Emilio's (rather vulgar) Spanish in this chapter:

Hija – daughter (pronounced like ee-ha)

Tonto – stupid

Vivo en un mundo de idiotas – I live in a world of idiots.

Victoria para el toro! – victory for the bull!

la bella durmiente despierta – sleeping beauty awakens.

Maldito – damn

Chinga usted – fuck you

joder – fuck

Baboso – retard

Chapter Sixty Eight

The nurse-angel points down the hallway, nodding clinically. "Yes, the Spaniard's room is the one on the end of the hall, the one with the open door –"

She winces at a sudden burst of noise coming from the exact same room.

"You IDIOT! Maldito! Get out of the goddamned way! THAT IS A – MOVE! THE BULL IS NOT GOING TO SIT THERE. Oh, for the love of – stop! Vivo en un mundo de idiotas!"

"He's, um." The nurse smiles tensely, her eyes icy as she glares daggers towards the room. "Well, we're lucky this wing is mostly empty, aside from… the… other one. Someone managed to find him copies of all the recorded Running of the Bulls and this hallway hasn't been quiet since."

"I see…" I bite at my lip to keep from bursting into laughter as repeated cries of "Tonto! Tonto! Oh, you deserve to be gored to death, baboso! Darwinism! Darwinism!"

"Thank you for leading me down here," I offer the miffed nurse, trying a half-assed smile before letting it drop. "I think… I need to speak to him right now."

She nods in understanding. "Of course. Shall I let –"

"DIE!" Emilio howls from his room, cheering gleefully over the sound of people screaming.

The nurse sighs jadedly, shaking her head. "He watches those tapes on repeat, you know. Apparently, it's baffling to him, the stupidity of people."

"It can be baffling to all of us," I say with a dry chuckle. "Thank you. Um, can you do your best to keep people away from this wing, maybe?"

She hesitates, flinching away from me for a second with a mixed emotion brewing behind her hazel eyes, but that clinical smile returns. "Of course, miss. Take as long as you need."

"Thank you." I offer her a smile that I hope is as emotionless as hers, but it seems to come off as more of a relieved grimace. Thankfully, though, she turns without comment and walks off, her pale blue wings folded tightly beneath her waves of chocolaty hair. With a heavy sigh, I turn and trudge towards the doorway.

"Move! Move! Chinga usted! Just run, run – oh, joder." I hear the sound of something thumping against a wall, and pause for a second just outside the doorway, grinning weakly to myself. "You know what, sir? You deserved that. That was a bull. Not a pony. You cannot avoid a bull."

Experimentally, I rap my knuckles against the doorframe of Emilio's room, sticking my head in. "Knock, knock?"

A head turns and snaps towards me, a hand reaches for a remote, a finger presses a button, an eye softens with such warm tenderness that it simply seems to melt my nervousness and worry, and half a mouth quirks upwards.

"La bella durmiente despierta," Emilio intones softly, his voice thick with emotion. He sits wordlessly for a second more, and I feel tears building in the back of my throat. At last, he throws his arms out towards me, lips quivering slightly.

"Come here, Penryn," he whispers. "Oh, bella durmiente. Come here, baby girl."

A meek, strangled sound escapes my throat, and I run towards him and throw my arms around his torso.

"Shh, Penryn," Emilio whispers, pulling me onto the bed beside him. "Oh, darling. Let it all out. That's the way. Like that. Just like that."

"I want it to end," I sob, burying my face in his shoulder, ignoring the scratchy fabric of his ugly hospital gown, ignoring the bandages I clutch feebly at, ignoring the fact that only one brown eye glitters with tears. "I don't – I don't – I can't…"

"Shh." Emilio rocks me from side to side. "I know. I know." He breathes in shudderingly, nuzzling into my hair. "Trust me, hija, I know. It was too much death. Too much. Correct?"

I nod into his shoulder, sniffling. "And – God, Emilio, your mom – and Bay – and you –"

"I am in quite a state, aren't I?" Emilio sighs, lifting a hand to gently stroke at the bandage pad covering his eye. "I don't think I quite qualify to be your bodyguard anymore, bella durmiente. You're going to have to… find someone else to look after you."

Harshly, I yank myself back from his chest, just enough to glare up at him. "No. Don't you dare."

He strokes my hair sadly, tucking the shorter strands behind my ear. "Penryn," Emilio says softly, "my number one priority is to keep you safe. I cannot do that, wrapped up like a mummy. I cannot fly you from danger anymore. It is unwise."

A few stutter beats escape my heart as I think of this, very, very briefly, before nuzzling back into his chest and giving him an inconsiderately tight squeeze. "No," I murmur against his bandages, ignoring his pained flinch. "No. You can't leave me to. I won't let you. Please?"

Emilio hugs me gingerly. "I will do what I can, darling. But… your safety comes first, alright?" He presses a chaste kiss to the top of my head. "I cannot lose you, either. And you have your sister to think of."

"There's no one better with swords than you," I argue softly. "And we can figure something out. We can. I know it. We have to."

