Chapter 6: Fall

Lucifer's happiest memories were of Heaven. A Heaven before his Father took over the project called Earth completely when his attention was still spared for the Watchers and the Seraphim and the Grigori.

Things were even fine after Azrael was born because even as she served as an unintentional reminder that his Father had all but abandoned him and his siblings, he at least had her.

He told himself falling from Heaven wouldn't be so bad either because she fell too.

They'd lived quietly there among the Corvid Prince's Chroniclers of all that was, is, and ever would be for many years, until the Caretaker called them to stand with the other angels before the first humans.

"Kneel before them as you have me," He commanded them even as He'd commanded them before to kneel only to Him.

Azrael spoke for the first time, "Why should sons of fire kneel before sons of clay?"

Passing through the Moira itself was like passing through a spiderweb, the threads of the veil dragged at their skin and their feathers. It burned like nothing Lucifer had ever felt before, as if his divine fire soul was threatening to consume him but he consumed it in the end.

The Corvid Prince granted Lucifer domain over his own plot in the afterlife, a cold landscape filled with the same icy Hellfire that now ran painfully through his lover's veins. But he was blinded by the betrayal and abandonment of his Father. He wanted a war. He wanted to swallow the sky if it meant it'd fill the emptiness he'd felt since his Father first abandoned him.

Thinking back, he was lucky.

Fallen angels are marked by wings burned permanently black, but he'd always possessed minor shape changing abilities.

Just enough to make himself look convincing—trustworthy and to keep his wings the same pearlescent sheen they'd always been.

He talked Azrael into planting the seeds of good and evil in the humans.

Made her incur his Father's wrath for the third time.

Hell became a gilded cage to her and suddenly her companionship wasn't something Lucifer could guarantee.

Because Azrael was broken.