We return to her house, where it truly began.

The sky is just beginning to lighten with the promise of dawn when I land on the steps leading to her door. Grace stumbles ever so slightly before regaining her footing. The ginger cat still naps on the porch. When we pass, he opens one green eye to stare, still looking deeply unimpressed with us both.

The front door creaks open with the lightest touch, the pieces of the shattered lock rattling around inside the worn brass knob. We scarcely notice the wreckage Phenex and Uriel left in the house, skirting past a demolished coffee table, broken glass tacky with drying blood crunching under our feet.

The coming days will be filled with discovery as I learn the tiniest facets of her life and let her see beyond the screen of the Devil into Lucifer. The idea of getting to know each other without the threat of imminent destruction is new, to say the least. All I know was that I want her. In my bed. By my side. As an equal for as long as she’ll have me.

Grace presses her hand against my chest, the softness of her palm a contrast to the stiffness of the blood-soaked fabric of my ruined shirt. The noise of ripping cloth sounds loud in the silent house as her fingers poke through the tear in the shirt and pull. I stand still, letting her claw at the already tattered fabric until it hangs open. She pushes it off my shoulders, letting it fall at our feet.

The momentary frenzy passed, Grace's hand is back on my chest, the slightest tremor going through her fingers as she traces them over my heart where the ugly wound would have been.

My voice is barely above a whisper when I speak. "You saved the Devil's life. Some might say that was the wrong choice."

Grace stays quiet, her eyes affixed to the spot on my chest that she healed. A hundred quips about being in her debt and at her mercy spring to my mind, borne of a lifetime where favors and servitude were two sides of the same coin. I hold my tongue, letting her gather her thoughts without interruption.

When she speaks, her voice is as soft as my own, the weight of her choice and her actions already felt through Heaven and Hell with the force of an earthquake. Now, when everything is quiet, these words are only for us.

"It was worth it." She looks up at me, reminding me just how small she is. The top of her head barely reaches my shoulders. To my unasked question, she replies, "Sacrificing Heaven."

I tense, the old hatred at my Father threatening to boil over that someone so good would have the gates barred to her. "I never wanted that for you." If she hears the catch in my voice, she doesn’t comment.

We called Michael God’s Poison behind his back and to his face, but that nickname ended up with the wrong angel.

She takes my face in her hands, and I catch the first glimpse of the carefree girl she once was. Battered and bloody, surrounded by the wreckage of her home and lost family, she looks happy.

She looks free.

She takes a step back, and I follow into her bedroom, drawn to her with the same immutable want I’ve felt since I first touched her in the square.

This girl. This powerful, eternal, but still so human girl with the blood of Heaven in her veins and the blood of two Archangels on her hands takes the Devil to her bed.

If Heaven and Hell are watching, they keep silent for once.

The worlds of angels and devils, the damned and the forgiven, all blur a bit more at our union, black and white fading into smoke grey as the feathers beneath her fingertips.

I told her once that the devil doesn’t come dressed in horns and a red cape. He comes in the guise of all you’ve ever wanted.

I wanted vengeance and amusement. My brother’s head on a stick and the chance to drown myself in this flesh-filled world and forget.

To most of the world, I am still called many things.

Prince of Lies. Lord of Hell. The Supreme Tempter of Mankind. I am not so naïve to expect humanity to find a new scapegoat for their sins anytime soon.

When I Fell, my light was snuffed out. I embraced the blackness, telling myself I reveled in the torture and the screams, and a lie spoken often enough has a way of bleeding into truth. But ever so slowly the bits of me lost to the darkness have crept back, and I can already feel the awakening of the Lightbringer. The Morningstar.

Not His favorite. Not anymore.

With her by my side, I’m something different. Something better.

I am not what I was.