"Of course." Sadly, Emilio cradles me against him, resting his chin at my temple. "We can always try. …How long have you been up, my dear? Are you just wandering alone or is there someone lurking out in the hall?"

I shift into a more comfortable position, pillowing my head on his shoulder and wrapping him in a gentler embrace, much more mindful of the healing ribs I'd just strangled. He patiently waits for my response, allowing me to move around him stilly.

"I woke up a few minutes ago." Hesitantly, I glance up towards him, chewing at my lip. "Actually, um. I need to talk to you about that. When I woke up… Raffe and Josiah were gone… and Michael. He… he was there."

Emilio's voice is even, icy. "What."

"He was on the couch." I curl into him further. "He… he apologized. For killing…" I clutch at his hospital gown, rubbing my cheek against its coarse fabric. "For killing all those people."

"Just like that?" His single eye simmers with rage. "Just unannounced and unwarranted?"

"Yeah. Yeah, basically."

"How dare he," Emilio growls, collecting me in his arms again. "How dare that bastard even approach you. Offering insincere apologies! The nerve! I tell you, Penryn, I shall behead him one day in your name."

I sniff a bit, a weak, strangled chuckle escaping me. "Thank you, Emilio. But that wasn't all he wanted."

"Oh?" he asks flatly, and something in his voice tells me that he's just itching to find another reason to strangle Michael.

"He wanted to know what I was going to do about…" I wave a hand in frustration. "About being a motherfucking princess of a motherfucking nation I don't want. And Ogden… God, Emilio. He hinted that Ogden was the one that shot… shot him."

Emilio falters for only a half second. "No… oh, no."

"He hinted that it might've been Theobella," I whisper, staring up at his ceiling. "That Ogden fell to the same thing that caused Bryon's downfall. And – and he knows about Raffe, Emilio, oh my God, he knows about Raffe. He doesn't think he can trust Raffe and he knows everything and he knew me and – oh, my God."

"Hush, hija," Emilio croons, stroking at my hair. "Calm down. Calm down. Did he try to hurt you?"

"No… but Emilio, how did he know all that? How could he possibly…?"

"When Bryon taught me about all of the angels," Emilio says grimly, "there were none he spoke of with more respect than Michael. He observes, Penryn. He applies a warrior's mindset in many different manners. Do not let that spook you – it was foolish, to think that we could deceive him."

"But he knows about Raffe – what if he knows about you, too?"

"I am not much of a threat," Emilio reasons. "He has more important things to worry about than Titaniel's cripple. And Ogden…" He sighs, pressing his good hand to his face and mumbling soft, foreign words beneath his breath. "That makes such terrible, terrible sense."

"Do you think…?"

"I'm certain, now that Michael brings it up." Emilio sides his hand down his nose a little bit, peeping at me over the bridges of his fingers. "Remember the direction Ogden staggered? Directly from where the bullet came. And our little friend has been suspiciously quiet lately, no?"

"Right," I say quietly. "So, what now?"

He shrugs lopsidedly. "We do the best we can. If we can get proof, we can probably eliminate any chance Ogden has at winning over the people. For now? We cower indoors and under the safety of the Dragon King's wife – no idiot would come here."

"Oh – Audiat." I frown. "Shouldn't she be getting the title of Nephilim Queen, then? Not me?"

Emilio taps his fingers on my arms in a repetitive rhythm. "Her title was always honorary. Nobody wants a she-angel running a Nephilim country. It doesn't work like that."

"Right, right," I amend, hiding my disappointment. "So… for now… we do nothing?"

"We let the shit finish hitting the fan," Emilio sighs. "Because it's really, really hitting the fan. More than likely, that's why Michael contacted you. He's desperate. It was some incredibly bad luck for him to accidentally kill Bryon – possessed or not, people loved him. The angels have been suffering."

"Yeah?" I snuggle closer to him. "How so?"

"Mmm. Giant bear things the size of the Eifel Tower attacking Russia. Huge fish things jumping from the water to snap up angels whole every time they cross bodies of water. Large squirrel things wreaking general havoc. Things like that. Europe, Africa, and most of Asia are now angel-free."

"But not America?"

Emilio shakes his head. "Both South and North America are filled to the brim with all the relocated angels. We're far enough from the conflict that it's not as evident, but people are angry."

"And the angels?"

"Blaming each other." Emilio smirks dryly. "You know, it's almost like Bryon knew what he was doing, guiding Raphael's political tactics as he did – it was easy for your boyfriend to slip the lie that the Nephilim had spread from Africa. Now they're all like middle schoolers, blaming each other for sleeping with people and causing this outbreak. Honestly, we could probably stand back and watch them kill each other now."

"That's… good?"

"That's good," he confirms, giving me a quick squeeze. "However… hija, do you have anywhere else to go? Because there is a nurse with clicky-heels approaching the door."

I open my mouth, spluttering out a quick, "Um, Hugo –"

Knock, knock, knock.

