Heaven again.
It was bright with God’s return to the Throne. The sky shone the color of an opal. The cloudsoil was thick that day, tufts of white reaching nearly to the angels’
waists. Those towering white spires to the right were trees in the Grove of Life; the silvery blossoms in full bloom to the left would soon bear the fruits of the Orchard of Knowledge. The trees were taller now. They’d had time to grow since Luce’s last recollection.
She was back in the Meadow, in the center of a great, flickering congregation of light. The angels in Heaven were gathered before the Throne, which was restored to the brightness so intense Lucinda cringed to look at it.
The silver ledge that had once been Lucifer’s had now been moved to the far end of the Meadow. It had been lowered to an insulting level by the Throne. Between Lucifer and the Throne the rest of the angels were united in a single mass—but soon, Lucinda realized, they would be partitioned off to one side or the other.
She was back at the Roll Call. This time she would force herself to remember how it went.
Every son and every daughter of Heaven would be asked to choose a side. God or Lucifer. Good or . . . no, he wasn’t evil.
Evil didn’t exist yet.
Crowded together like that, every angel was stunning, distinct but somehow indistinguishable from the next. There was Daniel, in the center, the purest glow she would ever know. In her memory, Lucinda was moving toward him.
Moving from where?
Daniel’s voice filled her ears: Search your past.
She hadn’t looked at Lucifer yet. She didn’t want to.
Look where you do not want to look.
When she turned to the far end of the Meadow, she saw the light around Lucifer. It was splendid and osten-tatious, as if he sought to compete with everything in the Meadow—the Orchard, the Heavenly hum, the Throne itself. Lucinda had to focus hard to see him clearly.
He was . . . lovely. Amber hair spilled down his shoulders in shiny waves. His body seemed grander, defined by muscle no mortal would ever achieve. His cold blue eyes were mesmerizing.
Lucinda couldn’t take her eyes off him. Then, between bars of the Heavenly hum, she heard it. Though she didn’t remember learning the song, she knew the words and would always know them, the way mortals carried nursery rhymes through their lives.
Of all the pairs the Throne endorsed None rose to burn as bright
As Lucifer, the Morning Star,
And Lucinda, his Evening Light
The lines echoed in her head, drawing memory to them, recollection raining down with every word.
Lucinda, his Evening Light?
Lucinda’s soul crawled, sickened, toward a realization. Lucifer had written this song. It was a part of his design.
She was . . . had she been Lucifer’s lover?
The moment she wondered whether that horror was possible, Luce knew it was the oldest, coldest truth. She had been wrong about everything. Her first love had been Lucifer, and Lucifer had been hers. Even their names were paired. Once, they had been soul mates. She felt twisted, foreign to herself, as if she’d awakened to realize she had killed someone in her sleep.
Across the Meadow, Lucinda and Lucifer locked eyes at the Roll Call. Hers widened in disbelief as his crinkled up in an inscrutable smile.
Flash.
A memory inside a memory. Luce tunneled even further through the darkness, to the place where she most loathed to go.
Lucifer held her, his wings caressing hers, creating unmentionable pleasure, openly, there on her silver seat around the empty Throne.
Our love is endless. There can be nothing else.
When he kissed her, Lucinda and Lucifer became the first beings to experiment with affection beyond God.
The kisses had been strange and wonderful and Lucinda had wanted more, but she feared what the other angels would think of Lucifer’s kisses on her. She worried that his kiss would look like a brand on her lips. Most of all, she feared God would know when God returned and resumed the title of the Throne.
“Say you adore me,” Lucifer begged.
“Adoration is for God,” Lucinda replied.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Lucifer whispered. “Imagine how strong we’d be if we could openly declare our love before the Throne, you adoring me, me adoring you.
The Throne is only one—united in love, we could be greater.”
“What’s the difference between love and adoration?” Lucinda asked.
“Love is taking the adoration you feel for God and giving it to somebody actually here. ”
“But I don’t want to be greater than God.” Lucifer’s face darkened at her words. He spun away from her, rage taking root in his soul. Lucinda sensed a strange change within him, but it was so foreign she didn’t recognize it. She began to fear him. He seemed to fear nothing, except her ever leaving him. He taught her the song about the greatness of their union. He made her sing it constantly, until Lucinda saw herself as Lucifer’s Evening Light. He told Lucinda this was love.
Luce writhed with the pain of the memory. It went on and on like that with Lucifer. With every interaction, every caress of Lucinda’s wings, he grew more possessive, more envious of her adoration of the Throne, telling Lucinda that if she truly loved him, Lucifer would be enough.
There was one day she remembered during that dark period: She’d been weeping in the Meadow, up to her neck in cloudsoil, wanting to sink away from everything.
An angel’s shadow hovered over her.
“Leave me alone!” she had cried.
But the wing that draped over hers did the opposite.
It cradled her. The angel seemed to know what she needed better than she knew herself. Slowly, Lucinda lifted her head. The angel’s eyes were violet.
“Daniel.” She knew him as the sixth Archangel, charged with watching over lost souls. “Why have you come to me?”
“Because I have been watching you.” Daniel stared and Luce knew that before then, no one had ever seen an angel cry. Lucinda’s tears were the first. “What is happening to you?”
For a long time she searched for the words. “I feel like I’m losing my light.”
The story poured out of her, and Daniel let it come.
No one had listened to Lucinda in a very long time.
When she finished, Daniel’s eyes were wet with tears.
“What you call love does not sound very beautiful,” he said slowly. “Think of the way we adore the Throne.
That adoration makes us the best versions of ourselves.
We feel encouraged to go further with our instincts, not to change ourselves for love. If I were yours and you were mine, I would want you to be exactly as you are. I would never eclipse you with my desires.” Lucinda took Daniel’s warm, strong hand. Maybe Lucifer had discovered love, but this angel seemed to understand how to build it into something wonderful.
Suddenly, Lucinda was kissing Daniel, showing him how it was done, needing for the first time to give her soul entirely to another. They held each other, Daniel’s and Lucinda’s souls glowing brighter, two halves made better as a whole.
Flash.
Of course, Lucifer came back to her. The rage within him had swelled so much that he was twice as tall as her.
They used to stand eye to eye. “I can stand the yoke no longer. Will you come before the Throne with me and declare your sole allegiance to our love?”
“Lucifer, wait—” Lucinda wanted to tell him about Daniel, but he wouldn’t have heard her anyway.
“It is a lie for me to play adoring angel when I have you and require nothing more. Let us make plans, Lucinda, you and I. Let us scheme for glory.”
“How is that love?” she had cried. “You adore your dreams, your ambition. You taught me how to love, but I cannot love a soul so dark it eats up others’ light.” He did not believe her, or he pretended not to hear her, because Lucifer soon challenged the Throne to gather all the souls in the Meadow for the Roll Call.