“And you're ignorant.”
They fell into silence as Luce unwound and stretched the bandage, slapping the end against Michael’s chest.
“Hold this.” He began to wrap around muscled torso and tawny feathers, assuming Michael would follow the command.The angel didn’t disappoint, waiting for Luce to overlap the fabric before he let his hand drop.
“You do know you have toexplainthat Adam comment, don’t you?”
“I have to do nothing.” The Devil tugged the bandages neatly into place, conjuring a pin and stabbing precariously deep to secure the wrap. Michael gave him an accusatory look and Luce glared back. “Iwilltell you, if only to prove to you why you’re an utter imbecile, but I do it of my own will. No one commands me.”
Michael bit his tongue to avoid pointing out the contradiction there, not wanting to disrupt the tense truce they had entered. Instead, he rolled his eyes and waited for the explanation. Luce busied himself with righting his desk—or rather, the halves of it. He shot Michael a dirty look, and the angel glowered right back. He hadn’t told Luce to try and cut him in half!
The King continued avoiding his gaze, wandering the room and collecting pieces of his office by hand, as if the manual labor was helping him compose himself. Michael’s wings itched as the torn tendons knit back together, but he suspected the shiver down his spine had more to do with anticipation. This had to be one hell of a story, if it had led to such a monumental misunderstanding.
When Luce finally ran out of books and knickknacks to collect, he turned and locked their gazes for a long moment, as if he was trying to read something behind Michael’s eyes. “I just can’t understand it.”
Michael folded his hands in his lap, pointedly waiting for him to go on. Luce narrowed his eyes, but continued, “I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you’ve thought the worst of me, all this time.”
He resumed pacing, no longer bothering to mask his agitation in the guise of cleaning. “That I could actually betray you that way…that I could destroy Heaven!”
While he wasn’t quick to anger, Michael still had a temper—and now it stirred itself inside him like a stung bear. “What was I supposed to think? I came to the Garden at Jophiel’s urging. I saw you—and I think I of all people would know your face! I saw that face pressed against Eve’s, kissing her the way you would kissme.”
Luce opened his mouth to interrupt, but Michael barreled on, finally able to get the weight that had festered and tormented him for centuries off his chest, “As if that wasn’t enough, Gabriel told me of your plots and machinations. He told me how you spoke of using me, how I was to be your excuse and alibi, how you never loved me.”
“All lies! Eve, of all people?!” Luce threw his arms wide, then buried them in his hair and pulled. “I cannot believe you actually thought—The way you came accusing me, it makes so much more sense now.”
His eyes burned golden, and he leveled the full force of that glare on Michael. “I was withAdam, Michael! And before your ever-flexible imagination begins its cartwheels, it wasn’t for adulterous purposes.”
“Yes, I remember you were with Adam!” Michael was shouting now, but he didn’t care. “AfterI saw you with Eve! You say I never gave you a chance to explain what you were doing that day. Clarify it for me now if I’m somisinformed.”
“With pleasure!” Lucifer spun on his heel and stalked across the room. “I have just the thing to settle this once and for all.”
Michael scrambled to his feet and followed, coming up short as Luce stopped abruptly in front of a simple wooden door. He shot Michael a glare before yanking the handle and throwing thedoor dramatically inward. The angel blinked, looked towards the doorway, and arched a brow at Luce.
“Yes, yes, go in!” He shoved impatiently at Michael’s shoulder, making the angel wince. “I didn’t open the door for you to look at it!”
Michael rolled his eyes, then peered cautiously around the doorframe. He almost expected some sort of trick or trap to assail him as soon as he stepped inside, but Luce’s impatient huff and his own pride made him shove aside his worry to cross the threshold.
It was a simple space, but a cluttered one. In fact, so many seemingly unrelated objects littered the room that there was barely a path winding through it. Towers of boxes spilled over with yellowing papers and scrolls, and wooden crates of rolled canvases and maps and assorted weaponry formed barricades and obstacles to traverse.
The dark-paneled walls were visible only in slivers, hung heavily with frames housing priceless artwork. Bags of jewelry and gemstones were plopped unceremoniously on the floor. Shelves lined the walls bearing a bizarre variety of pottery and figurines. He shifted some electric guitars aside with his foot and had to lunge to grab a rack hung with fur coats before it toppled into an ornate Chinese vase on a pedestal.
Lucifer glared and swatted his arm. “Be careful you bull! These are mythings. Many are fragile, and all of them are old and treasured.”
Michael rolled his eyes but moved with more care as they advanced into the space. Lucifer hung close behind him, casting his gaze about and making sure Michael didn’t crush any priceless artifacts underfoot.
“What is this?” He paused, something shiny catching his eye. Bending down, he shimmied an unusual looking weapon out from under a finely woven carpet.
“Thatis a blunderbuss.”
“Is it… a gun?” He turned it every which way, looking at the brass mechanisms and the unusually large barrel, hefting it in his hands to feel the weight.
“Of sorts, though it doesn’t fire bullets.” Michael arched a brow and Luce answered with a wickedly tinged smirk. “It will fire anything you put into the end. Nails, broken glass, small rocks, et cetera.”
“Interesting…”
He carefully replaced it on one of several large pieces of furniture that had been shoved into the room. Other bulky pieces were buried under piles of books, or old clothing. Some were draped in sheets and paint-splattered tarps. Michael spied an old fiddle with chipping gold paint, half-hidden beneath a cluster of medieval weapons, and what he strongly suspected might betheHoly Grail balanced on a mannequin’s shoulder pad. A sad, half-finished dress drooped from the form to the floor.
It was a fascinating look at Lucifer’s taste in hobbies—and his haphazard organizational system—but Michael wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing that would explain this eons-old wound.