"Hugo is good." Emilio nudges me gently. "Get out of my bed, you little rascal. She's going to change the bandages on my wing… and eye… and I don't want you to see."

"I don't care," I say, but I swing my legs over the edge of the hospital cot and shakily get to my feet. He steadies me, but his hand slips from my back the moment I'm balanced, balling into a fist.

"Come in, wing lady!" he roars, spooking me a bit. "Penryn," he says, softer, more teasing, "I love you, hija, but you need to leave. It's bad enough you're offering to keep me around like a pathetic old dog that needs nothing more than a bullet through the head. I cannot stand doting. Shoo."

"Okay, okay, Mr. Tough Guy," I laugh, throwing my hands into the air as the nurse enters. "Lemme know if you ever need a hand to hold, okay?"

"I offer the same thing, hija. Shoo. You bother me. Ugh."

I turn to the nurse, a different one than before, and waggle a fingera t her. "Make sure you hit his wounds a couple of time on accident."

"Shove her into the syringe tray!" Emilio pipes up from behind me.

"Poor alcohol all over his cuts!"

"Give her cuts!"

"That's enough, you too," the nurse angel says sternly, shuffling with her wings in irritation. Her hazel eyes fix boringly on me. "You found your way down here, you can find your way out. Goodbye."

"Right, right, right." I sneer at Emilio as I stride out the door. "I hope she gives you an infection."

"I hope you have a lovely day!" he calls in an aggressive tone of voice as I slip from the sterile room and into the hallway. I hope he can hear me laughing through the door – I think he can, because he lets out a hearty guffaw, much to the dismay of the nurse.

Annoyed, the nurse slams the door shut, shooting one last scalding glare towards me. I stick my tongue out petulantly at the closed door, almost wishing for the standoffish angel that'd guided me down here. Sighing, I turn towards the hallway.

It's almost empty. The doors are all closed, this little private wing, far from the public's eye, except for one other. Curiosity gets the better of me – knowing very well that I should keep my nose safely in my own business, I creep towards the room, nudging the door completely open and pausing, hesitant, in the doorway.

Curiously, I plod into the room, peering around the corner. There's not much, it's even more boring than Emilio's room aside from a few bouquets of colorful flowers on the beside, and…

And…

…Oh.

My breath is stolen, punched from my lungs like I'd been struck.

He lies so still, so eerily still. His eyes do not flutter behind his eyelids. His hands cup the sheets. His shoes, immaculate and clean of dirt, rest neatly upon the bed, still on his feet. His wings, black, jagged, and ugly, curl around his arms in a manner I suppose is comfortable for sleep.

Weakly, I swallow. "Lucius…?" I croak.

He doesn't stir.

And I realize that he has a bizarre sort of peace to him, lying there quietly, slumbering like a baby. His eyelashes are pale as milk, but long, very long. The hair normally swept from his face dangles in tangled disarray, but somehow, it makes him all the more human. In the silence, I can hear the soft whoosh of his breathing. It's weirdly cute.

The light is soft. It sways languidly from the shadows of the flickering lightbulb.

Without fully realizing what I'm doing, I drift into the room and sit down on the bench beside him. When my brain catches up with my actions, I can't think of a reason to move. The seat is soft, cushioned, and molded, probably meaning that I'm not the only one who's sat by his bedside. A faint scent of lemons and flowers clings to the air.

It's so… peaceful. Lucius isn't warm. He doesn't stir in his sleep. Nothing escapes his lips. There's something so incredibly serene about him. About his chiseled cheekbones, so sharp, so lifted, obscuring and uglying his face.

The only noise is our breathing. And I love it. I love the quiet. I love his calming presence. Drifting into peaceful thoughtlessness, I close my eyes, leaning forward ever so slightly…

"Oh." I start violently at a new voice in the room, nearly dropping off the bench. "I didn't realize anyone actually came in to see him. Do you want me to wait, or…?"

Hastily, I whip around, springing up from the chair. I'm not sure why exactly it is that my heart throbs just slightly, pounding as if I'd been caught stealing treats from a cookie jar, but the guilt and shame still wells up from somewhere deep inside. It's almost immediately replaced by a sense of curiosity and hesitance as I study the figure in the doorway.

It's a face I've only seen in dreams before – an ugly, gnarled sort of face, as if when it'd been sculpted, someone had run up and pinched and smudged the clay. It sags in places it shouldn't and lifts to an unnatural degree in others. Still, in deep, sunken sockets, kind eyes glitter. Clawed paws nervously fiddle with an overflowing bouquet of blue violets and geraniums.

"N-no, sorry, I was just…" I feel my cheeks flush with heat. "I… I've just never seen him look so peaceful."

The demon studies me slowly. "You're the one who appeared in my brother's mental world, aren't you? I beg your pardon, what was your name?"

"Penryn." I blush redder. "Penryn Young. How do you know about…?"

"About your little trip to Lucius's fairyland?" His ugly lips twitch in a smile. "My brother was perplexed by it. He simply wouldn't shut up about you and your below-average mental strength puncturing his hull. I'm Luther, by the way. Grand Prince of Hell."

