in his chamber, touching part of himself he’d plucked free so long ago…a part he’d hidden under his work. Panic squeezed his lungs and his eyes shot down to the drawing of her, the one he had spent countless reflection time perfecting since that shameful day. It was a perfect image of her, detailing her oval face with its pointed chin, her round rosy cheeks, her petite nose, her plump swollen lips, her long flowing hair, and her eyes of endless hope. Until today, he had not allowed himself to look at her. Every time she had been near, he’d forced his eyes that were desperate to behold her down or away. But all that inspired this realistic drawing was branded across his mind. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget a single thing about her. And with their separation, this was as close as he could come to seeing her, really seeing her, in the flesh.

“My Gabriel.”

He glared at the whispered words that had slipped from his disloyal lips. She was not his. She was God’s archangel. His messenger.

But the feather…he could feel her warm and comforting presence radiating from it. She had been the one in his chamber. Which meant…she had found his drawing. The temptation to tear her likeness to rags struck Lucifer like the hand of God, to cover his tracks, so he could pretend it, along with his fixation with her, had never existed. But he could not bring himself to do it. Not now. Not while that humming was intensifying across his palm.

Looking down, he stared at the feather, his jaw falling open in surprise. “A message.”

With burning curiosity, Lucifer laid the feather open on one palm and closed the other over the top of it. He shouldn’t have done it. Destroying the feather was the right thing to do, the right thing that he did not seem capable of forcing upon himself at this moment. To rid himself of something she had intended for him to hear, a message from her blushed lips, words created from her vital breath for him alone…it was impossible.

The moment his palms pressed together and his breath penetrated his loose fingers, Gabriel’s melodic voice rose up, clear and as compelling as if she were standing right beside him and whispering into his ear. “Though you hide in plain sight, fading into dark misery, I see you. I will always see you. You are my oldest and dearest friend. My Morningstar. I miss you more than my heart can withstand. When you are ready, follow the labyrinth corridors to the west, beyond all the formed and future chambers. There, where the edge of light glows the brightest, and without eyes or ears to see or hear, I will be waiting—even if it takes an eternity.”

As the feather vanished from his cupped hands, stealing her electric essence, another sensation stalled his rushed steps. He’d been ready to follow her directions, to find her and lie to cover his obsession. To protect her from himself.

Lucifer’s head shot up instead, his heart jumping into his throat at the figure peeking in through the entry. With dark eyes narrowed dangerously at him and teeth bared, he knew he had not been the only one to hear Gabriel’s summons. Michael had too, and with his fierce stare shooting to his writing platform, he knew Michael had seen as much as he’d heard.

“Michael, please.”

Expression challenging, Michael shook his head. “You brought this upon yourself.” And then he was gone, the swaying drapery chiming as he disappeared from sight.

After a moment of pure shock, dread finally took root in Lucifer’s belly. “Gabriel.” He knew where Michael had rushed off to, and why. He had to stop him.

Darting back to the platform, Lucifer tore up his sketch. His heart’s desire. Jagged fragments fluttered down as he rushed from his chamber, leaving the song of chimes jangling in his wake. After all the time he’d spent aimlessly wandering the maze of corridors, he knew almost exactly where she’d be. Passing through the long stretches of light that hid any hard edges or surroundings, Lucifer felt a buzzing rise up inside of him. He was going the right way, feeling her individual essence as he had always been able to do since wiping away her first tear. The growing sensation drove him on faster over the floor that reverberated no sound of his footfalls with each racing step. And now he was heading west, with only one invisible bend ahead in his way.

The humming that rushed his heart like a drum shifted suddenly as he reached the turn, and Lucifer pulled up fast. Gabriel was there. She was waiting—anticipating his arrival? As he peered around the fuzzy, glowing bend, he found her standing before what appeared to be a dead end of brilliant white light. Drawn like a moth to a flame, he took in the long plait of her hair over her shoulder, her parted lips, her wide and worried eyes, and her entwined hands she held to her chest. His pounding heart tripped and fell.

Gabriel was not alone.

He was too late.

“You really wish to know?” Michael stood before her. His arms were crossed over his broad chest and out of sight with his back facing up the corridor Lucifer peeked around. His towering wings heaved ever so slightly with recovering breath.

The shock of finding her not alone constricted his chest. He watched in horror as her look of worry melted and she tilted her chin up in defiance. “You know I do.”

When her eyes flicked up over Michael’s shoulder, Lucifer shrank back around the bend, blending into the fuzzy light. The distance, however, did not blur Michael’s resounding answer, or the total fear that turned Lucifer’s body to stone.

“That day you watched Eden from above, you saw Adam and Eve. You saw them nil of cloth and foliage, bodies intertwined. You saw their mortal display of lust. Of fornication.”

Each of Michael’s words felt like a punch to Lucifer’s gut. He couldn’t say it. He wouldn’t. Not to her. Not to Gabriel, the purest of them all. Lucifer had been wrong to think what he did, but to tell her….

“Lucifer felt something that day. Something other than hope for a world that will always be light years away from us. A world that we are stationed to watch over and lead in God’s path. In Lucifer’s mind, he saw himself as Adam, bared naked and sweating, groaning and grunting…” Michael’s voice dropped. “Thrusting. And Eve in his arms he imagined was…”

Though he could not see, despite having recovered movement in his body, Lucifer imagined Michael’s brows hiking suggestively when his revelation fell short.

Gabriel’s reactive gasp made Lucifer feel like a dagger had sliced from his sternum to his male appendage. There was no undoing this, no taking back the words, the knowledge Michael had now bestowed upon Gabriel.

Now she knew, and she could never unknow this horrible truth.

Lucifer squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. The light he encompassed grew exponentially as Lucifer made a promise to himself, a promise he hoped he could keep. I will learn control over my reactions in mind and body. To protect her purity and my honor as an archangel, I must. For I cannot live without her. The day she forgives me of this, if that day ever comes to be, I must be ready. I must be worthy. And then, with a quiet click of his fingers, he burst into light as he traversed this realm to seek refuge below.