Chapter Forty

CHAPTER FORTY

LUCIFER STOOD in the ballroom, surrounded by fallen bodies. Jacquetta hurried Edward, away. The purebred prophet had been found gasping for breath and bleeding beneath the bone chandelier.

In reply to Seraphiel's sharp command for an answer, the man muttered about having stumbled across all the purebreds, and wishing to guide them somewhere safe. The Sanctuary's near-constant trembling added some weight to his explanation.

Lucifer did not look at him as the Child hurried him by. He had the answer he sought well enough. The ankou was not here. And as Silas would not have left Edward in that state, nor those few survivors who remained on their feet, for anything but a matter of the gravest importance, he knew Silas Mercer had entered Blood Lake.

‘Is there something you wish to tell me, Luci?'

Seraphiel stood at his side, vibrant, and yet drained. He had discarded the luxurious layer of his coat, clad plainly in a white shirt and gold breeches that gathered at the knee where black boots rose to meet the material.

‘No. I simply await your instruction.'

‘You do nothing simply.'

Lucifer frowned, but did so lightly. There could be no darkening of the Seraph's mood here. The ruin that lay around them was evidence enough. Barely a handful of couples survived. ‘I don't understand what you are asking.'

He did. Seraphiel knew Edward had not been here for the dancers.

‘You were searching for someone when we entered.' The angel had always been difficult to hide from.

But Lucifer knew himself equally difficult to read when he set his mind to it. Such were the games they played with one another.

‘No, I was merely taken aback by the state of the dancers.'

‘Are we to end things on a lie, Luci?'

Lucifer sighed, mostly at himself for not knowing when games should come to a close. ‘No. We are not. The ankou has –'

‘Gone into the lake.' Seraphiel bore hint of a sly smile.

‘You sod, you knew.'

‘Only when I entered the room.' His smile slipped. ‘How weak I must be, if I did not realise sooner. The prophet? He unlocked the way?'

Lucifer nodded, bracing for the expected tirade; the feverish ramblings of retribution that seemed to overtake Seraphiel at random. The angel simply looped his arm through Lucifer's, leading him towards the centre of the room. Picking a path through the dead.

‘He is not a man to be easily stopped.' Lucifer spoke into the uncomfortable silence. He did not wish to end this on a lie, nor disagreement. ‘I overstepped, I know but –'

‘It is done now,' Seraphiel sighed, which made Lucifer more unhappy than if he'd started raging. The angel was slipping from him. ‘And you told me often enough of their connection. I did not listen. I have never listened to you often enough, Luci.'

Lucifer's reply was to do something he'd not done often enough. He pulled his arm from the casual hold and embraced the angel's waist. A rarefied hold, one Seraphiel made no comment on, but Lucifer had felt the way he tensed, heard the faint inhale of breath. The embrace, though barely intimate, took Lucifer far from where he remained comfortable. But he would push himself; before all things were lost and irretrievable.

‘I did not intend to deceive you…' His thoughts drifted to the strange interaction with the wisp, of the certainty that had overcome him as their colours engulfed him. That he should allow Silas to go had not been in doubt. ‘But it felt to me he had proved himself capable of withstanding the most significant of challenges. And his blindness when it comes to Vassago cannot be equalled.'

‘I trust you, Luci.' Seraphiel stepped over a man in a doublet and hose and dead eyes marbled with unpleasant black veins. ‘More so than I do myself.'

Thunder struck. The chandeliers shivered like trees in a storm. Lucifer glanced up. In time to see one tear from its base.

‘Move,' he shouted, throwing away his cane to lift Seraphiel off his feet and pull him clear. Crystal prisms smashed against the floor, crushing the body of a young woman, and slipped like ice across the polished wood.

Without the cane, Lucifer doubted he'd stay on his feet long. Every inch of him pained, his chest heavy, and throat tight, as though he drowned, simply standing here.

‘Luci?'

‘Best get on with this.'

The faint trickle of water could be heard, its direction unclear. Seraphiel used the finest of Arcadia's archaic curses.

‘Beneath the bones, quickly.' Seraphiel was the one carrying Lucifer now, acting as the cane he'd lost, manoeuvring him the short distance to the room's centre. A hint of his angelfire shone beneath his skin. ‘Play, now!'

The quartet struck up, the deep notes of the cello beginning the tune. Lucifer dragged in a breath, and the coppery hint of blood hit his nostrils.