"Um, I'm… slight Princess of the Nephilim?" I frown, feeling strangely more at ease with the Grand Prince of Hell than I had with Michael. "I don't know, it's all… very complicated. So, like, why hasn't he woken up yet?"

Luther shrugs, shyly drifting further into the room. "He probably just doesn't want to. I don't blame him. It's sort of crappy, everything that's going on. …I wish he would, though. I miss him."

"So…" I bite at my lip anxiously, glancing down at Lucius's peaceful face, then to Luther's terribly deformed one. "You two were close, then? Really close?"

Luther hesitates for a moment longer – then, visibly gaining courage and squaring his shoulders, he strides over towards me, gently sets the bouquet down on the nightstand beside his brother, and sinks down to the bench beside me.

"What do you want to know?" Luther asks quietly, his tone soft and gentle, gaze fixed on Lucius.

"A… a few things." Awkwardly, I sit down beside him, feeling more clumsy than usual beside the demon. "Are all those other bouquets from you, too?"

He nods several times, lips quirking. "Lucius was the inventor of the flower language, so I made sure to hide little messages in each one that he could understand when he awoke. Gloryflowers, Kennedia, white lilacs – he'll understand the message. It should help… lessen the blow of Bryon's demise for when he awakens." Luther's voice is pained. "A reminder that a few people living in this world still love him."

I gnaw at my lip, a surge of guilt hitting me again. "I'm sorry. If you want to be alone, I can…"

"No, it's fine." Luther smiles at me, his eyes glittering kindly. "He'd never let anyone know it, of course, stoic bastard, but hearing that you came by to visit him… might just bring him to tears with happiness. He has the worst insecurity complex."

"Him?" My eyebrows cock up. "Are we talking about the same demon?"

Luther chuckles, shaking his head. "It's hard to believe, I know, with the way he acts most of the time. But we were raised in a reality where you either were sharp as nails or you were ground up for glue. And… well… not many people realize what a damaged child he truly is."

"I'm being honest when I say that I really can't picture that, at all."

He tilts his head to one side, staring at me in fascination. "You saw him in the fairyland he constructed, didn't you?"

My shoulders roll in a shrug. "Only briefly. …Why? What can you tell me about that place?"

"It's an entire world." Luther stares through the curtains, smiling to himself, eyes lost in distant memories. "An entire beautiful world, built from sorrows and frustrations with the world he was given. He could not change the world. He could not make it beautiful. And so he sculpted it again."

"I have no idea what that means. Can you… elaborate?" Bashfully, I rub my hands together, staring intently down at them. "I'm really starting to get curious about Lucius's… whole story."

Luther hesitates for a second, glancing from me to his sleeping brother. Slowly, slowly, a smile spreads over his lips.

"You seemed to see a very, very small snippet of this world of Lucius's. It really is another world – his mother was a fourth-blood Nephilim, so he has the same blood as Theobella. Did you know this?"

I furrow my brow. "No, actually, no – wait. Does that mean that he's… also a god-thing?"

"Yes." Luther smiles sideways at me. "And he's quite a remarkable one. From an early age, Lucius constructed this – this other world. This perfect world, a heaven, a sanctuary within his own mind. Our simple thoughts are flat and boring and simple – we remember a smell or think of an image, but they do not coexist, do not take upon them the depth of Lucius's world. And that is what you must think. Your thoughts, so simple and shallow, and the universe, so deep… so complex… residing inside his mind.

"It started as an escape route for him. On good days, I would get invited to play in a simple green field, reveling in the freedom we were granted. It wasn't real in the traditional sense, and yet, it was – little eight-year-old Lucius and I would endlessly run through fields of sweet-grass with the sun warm on our backs and it was all in his mind, and it was beautiful.

"As he grew, it grew with him. Now… now, Penryn, it's simply beautiful. It's an entire thriving ecosystem. When I say that… I mean that it's as real as real can be. It's no longer in his mind, but on another plane of existence – whether that plane is his mind or not, I don't know. It's… it's gorgeous, Penryn."

He leans back, sighing, rolling his eyes closed and smiling happily to himself. The air moves through his lungs in loud sucks and wheezes.

"Have you ever read a book," he murmurs quietly, "where you read about someplace that you've been before, but author obviously hasn't? A place where the author spruces it up and makes it seem oh-so-falsely grandiose and majestic, and you just know that they're full of it? Each of the places in Lucius's world are like that – so pristine and beautiful and perfect that you have to wonder if what you're feeling is truly real, if your eyes have betrayed you.

"There are oceans where the water is clear as glass, all the way to the very bottom miles and miles beneath you, where the coral is vividly colorful and the seaweed pulses and fluctuates with florescent light. There are wild, free waves crashing upon rocks as jagged and rugged as blunt blades. Windswept Irish landscape after beautiful Iceland terrain will go on as far as the eye can see, like a carpet of surreally beautiful green, only broken by clusters of trees and craggy boulders. Mountains rise from the earth as purple majesties, the snow dusting over their crowns powdery and perfect and awesome.

