Mags went small and rigid in the angel’s grip.
“Release her!” Luce roared and attempted to surge to his feet. Between maintaining the barriers in place and the damage his body had taken, his magic was almost fully depleted, even withthe bolstering waves from Cami and Sachi. Lucifer crashed to his knees halfway to Mags’s side. “Please, Ezekiel, release her.”
“He will not,” Jehovah dismissed his brother with a lazy wave, but Ezekiel hesitated, gripping Mags tightly but not moving to return to Jehovah. “You disgrace yourself with these pitiful displays, Lucifer, honestly.”
“I do not care,” Luce said, bracing his palms in the dirt. He shoved himself up, struggling to get one foot planted and wavering from the strain. “I will debase myself a thousand times over for the ones I love.”
“Not for your son, however?”
“Some of us draw the line at murdering our children.”
A darkness stole over Jehovah’s face like a cloud across the sun, something ugly flickering there. With a swift and violent slash of his hand, a tendril of light came down like a whip across Luce’s straining back, bringing him to the ground again.
“How dare you,” Jehovah hissed, bringing his whip down again, and again. It tore through Luce’s shirt and bit into his back like a fiery brand, singing the flesh even as it was split. “You know nothing of why Christos was asked for his sacrifice, or what it cost me to even consider it.”
“And yet,” Luce hissed, voice low and taut with strain from the assault, “you allowed your son to die. Encouraged it, even.”
Another swing and crack of the whip. Glory began to cry, while Remiel unleashed a string of curses in several dead languages.
Fury cast Jehovah’s face in hard lines, rendering him a vengeful sculpture. “Unlike you and yours, my son understands the balance of the universe, and his place within it.”
“Soyou claim.” Luce looked up from the ground, disdain clearly etched in the lines of his mouth, the furrow of his brow. “Or is he simply afraid of your reaction should he refuse your wishes?”
The golden light reared back again, angling to strike Luce across the face this time. Instead, the whip cracked down across a broad, tanned chest, leaving a nasty split in the skin like a flayed fish, its edges smoldering. Michael grunted, falling back and landing on his back in the dirt before Lucifer.
“Not me,youbeautiful idiot,” Luce murmured, running his fingers over Michael’s forehead to brush loose curls out of his eyes. “I can take it. If you must defend someone, go to Mags.”
Michael’s healing factor had been almost completely depleted when he took Foster’s blow for Luce, and the building collapse had left him severely injured. Luce dug deep, pushing himself past his long-reached limits, to send the last dregs of his power into the angel, offering him as much healing as he could muster in the hopes one of them could save the girl.
Michael stared up, the pale blue of the sky haloing Lucifer’s dark, disheveled head, and thought the Devil might be more beautiful now than he had ever been in their youth. Sparks of healing magic raced across his temples and down his neck, shoulders, and torso.
Bones snapped back into solid form; torn muscles knit back together. Then the magic fizzled out, only able to address the most urgent of medical concerns. Michael grunted, rolled to the side, pushed up from the ground on trembling arms, and got unsteadily to his feet. His still shattered wings drooped and dragged along the grass.
“You are entirely out of line, Michael,” Jehovah warned him, voice taut with fury. “To lie to me, defy me, and now to interfere with my justice?”
“This is vengeance, not justice,” he spoke slowly, knowing to speak his mind was to invite his own punishment. He turned to Ezekiel, delivering his best disappointed glower.“You were trained to be better than this, Ezekiel.”
“I was trained to follow orders,” the younger angel rebuked him. “A lesson you seem to have forgotten since teaching it to me.”
“You will learn much with age that cannot be taught,youngling.”He extended a hand.“Please allow Mary to come to me. I do not wish to fight you.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Ezekiel gripped Mags more tightly, pulling her rigid form to his side. Mags whimpered, and Michael couldn’t hold himself back anymore.
“So be it.”Michael lunged forward, only for Ezekiel to spin nimbly aside, dragging Mags with him. Michael pulled up short, wheeling around and making a second attempt at tackling the younger angel.
Ezekiel dodged again, stumbling slightly over Mags’s feet and yanking her behind him as Michael reached for her again. With a growl of irritation, he pulled a thin cord from his belt, looping the golden strands over Mags’s thin wrists and letting it pull taut. She winced, recoiling, and Ezekiel pushed her to her knees.
“Stay out of my way,” he hissed, ducking another swipe from Michael and elbowing the taller man in the gut, pushing him away from Mags. Michael tried to draw his sword from the sheath down his back, but Ezekiel wasn’t foolish enough to allow his former mentor a weapon. He beat him back mercilessly, blocking every strike and countering with another immediately after.
Jehovah merely watched the show, an expression of amusement on his face. Uriel cleared his throat softly, then louder, until God turned to look at him. “Yes, Uriel, what is it?”
“Sir,” he swallowed, cleared his throat at the sharp look he received, and tried again. “Your Majesty, should you not...interfere?”
Jehovah hummed. “I think not. Michael is treading on the thinnest ice, and I think he deserves the shame of losing to a former protégé.”
Uriel swallowed again, his throat like sandpaper with a golf ball lodged in it. This fight, this scene... All of it was wrong. His commander in chief was content to gloat over a broken man taking a beating—and for what? What had Michael done, but protest injustice?
Ezekiel spun and twisted, dancing around Michael with inhuman grace and speed, unimpeded by injuries or fatigue. In contrast, Michael clearly operated at about ten percent, broken and bruised yetstillmatching Ezekiel strike for strike. A swell of pride in his best friend burst in Uriel’s chest, chased by a deep-rooted shame. What waswrongwith him, standing here watching Mike struggle and strain?
