The Glittering Halo

by Liddie Cain

  “Hello, Trow,” the succubus said in a sweet voice.

  Drest swallowed, but didn’t stop walking. “Greetings, but excuse me.”

  “In a hurry?”

  “Yes. I have business with the Overlord’s office.”

  “No one is getting in right now, Trow. You have time to socialize.”

  “Sorry, I’m expected.”

  She shrugged and walked away from us. Drest blew out a breath before saying, “Think she’s right?”

  “Guess we will see,” Felix responded.

  “I think if you drop Felix’s name, the problem won’t be getting in, it will be getting out,” I said.

  “Yes. We will have to make sure they don’t separate us,” Felix said as we walked up to the guard house an entrance to the palace. An Imp stepped out of the guard office with a frown.

  “The palace is closed to visitors today.”

  “I need to speak with my Lady Devina.”

  “Will have to wait for another day. Move along,” the guard responded, waving us away.

  “I have an important matter to discuss with her.”

  “No one in, no exceptions.”

  Felix looked at Drest and nodded. Drest clinched onto Felix’s arm and jerked him forward a step. I hadn’t let go of Felix’s hand yet, so it made me stumble forward as well.

  “I bring her Thrasher to her,” Drest said in a low voice.

  The guard paused, looking more closely at Felix. His eyes bulged. “Wait here.”

  He stepped into the guard office, leaving us glancing between each other, but we didn’t have to wait long. Within moments, we were surrounded by dozens of guards and being dragged through the gate. They didn’t try to take Felix away from us, luckily.

  But with every gate and door that shut and locked behind us, my feeling of dread grew.

  The inside of the palace wasn’t what I imagined it would be. It was striking and tasteful with dark and vibrant colors. Large windows looked out over the city. We were taken through a well appointed sitting room and back outside again into the back gardens. A small group was gathered in the middle of an open lawn in the middle of the garden, and the guards led us toward them. It was there that the atmosphere grew more violent, because I realized that the group was gathered around the recently fallen ash outline of a body. A vampire had been staked a moment before we walked out into the gardens. My first glance of Devina in centuries was a closed toe black spike heel stepping into those ashen remains with a total indifference that it had been a person just moments before.

  Long, toned legs poised above that tasteful pair of black heels. Her narrow hips were showcased in a pair of lace shorts that were barely larger than boy-short panties. A flat and toned stomach was left bare under the sheer fabric that fastened across her large breasts. It was made of the same black lace material that the shorts were. The top was high necked, long sleeved, and the back swept out into a train that trailed the ground behind her. Her face was almost fragile in its features, but there was nothing delicate about the cold expression. A silver diadem sat on her black hair, hair that was swept up into a pile of curls in a loose bun. Her eyes, as dark as those curls, swept across us.

  “Have I lost my Thrasher?” the Lady asked.

  It sounded almost intimate. She grieved his loss. I expected haughtiness, or disdain. The vulnerable moment surprised me. Felix seemed to be taken aback for a moment as well, because he hesitated before he nodded.

  “Yes, my Lady.”

  “You know all of it, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Her face stayed carefully blank as she started to walk closer to us. Her council remained behind, grouped together, their faces hidden in their hooded cloaks. Devina’s black eyes roamed across Drest, then turned to me. She stopped.

  “It is Azrael’s daughter.”

  Felix replied, “Yes.”

  Those pink painted lips pressed together in displeasure. Then she drew herself up slightly taller and looked back at Felix. “You will remain imprisoned here, but you may have her with you. The Trow can go, payment will be given for their return.”

  Drest had no valid reason to object. He submitted to the guards escorting him back inside the palace. I cleared my mind and invoked my angel mark. It was forged with Ariel, which made it easiest to reach her first. I concentrated on letting her know where we were located.

  “And, Trow?” Devina called out when Drest was a few steps away, breaking my concentration on communicating with Ariel. “Are my angels free?”

  I implored him with my gaze to be honest. There was a good chance Devina already knew the answer to this, and it was only a test. Anger flickered over his face. He had spent a lot of his time growing up speaking to my parents as the Trows had guarded their prison. He loved them. Part of him still wanted to protect them, but he lifted his chin and pinned her with that beautiful blue gaze. “They are free.”

  “Thank you, Trow. Leave.”

  The guards shoved him forward, making him walk toward the palace again. Devina walked forward, her hand flying up and gripping onto Felix’s jaw. “If the angels are free, there’s not much of a reason to keep either of you alive, is there, Felix? My rule breaking will be discovered in only a matter of time.”

  “Take me, let Roz go,” he responded through clenched teeth. She was breaking his jaw with her grip on his newly mortal body.

  “You have wings, Felix. You never had those before.”

  There was no safe response to that, so he stayed quiet.

  “Her soul is still mine until judgment,” she said softly. Felix’s entire body jerked as if she struck him. Her hand fell away from his jaw and she let out a sharp laugh. “You didn’t think of that when you let her come with you? You didn’t negotiate for her soul to be released before her mortal life began, only after. You only bargained that she be given the chance to earn her way into heaven with your sister.”