"In the very center of the world is a forest, the only forest there is, and it puts the Redwoods to shame. It is called the Orchard, and truly, there is no place better than on heaven or on earth. The air is so pure it's like tasting the failed potential of our world. I have seen trees so large that if you were to hollow them out, a four lane highway could easily run down the center. The soft, plush ground is blanketed with moss and speckled with bushes carrying the juiciest, most refreshing berries one has ever tasted in clusters along their spines. Animals the likes of which I've never seen walk about in pairs, unique and wonderful and free wander about, unafraid of predators that are never to prey upon them. At the tops of the trees, vines covered with luscious-petaled flowers and sweet fruits wind around thick branches wide enough for one to walk across, and over-crossing one another like sidewalks through the canopies. And no matter the time of day, thousands upon thousands of fireflies with golden lights bob around and sway, following you in peaceful, ambling swarms.

"In the very center is a tree – a willow, to be precise, a willow without a precise variety. It is not a Weeping Willow, nor a French Willow, nor a Water Willow. But it is massive and black, such a very dark black. Sometimes, you hear someone singing softly, or whispers created by the tendrils sweeping against one another. At the base in a very particular spot are two graves, side by side, honoring where Lucius buried his birth-mother and step-father after their deaths at the foot of a willow tree. It's the very heart of the universe, so complex and filled with life, and you can feel it, feel the beat of its pulse through you. And that world, Penryn, that world is so very, very beautiful because Lucius poured every essence of his goodness into creating it, carved himself hollow to make it perfect."

Silence hangs in the air, aside from the breathing of the two demons.

"That… that sounds…" I breathe in a slow breath, shutting my eyes. "That sounds like heaven. Literally. If heaven isn't like that… well… I don't want to go to it."

"Heaven… is a lie, actually," Luther says sadly. Noticing the way I snap up, at attention, he shrugs and expands upon it. "The Hall of Memories or whatever you wish to call the final journey people go through before they're 'judged' and sent to 'heaven' or 'hell' is a complete hoax. The memories are used to make things raw, make emotions just as vivid and painful and powerful as they were the days the things happened."

I stare at him in horror, the icy fist in my chest clenching. "…No."

He bows his head. "Once the soul has suffered… it is absorbed. By Theobella."

"That…" I breathe in shudderingly, a raw knot of disbelief and hopelessness yanking at my gut. "That can't be true."

Luther's sigh is laced with tears. "It's terrible, isn't it? She's built up an entire culture on the belief that heaven is waiting for them, giving them hope to continue fighting, only to… to gobble them up when they're at their weakest. That poor Black Wolf, forced to shuttle soul after soul to their death…" He shakes his head. "And of course, no one would believe the Devil telling them that heaven was a lie. She's so clever. So evilly clever."

"That's…" I cradle my head in my hands, a thick, gnawing bundle of horror, of dread, growing scratchier in my throat. "That's terrible. Oh, God. But… it makes such awful sense, too. She feeds off of emotion. Our entire lives are… oh, Jesus Christ. We're… we're all fucked, aren't we?"

"No," Luther says sadly. "Not all of us. It's part of the reason Lucius built his world, you know. His perfect world. He was… so upset with the thought that heaven was a lie, when we first figured out that the souls were being devoured. He'd always dreamt of a perfect place. So instead of dreaming, he set out to make. I must admit, I am jealous of you Wives."

"…What?"

"Well, your souls belong to him, correct?" Luther turns his wide-eyed and innocent gaze upon me. "When you die… you're not allowed to be absorbed if you don't want to. He always gives you a choice. Live life for eternity in his perfect world, live again in the body of a hellhound to watch over those you love and at least grant them a decent life, or simply fade. I am jealous of your ability to live forever in a true heaven."

"As a bald dog-thing?" I laugh bitterly, any semblance of happiness I'd maintained souring. "That's my life, isn't it? It's either live until I become god-food or a god-pet. There's no way out of it. I'm going to be an ugly dog-thing."

Luther stares at me for a few seconds. "…Have you ever seen a full grown hellhound, Penryn?"

I hesitate – the hellhound Lucius has scooped from the earth had been very ugly, but newborn, and disgusting. "…No?"

"Then don't be so quick to pass judgment." Luther's lips twitch into a smile. "I've always been an ugly creature, so hideous even the light of day shies away from my face, but before he was cursed, Lucius was… beautiful. In every regard. He was gorgeous, a perfect specimen, a paragon of life. He bitterly despised having beauty stolen from him, and so he sought to create it. The hellhounds are shaped in the image of who he used to be… and yes, they're not perfect, but they are… imperfectly perfect."

"Still." I lean into my knuckles, trying to keep the tears from sprouting. "Why am I even fighting if that's all that's waiting for me? A life separate from everyone else? No matter how beautiful it is… I don't want that."

