“See them,” the foreign voice reappeared, close at his ear. The same lack of inflection but somehow conveying a sense of urgency. “See him.”
Luce started with a jolt—him.This was the day Foster was born. He approached cautiously, as if expecting someone to turn and tell him he was intruding. But no one noticed him; he was seeing a memory, not truly returned to this moment when everyone had gathered at his panicked summons.
Angela had been much more composed than he had, despite the clear pain written on her face. She’d been the one to comforthimthrough his panic, all while laying down towels and fresh sheets on their large bed and directing several Lidae demons on where to place pitchers of water and spare towels. Her sheer willpower was astonishing to watch, though Luce had always known he had been blessed with a strong, determined wife.
The labor dragged on for hours, with Gloriana and Camiel attentively catering to the exhausted mother and guiding her through the birth. They couldn’t risk a hospital – not when they couldn’t be sure exactly how their son would come into the world. Coming from his mixed origins, there was the possibility he could come out with horns, or possibly even wings, as unlikely as it was.
A small part of Luce hoped his son might inherit wings, if only to experience the joy that was flight. But Foster had turnedout to be perfectly human in appearance, pink-skinned and sosmall, though he wailed loudly from the moment he drew his first breath.
“As dramatic as his father,” Angela had teased affectionately, sinking back into her pillows with a relieved sigh. A swell of warmth burst in Luce’s chest as he watched his past self stroke her flushed cheek gently, brushing her honey-brown hair off her sweaty brow.
“You did so beautifully,” he leaned down to press a kiss to her hairline, and Luce didn’t need to hear the words to remember what he had whispered against her skin. “I am so proud of you, my love.”
And he loved her deeply, even now. Even after she had been gone for years, Angela was a constant presence in his heart and mind. Everyone Luce loved managed to worm their way into his soul so completely that he would never be rid of them even if he wanted to. His desires were so rarely considered by fate, though it had done him a kindness this day.
He had never expected to be a father, yet there he was, humbled and awed by the new, tiny life that his wife placed into his trembling hands. His memory self rocked the infant gently as their friends crowded around to see the baby. Luce walked closer, a part of him aching to experience this moment again. It had been—and still was—the happiest moment of his life.
But why was he here? What was he meant to see?
“Your heir,” the foreign, phantom voice returned with a tingling sensation, as if the speaker was whispering at the nape of his neck.
His heir, Luce mused. Foster was meant to be here with him and was not. He had consented to Angela’s request to raise the boy among mortals—to show him the world and instill a humanity that she found lacking in most immortals. Luce had been present in his son’s life, between his visits to the mortalrealm and Angela’s returns to his kingdom, not to mention all the gifts he sent to the boy. But why not show him his son in the present? What was specific about this day?
He watched himself bounce his infant, until he’d given in to the incessant nudging at his ribs and offered the baby for Mags to hold. She reached out eagerly, grinning. She had barely touched him or looked at him before the vision struck.Oh.Luce realized why he was here with a sudden, heart-wrenching ache.
A particularly strong or nasty vision could make her spasm or render her motionless as she was lost to it. This one ripped through her with violent intensity. She shuddered, shoving the baby back into his father’s arms, as she would surely have dropped him. Her body shook and trembled, her eyes glazing over milky white instead of their normal dark ochre as tears poured freely down her bronze cheeks. Her breath choked off with a strangled sob. It lasted only a few minutes, but Luce had felt as if it dragged on for hours.
The Fallen watched with concern, but they all knew better than to try and interrupt the vision. Gloriana wrung her hands anxiously, and Camiel fell against her husband Sachiel for support. Remi looked like she wanted to punch the something but settled for pacing laps around the smaller woman instead.
As she returned to herself, Mags’s expression fell somewhere between shock and horror, and she seemed unable to even form words. She refused to look at Foster, refused to be within a few feet of him. Angela reached for her, as if to console the smaller woman, but Mags bolted from the room. She fled Luce’s domain, returning to Heaven without a word of goodbye.
“Understand,” the voice returned, finally conveying some emotion through an anxious tone as it echoed from directly in front of him “Understand, Fallen One, and correct your mistakes.”
An intense pressure bore down on Luce and coalesced at his shoulders, accompanied by the strong scent of ammonia. The vision before him scattered like ashes, giving way to blackness as he was shoved backwards once more into the void.
Luce faded back into the present moment, the old memories clinging to him like the smelling salts Mags wafted under his nose. Her bedroom ceiling arched above him, strings of origami figures dangling down from the rafters. He must have collapsed when the visions overwhelmed him.
“Yes,” she said simply, seeing the pure grief on his face now. “The time has come, Lucifer. Your son is turning down the path.”
“No,” he murmured insistently, pushing himself back to a sitting position. “There is a way to prevent this, there must be. We took so many precautions after you had that vision.”
Mags sighed, chewing her lip. “We knew there was the possibility it wouldn’t matter. And... this feels like a vision that is bearing down on us quickly. I think things may already be in motion.”
Disappointment crashed over him, destroying any fledgling hope Luce had been building. “If Foster has gone down this path…I won’t be strong enough to stop him. Emotionallyorliterally, not since…well, you were there. You know I’m not the Devil I used to be.”
“Actually,” she brightened, if only marginally, “I think I might have an idea. But I’ll need access to your archive.”
Chapter Two
Lucifer was very, very close to breaking something—or baking something. He took a moment to mourn the ruined cake he’d been crafting before Mags had arrived and dropped a bomb all over his good mood.
Said woman was currently tearing apart his private library. She was a force of nature, pulling countless manuscripts, tomes and scrolls from his densely packed shelves, rifling quickly through them, and then tossing them aside when she deemed them lacking. Luce had tried to help, but when she struggled to articulate exactly what she was looking for, he had been relegated to rescuing the discarded books from her careless hands.
He arranged them neatly on his desk at first, maintaining the ordering system he used on the shelves, but he had to settle for laying them carefully on any flat surface he could find as Mags increased her pace.
She began to yank the books down with not only her hands, but her power, giving them a quick skim and then flinging them away with an agitated shake of her head. It was all he could do to keep them off the parquet floor. It helped to have a task, evenif he wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for. Anything to avoid thinking about his hopeless position.
That familiar itch to create something was taking over again, as it often did when he was overwhelmed or stressed. It was the urge that had resulted in the pile of scrapped paintings half-finished in a closet somewhere, or the many discarded manuscripts in progress, or the scarves and blankets he’d attempted to knit. Again, he thought of the mortal realm and his other unfinished business there. A sick feeling wound through his gut, and Luce frowned.