  Her slender hand wrapped around my upper arm and she jerked me away from his side. I stumbled forward, managing to stay on my feet. “By law, I have every right to keep this human here with me. I can keep that soul in this mortal shell indefinitely.”

  Power lashed out from her fingertips and drove Felix back. He fell onto his back, his useless wings framing him. “And you belong to me completely, Felix. I can make you watch.”

  “No!” Darby’s cry echoed across the lawn as she ran to Felix, alone. It meant that she had slipped away from the others when she saw Felix go down. The three of us were back where this all started, facing off with a scheming Devina.

  “Ahh. The sister,” she said. “The one who screwed up my plan to make my deal with you,” she said against my ear. “Tricking him into betraying you and gaining your soul in a deal to heal your broken heart was so simple and only bending the laws, not breaking them. I would have had my archangel war general. Even if you were only a guardian angel, you had the potential. Then the sister showed up, dripping with love for the both of you and ready to fix it. You were going to say no to the deal, because you loved her enough to deal with your broken heart and stay.”

  Another laugh bubbled across her lips. “It wasn’t even the romantic love that screwed it all up. It was the love like sisters the two of you shared.”

  Darby gripped Felix’s hand and helped him sit back up, both of them watching as she yanked me up against her. “Not this time. There are no deals to make with any of you today, and I only need one of you to bargain for myself.”

  That was the moment that the trumpets began to herald the arrival of the angel army. The sky broke open. Light poured down on us as rows of angels in battle gear began to descend. Conall came from the opposite direction, perched on the silent hooves of a flying fairy horse, the monsters of the Sluagh behind their huntsman. It was a thick wind of gruesome shaped shadows. Sharp teeth snapped, growls and high pitched wails sounded from that nightmare cloud. Michael rose in the air at the front of the angels, his sword tip pointed at Devina.

  I should have rea
lized that she seemed too sure of herself. It would have given me some clue. She looked up at Conall, then turned to smile at Michael. Her hand gripped my shoulder. White hot, searing power ripped through my body. Michael shouted in anger. Felix and Mac, who moved in a fast blur across the gardens from where he had been hiding, cried out my name in anguished voices.

  Then I died.

  I descended into flames that did not lick across my skin, because I had no mortal body to burn. Shadow invaded into the glow of those flames and brought my vision back slowly. It was a square room that had no door. The walls and floor were made of a dark gray stone. A desk sat in front of a bookshelf that ran almost the entire length of the wall and was overflowing with ancient looking tomes and scrolls. Light was provided by torches around the room and a large candelabra sitting on the desk.

  The shadows that had brought me out of the flame retreated across the room and back to the figure that sat behind the desk. His face remained obscured behind them. I felt nothing from him, no aura to give me a sense of who or what he was. All I felt was stillness. It wasn’t exactly peace, but it was a void of emotion that kept me from panicking over what was happening to me. A voice broke through the shadows that obscured him.

  “Were you planning on marching across all the realms of Hell to defeat Devina, save your father and protect your lovers?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  He stood and walked around the desk. Tendrils of shadow slipped down along his form and clung like wispy fingers which were loath to let him go. As he came to stand in front of me, the last of the shadows dropped away. Green eyes that were familiar looked at me with amusement. Long, dark blond hair trailed down across the front of one shoulder. Wings were everywhere, seven sets with the first at the very base of the back of his neck and the last were widely set on his hips. It made a wall of white glistening feathers behind him. This many wings marked him as the highest of the Seraphim and the shadow bending marked him as the most powerful of the demonic.

  It was Lucifer.

  I took a step backwards.

  “Devina just ended your mortal life,” he said, his voice a velvet caress. “She seems to have forgotten something crucial. Do you realize what that is?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  His lips lifted with a gentle smile. The features of his face were undeniably handsome. I had spent so many years thinking of him as a red skinned, double horned demon. Even as an angel, legends left the impression of someone physically marked by evil. It never occurred to me to imagine him as looking as any other heavenly angel that I had grown up around, or that the charisma would be almost palpable emanating from that soft smile he directed toward me. Those green eyes weren’t the void depths of indifference that I would have been certain I would have found.

  “She forgets that she just killed my niece,” he said, a steel thread under that velvet warmth of his voice. He turned and gestured behind him. Flame erupted from the stone floor and towered up to the ceiling. When it extinguished, Azrael stood there, whole and unharmed.

  “Father!” I gasped out. We moved to each other, and the Devil watched us embrace. I was pulled into Azrael’s strong arms and comforting wings. He looked down at me with a relaxed smile, stroking his thumb across my cheek.

  “I thought we had lost you,” I said.

  “I frightened you, I know. And your mother is going to kill me.”

  “My reputation must be horrendous for your family to believe I would torture my own brother,” Lucifer said, clearly amused.

  “Like you wouldn’t,” Father responded to him, still smiling down at him.