Luther is silent for a very, very long time. I sense him contemplating my words, figuring out a response. Somewhere, I know it isn't right to dump my frustration upon him, but I can't talk to Emilio about this, or Hugo, and definitely not Raffe. Talking to him, ranting to him… it's refreshing.

"It's especially wonderfully at night," he says quietly at last, and, as much as I want to cut him off and snap that I don't care, I do, and I listen intently to his words as they roll fluidly off his tongue.

"It's different than in the day because foliage grows from the ground and covers everything in glowing beauty, like Bryon's flowers. The lightning bugs disappear, replaced instead by black butterflies, the ones with purple highlights as large as watermelons, those with pink large as Labrador retrievers. You don't ever feel tired. Crystalline pools with their overflowing waterfalls blossom with lilypads, and spots on the backs of the koi fish shimmer metallically. The moon is always so much closer than it seems, and the stars… the stars are so close, and so bright, so amazingly bright. And if you fly high enough…"

He hesitates, glancing at me.

Petulantly attempting to disguise my interest, I gesture for him to continue.

"If you fly high enough, you can soar up to the stars and find that they are little orbs of light floating in thick black mist. You can cup their cold fire in your hands and peer down at them, their peculiar flickering ambiance. They hover between your palms, and, although you're not really able to touch them, you can carry them around and mix them up. And if you look close enough, you can see thousands of planets and meteors and asteroids and comets swirling around the little star in your hands, and you just…

"Just…

"At night, there is this sense of placid clarity. You see what he sees every day at night, every moment, and that's what truly makes his world so special – you know how everything connects. You know that even though a note may be played only once in a song, it still needs to be hit correctly and fully, else it won't ever be correct. You understand that a paragraph is incomplete and terrible and unbalanced if it's missing a single word. You see how, even though a sparrow may live the shortest life of all, it is just as important as a panther that ends many.

"And the stars, they give you such a lovely sense of perspective, holding another universe in the palm of your hand. I can only assume that there are thousands of worlds and that Lucius has painstakingly designed every one like the God he is someday to be. And you see this entire world in your hand, all this person knows, and the thousands of stars floating around you, and you… you just realize the infinity and finity of everything. How the world must seem so big to these tiny creatures, about how they may never think of someone larger, and the things that may inhabit their stars, and the larger giants that may be looking down upon us and thinking about the same lovely, lovely things. Your problems suddenly seem… not silly, never silly, but fixable – because surely, surely, if the world we live in is so vast and complicated and beautiful then everything will of course be okay in the end.

"It's just… it's incredibly eye-opening." Luther smiles to himself, staring down at his palms, and a tear splats against the light-red skin there. "I told Lucius about it once. I told him about the lovely infinity and finity and the complexity and beauty and how we are all connected and equally important and unimportant. He only smiled and said that these wonderful, glorious things I was seeing were what he saw every day in every moment. Can you… can you even understand that, Penryn?"

Luther looks out the window for a few seconds, a few more tears running down his cheeks.

"Lucius has been tormented and beaten and has never, ever lived a day in his life since he was turned without getting spat on or punched at or shoved into a wall as he passes by his inferiors, and yet… he is capable of such beauty. From thousands and thousands of years of viciousness, he turned it around and… he gave us all something beautiful. A world to live in that would not be cruel. That would not be harsh. He saw all the evil in our world and gave us a way to escape it all, and to see what we truly were and were not. And I have never seen such clarity. Never. Not once. Yet here you sit beside me, and… and you try to tell me that it is a curse to be gifted this infinity?"

He grows angrier, curling his fists.

"That his ingeniousness is a hex upon you? That it's wrongful for him to only offer you a heaven? Do you realize how selfish you sound?"

"Look…" I scratch at the back of my neck. "That sounds amazing, but you know what? Look at it under my lens. He might be a philophoser, but that doesn't excuse anything. A beautiful perspective on life doesn't equate a beautiful person. He killed my dad. He's keeping me from Raffe." I ignore Luther's snort at that. "I can't just forget that. Maybe he's had a sucky life, but so have I. Kinda because of him."

Luther chews at his lip dubiously. "Maybe I'm being impartial to Lucius, but… do you blame him for your father?"

"What?" I ask, staring at him dumbly. "He killed my goddamned dad. He explained it to me." I shiver, recalling the silky-soft touch of his cold fingers beneath my jaw. "In great detail."

"Your father and your mother were both hunting hellhounds," Luther says gingerly. "Hellhounds – people. People that could've committed suicide if they'd wanted to transition into another life. The first time, your father was resurrected."

"The second time," I mutter darkly, "he wasn't."

"Hmm, debatable," Luther hums, nodding a few times. "The second time, he was also slaughtering more hellhounds. He'd gotten a just warning – I'd say death and then resurrection is a just warning, wouldn't you? – and continued onwards all the same."

"Why would he kill the hellhounds if he didn't have a reason to?" I snap churlishly. "He must've known something, something we didn't – maybe he was trying to help them –"

"Or maybe he didn't know anything," Luther says, a bit more steel in his tone. "Maybe he was under the same misconceptions that you were. Thought he was giving them an end."

