Gabriel spoke as Lucifer remained still, looking more and more wounded for every moment he stared at her as if trying to reconcile all the familiarities of her face against who she now was to him. “I have missed you, Morningstar.” Her tender name for him. “You tempt your fate too much.” She moved closer with the weightlessness of the wind, coming right up to him.

When she reached for his handsome face, Lucifer leaned his cheek into her warm palm. The reaction tugged at her heart, flooding her with a sense of déjà vu at the scratch of his stubble and the way his eyes became hooded. She desperately wanted to be closer to him, to envelop him with her arms, to show her undying belief in all she knew he could be. Yet she did not move. She couldn’t. Doing so would only cause more strife.

“I fear what this petulance will cost you. His forgiveness may not withstand—”

Lucifer jerked back with a snarl, and Gabriel’s hand fell along with the hope she had held onto for all these years. The gleam in his eyes turned feral. “God’s eternal forgiveness is saved for his precious humans. They alone are his pride. We are merely his servants. Loyal and pure is not what he values. Now I am like them.” He held his arms out wide and glared up at the sky. “Existing solely for my own gain and other’s demise.”

Gabriel unfurled her wings. The soft downy feathers quivered with the sadness that pooled in her eyes. She was losing him. “Lucifer, no. You allow your anger to blind you. He does not want—”

Lucifer shoved Gabriel back, and she continued back stepping as he stalked forward. Feet poked and scratched by fallen twigs, she did not stop until her wings hit a tree. With his next words, her fear and frustration peaked. “I am human. One of his precious creations. Still I am not good enough. He cast me out. He took my wings. He took everyth—”

Gabriel’s warring emotions exploded and she punched Lucifer in the face.

It was all too much to contain. Knowing she wasn’t getting through to him. Knowing she was failing him like the day he had fallen, and long before then when she had failed to control her forbidden love for him and been caught ready to welcome him into her bared body.

As he stumbled, her wings flung open, huge and powerful as her ability to be soft vanished. Striking out, her long fingers grabbed Lucifer around the neck. “I will not let you continue this.” She squeezed with heavenly might as silver tears streaked down her cheeks. At the sight, Lucifer’s entire body turned rigid, but he did not fight back as she spoke. “This plague you have cursed the earth with…I cannot bear to see it. Not for them, but even more so, not for you. I know you, Lucifer. You burned so brightly once. It can be that way again.” Her grip loosened as she blinked her eyes clear. Her lips lifted with a small, hopeful smile. There was no returning to what they had once been to each other, but there was always hope for redemption and forgiveness. “If you would only let go of this pain and accept your place among us once more. Accept God’s love again, Lucifer. Beg His forgiveness. Do it for you, for what we both know you can be.”

Tightness melted from Lucifer’s body and his sigh was resigned. Gabriel’s hand around his throat fell. With her hope redoubling, she tried to ignore the indent she’d left around his neck as it faded. “What you demand is impossible. Without you…I am nothing. God knows my heart. And that I cannot change. You may not feel what we once shared, but I can never forget. I can never let go. And that alone is why He keeps me a prisoner below, why my will to redeem myself died…”

Gabriel wanted to argue despite having seen the moment of his dying plight for redemption, but his severe frown killed the words on her tongue. She reached out to lift his face. “Lucifer, what is—”

He caught her wrist with firm yet gentle fingers. His head snapped up. “You are not permitted to be here.”

Remembering her escape, Gabriel shot a glance to and from the faintly glowing manacle that circled her ankle. She pulled her wrist free and tugged her silver tresses over her shoulder, twisting the long length back and forth. “I had to see you.” The words were ones Lucifer had said to her many times in their past, and she would have smiled at using them if the cause for her disobedience was not so dire. “There is a place worse than Earth. Michael warmed—”

“Michael is a snake,” Lucifer spat through clenched teeth. “You endanger yourself in buying his lies. You should not have come. Leave, before it is too late.”

He turned to stalk away, and Gabriel darted forward, spinning him around by his bicep. “No. I will not go. I will not fail you again.”

Though his face was red with anger, he stopped to look at her, really look at her. With a deep breath, kindness returned to his starry eyes. “It is not you who failed me.” When he reached up, she let him brush her cheek with his rough hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. His hand lingered there with his arm outstretched between them, a battle waging on behind his eyes. Then he took a hesitant step closer and pressed his lips to her forehead. His hand moved at the same time to clasp the back of her neck.

Gabriel softened at his touch, her heavy wings dipping lower as the gentle breeze swept her silver-flaxen hair back from her shoulders. “Lucifer, please…”

“I am sorry,” he whispered, his breath warm against her forehead and hard to hear over the rustling of tree leaves. Lucifer’s grip tightened on her neck. “I will not let you be condemned too.” He freed his sword of its sheath and drove it into her gut, stopping only when the hilt reached her body. “My place is here where he left me. I am the humans’ God. Their Messiah. I will make every last one of them mine. I will ruin his precious humans by bringing out their true natures. Tell your God to keep watching from his pearly throne as the world turns black. Or until he undoes this mistake he created and eliminates this hell.”

A sudden well of blood choked up Gabriel’s throat and she coughed. Silver splatter coated Lucifer’s face the same color as her streaming tears. The pain was merciless, but she did not care. This had been her one chance, and now it was gone. Even her love could not sate Lucifer’s hate of their maker. “I will pray for you.”

“Do not bother.” Lucifer tugged his sword back. The anger across his face broke into disgust then fear at the sight of the bloody hole he’d cut into her. His sword fell from his hand as if it had become too heavy to hold. As he spoke, his voice cracked. “God is not listening.”

Letting her blood fall freely, the light around Gabriel dimmed. Her angelic light, the power of her soul and eternal life. And yet she made no move to leave Lucifer. She spared a glance down at her gouged stomach, the silver staining down her sapphire robe. “I will not abandon you, Lucifer.” In truth, she could not bear to say goodbye. To leave him for good. To return above while knowing the danger that could come for him at any time. “Despite it all and what you think, you have never been alone. I believe in you. In what you used to be. In what you still can be.”

Lucifer staggered, hand covering his heart and clawing into his armor as if he were in agony. As he stood straighter, fighting the tremble of his legs, she knew he still cared. The horror across his face proved it. He knew as well as she did that if Gabriel stayed, the injury he’d inflicted would kill her. Angels could heal of almost anything…if they returned above in time. In his anger, his long and wide sword had almost cut her in half.

Lucifer’s expression hardened, any gentleness chased away. His fists squeezed so hard, blood dripped from his hands. Silver pooled in his eyes as he spat through clenched teeth. “Then stay and die. I will use your cold body as a trophy, as proof to show the humans that I rule over even the heavens. I will mount you to the castle wall for all to see. I will watch you rot like all who plot against me.”

Those words resounded in Gabriel with a hundred times more punch than his attack had. He did not mean it. Not a word. He was saving her. Forcing her to leave. And what choice did she really have? In her state, there was no stopping him now.

As Gabriel wiped her tears away, her sorrow remained like a stain on her soul. “Then I failed you greatly. I am sorry, Morningstar. I am so sorry.” With one last look at Lucifer, she bent at the knees and then pushed up with power that rippled out in waves on the air. Her wings beat with force to take her straight up—and away from him.