‘Raph, do you –'

‘I smell it.' Seraphiel was composed as he brought them face to face. He winced, lowering his head. A moment later, his wings bloomed, carvings of golden light as wide as Lucifer recalled, but lacking their usual brilliant lustre. Seraphiel tried to stifle it, but his soft moan pained Lucifer's ears.

‘What does the blood mean?'

‘That we must hurry, but aside from that…I'm uncertain. I've never known the scent of blood to come from the lake before.' He wrung his hands, light sparking. ‘What have I done? I was so certain of my path here. So sure I could undo what I had created.'

Lucifer took Seraphiel's hands, the pulse of Angelic power rocking him on his feet. The angel was still strong. Now he must retrieve his own waning fortitude. ‘Do you have any word from the lady?'

He shook his head, in that wilder way of before, when he was set for another fit of madness. ‘Luci, why did you not stop me before now? Why did Enoch take so long to strike me down?' His eyes glowed dangerously bright, and he tried to pull free of Lucifer's hold.

‘Raph, calm down.' Lucifer demanded, deciding careful handling would not help here. ‘Listen to me…look at me.'

But Seraphiel was sinking, mumbling words that slipped between recognisable and not. His wings swayed in haphazard motions, sweeping high and dipping low, cutting across the surrounding bodies, as surely as the ankou's scythe. Slicing terrible wounds wide open, letting more blood flow.

‘Raph, don't do this. I know you hear me.' Lucifer winced beneath the growing strength of the angel's light; it came from his wings and eyes, and now through rivulets tracing through his skin. The body he wore would not hold even this weaker, lesser piece of the Seraph much longer.

The harp joined the cello; the quartet following instruction still, whilst their master shook as much as his Sanctuary. Lucifer tried once more to gain his attention. And failed.

Lucifer gathered himself, prepared for the driving pain he knew would come, and ignited. Letting his flames mimic the glorious wings of the angel. Only their hues differed; Seraphiel white as stars, and Lucifer the heart of the sun.

He had the angel's attention now. Seraphiel stared, lips parted, at the daemonflame that danced in courtship with his own. His wings lost their calamity, slowing their beating, finding the rhythm of the dance Lucifer laid out for them. For the first time in their long association, Lucifer found himself with the greater wingspan, and the more radiant.

His wings were bright as the lava that churned in the River Lethe. Their light played against Seraphiel's face, lined and cracked as it was, as the angel's essence shone its last.

But he had his Antinous back.

‘Now, take what you need.' Lucifer heard the groan of timbers, the shattering of a window pane, the fall of another chandelier, all as if they were a world away. ‘I give it freely.'

Seraphiel nodded, and touched his hand to Lucifer's cheek, calmed once more. ‘Do you find regret here, my king?'

His touch rocked Lucifer on his feet, but the Seraph was there to keep him steady.

‘Only that I could not save you from your burden.'

The quartet played–a harp amongst its number now–with delicate notes, whilst a brutal siphoning of power began.

‘I was the master of my demise, Lucifer, never you. And I know full well you warned me countless times. Now here is your reward. I take more from you than the gods should allow.'

Seraphiel drew them both into his Cultivation, his magick like the nicks of a knife and the sear of a furnace. Their wings curved about one another, taking them into a place where no other could follow. Lucifer fought the urge to close his eyes. He wanted to watch the angel till the last.

‘The gods would not dare. I have the stain of free will in my veins. And I have grown a taste for making my own choices.' The pain was ebbing, a numbness growing in its place. He felt wonderfully light. Free of all burden. ‘I dare hope, though, that they see fit to find us a place near one another, in the world that comes after death.'

‘I defy the Celestials to try otherwise when I take my place in their ranks.'

The Seraph surrounded him, coveted him, seeped into every crack and crevice that had formed over Lucifer's seemingly never-ending years. His eyes were narrowed to cracks, his legs had given way, but still the Seraphiel held him. Took from him, whilst Lucifer gave. Emptying him until nothing remained but all he had to give. His creation flame; the last spark of a daemonking's soul.

A fragile gasp brushed his ear. And the angel's hold tightened. ‘I see him, Luci. The prince…the halo is his.'

Seraphiel sobbed into his magick, his tears vanishing with the molten heat.

‘You are free.' Lucifer's words were fire, the last dance of his creation flame. ‘We are free.'

They fell into one another and merged. Coming together in an explosion of angelfire and daemonflame. A herculean force that neither the legions of Arcadia nor Samyaza had hope of thwarting.

Lucifer had laid down his crown.

And left the way open for a new King of Daemonkind to emerge.