"I can't forgive Lucius for that!" I turn my head away from the demon, my lips pricked in either a snarl or a grimace, I can't tell which. "I don't care if he has a stupid other world and it's pretty! He kills people!"

"Don't bring that into this, Penryn," Luther warns.

"It's not right for him to try and cage people to some sort of fantasy world of his," I persist. "It's unhuman, and I don't want your half-ass excuses for reasons that it's not monstrous!"

Luther's eyes boil with an unfamiliar rage, weary and aggressive and terrible. "He doesn't force anything, Penryn. If you want your soul absorbed when you die, I guarantee you can have that. Some people like the idea of heaven."

Alarm bells ring at the primal fury building in Luther's eyes, the way the long nails tipping each gnarled finger become more and more clawlike tunneling my vision. Time to back the hell out of this situation. If there's one thing today really does not need, it's a furious Luther.

"I – I'm sorry." Nervously, I stare down at Lucius's peaceful sleeping face, his eyes rolling in his eyelids with dreams. "Didn't mean to make you angry. Just… frustrated. With everything."

Luther is silent. His eyes rove over my face for a very long time, studying every nook and cranny, searching for something yet remaining unsatisfied. Quietly, he says, "You and Lucius have a lot in common, then."

"Huh?"

"Frustration with everything." Luther turns his gaze back to his brother. "He always used to get so upset at the world. He'd start screaming for the hell of it, yelling at someone up in the sky. A sister? Something. He still does, sometimes, but… less so." To my astonishment, his voice cracks. "He's gotten so much more reserved."

"Reserved?" Frowning, I glance at Lucius's sleeping face, feeling the anger coiled tightly in the pit of my stomach dissolve with the peace of his expression. "How do you say that? He seems everything but reserved."

"True, but he's more… sharp." Luther holds his head in his hands. "So self-conscious now. So many careful boundaries between him and the world. You may have trouble coming to terms with it, Penryn, but he is still… still human. And… and he hurts so much."

"He has a funny way of showing it."

Luther rumbles out a coarse laugh. "That's very true," he agrees, chuckling. "Put yourself in his shoes, though. Hated so… so wretchedly for what he is, what he has the reputation of, with so few thinking of how much good he's doing. No one cares about him. Who he is. At first, he was himself, believing that people would see that he was just a good kid despite his deformities, but… eventually, he stopped trying."

"Oh?" I hope it doesn't sound too much like I'm fishing, because that's totally what I'm doing. "What do you mean?"

"Remember when you knew nothing of Lucius other than that he was a ruthless dealmaker?" Luther questions quietly. "There was no desire there to learn anything about him. He was a monster you were trying to spurn into doing your bidding. He's… grown so tired of being seen like a monster. So tired of trying to be looked at as anything else. At first, he just tried… to end it." Luther rubs his gnarled hands together, lower lip quivering. "You… your human eyes can't quite pick up on it, especially with his white skin, but he's got scars, Penryn."

Gingerly, Luther takes his brother's wrist in his hand and slides his sleeve back, tracing along lines that I cannot discern.

"He didn't want to live anymore." Luther's voice breaks. "And… it's such a terrible thing, when a person wants to die but they cannot. I almost wish… I almost wish he'd been able to go through with it. He never would've been scarred the way he is. Would've died with memories of happiness still close to his heart, instead of… distant… twisted…"

"He can't die, can he…?" I murmur quietly. "So… any suicide attempts… would stay attempts? It wasn't too bad, then?"

Luther croaks out a soft sound. "I found him one day in a puddle of his own blood – it used to be red, you know, and each time he died, it's grown darker and darker."

I tilt my head to one side upon hearing that.

"It was a mix of crimson and obsidian and – he was just sitting in the middle of it… crying… dumbly asking over and over again, 'Why can't I just die? Why can't I die? Why can't even I kill myself?' …Eternity is such a terrible thing. I almost… I almost wished he could. Die then. Save what little sanity he has left instead of just further implanting the image of himself as a monster."

I stare at the pale expanse of smooth skin, dumbly examining the black webbing of veins to try and catch a glimpse of the scars. "…I didn't know… but he's got people that appreciate him, doesn't he?" Slowly, I lift my head, meeting Luther's eyes. "He's got you?"

"Lucius does not love me anymore." A sob catches in Luther's throat. "You are aware of the concept of the rebirth of the five-eights, yes? How they leave something behind in order to be reborn?"

"Yeah," I whisper, a prickling mixture of fascination and repulsion churning in my gut.

He turns to me, eyes prickling with tears. "For so long… when our father would beat him to death… for saving the life of a dog doomed for death, for speaking out for a lowly demon that would otherwise be a slave to Satan's wishes, for his unmanly love of beauty. And he would… he would cling to me. I would be his rock. And when… when it happened…"

Luther looks away, trembling.