  “Only some of them.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at the Devil. I always knew he was technically my uncle, but I had been born ages after his reign in Hell began. He had distanced himself from familial ties. Father had rarely mentioned him. Through the centuries, those connections were forgotten. A demon like Devina, created long after Lucifer had waged his war, might not even realize the connection.

  “She deserves to be destroyed,” I told him firmly.

  “Agreed, my niece,” he responded. “There are some laws that even I won’t break. We have decisions to make then.” He clapped his hands together and walked back to sit behind his desk again. Those wisps of shadow welcomed him back into their depths again once he took his seat, but didn’t obscure his face this time. He unrolled a long parchment on the desk top with nimble fingers before looking back up at me and Azrael.

  “Do you wish to reanimate your mortal body?” he asked.

  “I want to return to my life with the people I love,” I replied.

  “Either way, that can happen,” Azrael said. “But I told Lucifer that you might want to keep the biological connection you have with your parents. Especially if you decide you want children.”

  “Yes,” I responded quickly. “I don’t want to lose the connection I have to Mom and Dad.”

  Azrael smiled at me. “Then we will keep it.”

  “You have two heritages to choose from, Rozalyn,” Lucifer said seriously. “Daughter of Azrael, Nephilim of Heaven, or my niece and a Princess of Hell, basically.”

  “I’m both,” I responded. That soft smile touched the Devil’s lips again. He laid his hands flat on the scroll he had in front of him and turned his gaze to Azrael.

  Azrael met his look with raised eyebrows. “This conversation might as well wait until she is with the ones she loves. She won’t make the decision without them.”

  “Eziel’s son,” Lucifer said.

  “Yes, Felix,” I replied.

  He shook his head and let out a frustrated breath. “Eziel was always fair with me. I regret the pain that Devina has caused his family.”

  The two of them gave a similar pause as they were briefly lost in thought. Looking between them, I realized that they had the same eyes. Eyes that Devina had taken from me when she ended my immortal existence. Knowing that the Devil is your uncle is one thing, but looking into his face and seeing the resemblance is a completely different thing to process. “You really are brothers,” I finally said with a voice that was barely above a whisper.

  Lucifer’s expression went blank as Azrael watched me with amusement. “You already knew that,” he said.

  “But not that you would remind me of each other,” I replied.

  “There might be some resemblance, but we have made very different choices in our lives.” Lucifer said.

  “I chose to fall too, you know,” I said.

  “Over love. Quite a different motivation than my prideful fall.”

  “I always thought you fell to give the humans a choice.”

  “Careful, little niece, Michael will smite you if you devillianize me,” Lucifer responded. He stood from his desk again. “I wanted my kingdom, Roz. I gained my throne. There is no redeeming quality to be found in that.”

  “But it wasn’t just black and white, good versus evil, was it?”

  “Are you asking the Devil if he is inherently evil?” Lucifer asked with a low laugh, then shook his head at me and moved on from the discussion. “Michael has called his army down to slay Devina, but it must be one of you that has been tricked into her deal.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It will protect Michael,” Lucifer said with a shrug.

  “Michael cannot be the instrument of her demise without it being a mark on his own soul since she has not done anything directly to him,” Azrael explained.

  “I would prefer it to be you,” Lucifer told me.

  “Okay,” I said, then drew in a breath. “But she is much more powerful than me.”

  “The power will come to you when it is needed,” Lucifer said.

  “Can we go back? Everyone thinks I’m dead and gone.”

  “There will be pain to bring you back in the body she killed,” Lucifer warned me.

  “I’m ready for that.”

  “Then take the Devil’s hand, Rozalyn.” Lucifer and Azrael both held their hands out for
mine. I placed mine hands in theirs, and wondered if it was a bad sign that I wasn’t nervous at all as my vision began to fade away like it had all been a dream.

  ***

  Pain ripped me back from the darkness. I gasped as my eyes flew open to find myself in Mac’s arms, his tear-streaked face looking down at me in shock.

  “Dove!” He crushed me against him, hard enough to make me yelp, but he only loosened his grip slightly. “Dove, oh God. You were dead.”

  “I’m here, Mac. I wouldn’t leave you,” I soothed, unable to wrap my arms around him because of how tightly he held me. “Where are we?”

  “I brought you back inside when the fighting started. Felix went into a rage and tackled Devina. Jason and Conall are trying to keep him from getting seriously hurt.” He pulled back to look at me, his voice breaking as he continued. “I just couldn’t leave you out there like that.”

  Now that my arms were free, I wrapped them up around his neck and hugged him close. “We have to get back out there,” I said against his ear. He turned and pressed his mouth against mine, kissing me quickly and firmly.

  “Don’t do that again. Ever.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied with a touch of a smile, but he didn’t smile back. His face was lost in thoughts that I had no insight in and his gaze raked my face up and down. I reached out and touched his cheek. He tilted his face to lay his cheek against the palm of my hand. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was a little moment that becomes seared into your brain. A memory that has its own heartbeat. Him looking at me, love raw and unfiltered on his face, while it was sinking in that he had another chance to live his life with me. Death had not separated us.