"When he finally acted out too much on my advice, and… embarrassed the Devil in a social gathering… and when he had this terrible, terrible curse placed on him… he saw me… just watching… and he has not felt an ounce of affection towards me since. I watched my brother die that day. What returned, with these eyes and these hooked wings, it's not completely him." Luther turns to me miserably. "Like your sister. Remember… remember how you felt when you got her back from the aerie?"

My heart staggers in my chest. "Y-yes."

"That's how I feel." Luther looks upon Lucius, and a fat tear slides down his greasy cheek. "Same inside. Deep inside. But… damaged. So very, very damaged."

Damaged.

It hits me like a slap in the face. My throat clogs – I turn to Lucius with a different lens, my mouth dropping open in a pained O as I gaze down at his long eyelashes, his smooth cheeks. At last, the point it seems the universe has been trying to prove is driven home.

Damaged.

The word drives itself like a pick of ice through my heart.

I shake my head, ignoring the prickle of tears in the corner of my eyes as so many things become so very, very clear.

He hadn't asked for a charge when he'd fixed Paige. He'd done it simply, with ease, without even blinking. What I'd perceived as a hook to draw me in further had been a desperate attempt to let someone else out of this tricky net, this horror he's been cursed with. And then later, helping Paige wander safely throughout the building, protecting her from Black Wolf's freakout, like a little guardian angel –

And here is Luther before me. Desperately clinging to the hope that their sibling doesn't feel abandoned as it seems, praying with all their heart that their beloved one is still in there somewhere, somewhere that they can be retrieved from. Paige was a vegetarian, but then could only eat meat or starve; Lucius would never harm a soul, but then his hand was forced.

Luther speaks up again. "Just like Paige, there's… a way he can be healed. But… Penryn, he's been reborn forty-three times that I know of. And every time…" His voice cracks. "He grows stronger. His fragment of his old self grows smaller and smaller, and his forced outer shell becomes harder. Thicker. …There's a way to break the curse, like any fairytale, but…" He buries his head in his hands. "I don't know how. I don't know how, and I just want my brother back."

Softly, I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling his chest bob with silent sobs. Though I try, I can't make myself look away from Lucius's eerily still chest and wonder if he's still breathing.

"I just want to play cards with him again." Luther leans into my touch. "I want to hold him on my lap. I want to see his blush. I want to look into his eyes again. Is that too much to ask?"

"The universe sucks," I lament, rubbing comforting circles onto his bony shoulder. He leans into my touch, perhaps seeking solace from another being, releasing his pent-up frustration and despair. My heart aches a little – I could use with a shoulder to cry on myself.

"His cards," Luther whispers in a heavy tone. "His cards… There's fifty three of them, you know; a birthday gift from Bryon, handpainted with tiny murals. Same deck he had when our father cursed him. Except he removed the King of Hearts. Fifty-three. It was a picture of him, you realize – an adult version of him, smiling, with lovely eyes and a pink blush. I still don't know where he keeps it."

I shake my head. "That's… I'm sorry, Luther. Oh, Luther. It'll be okay."

He sniffles pathetically, rubbing at his nose. "I don't know what I'm going to do, he's just so –"

"Luther," Lucius purrs, "if your hand so much as advances an inch closer towards Penryn's ass, I swear I will cut it off and wear it around my neck. Are we understood?"

A pulse of electricity jolts through me. Stiffening, jumping both backwards and away from Luther, I turn to Lucius, the man I had assumed to be caught in a very deep sleep. I flick a glance towards his face before disciplining myself away from the treachery hidden beneath porcelain lids to find that he had barely even moved – I catch the slightest glimmer of onyx in the corner of my eye to signify that the Prince's eyes have opened.

A glance behind me reveals that Luther's hand is indeed creepily close to my butt, frozen in fear as he stares at his now-conscious brother. Faintly, I recall Bay's warnings about the older son of Satan being a bit grabby, and I pull myself onto my feet, slowly backing away from the charged situation.

My eyes dart back and forth. I wet my lips nervously. Who to trust? The kind pervert or the well-meaning devil?

Very slowly, Lucius curls up, rising like Count Dracula from a coffin. He stretches his inky black wings, the razors slotting out at every possible angle scratching and scraping and plinking against one another. He plucks a single pink rose from a bouquet on the table as he settles on the balls of his feet, slipping it into the pocket of his jacket, and tucks the deck of cards away. Luther, still stiff, shies away from his brother.

"I suppose, then, that what I feel now is true?" Lucius drawls in a tone that's… too gravelly, too heavy. If I hadn't known him better, I would've said that he sounded furious. "What other reason would Penryn be curled by my bedside? The Nephilim King is dead?"

I make a vague choking noise that almost sounds like a confirmation. Mentally, I applaud myself for that.

Sighing slowly, Lucius adjusts his cuff links, lips twisted downwards in a fierce scowl. "Of course. And I have a theory on who to blame."

His gaze flickers up to me – I can feel its scorching heat, the rage halfway hidden by his calm demeanor, but when he speaks, his voice is surprisingly soft.

"Penryn, you should get some rest," Lucius advises quietly. "I don't know how long my brother's been blathering on to you, but you look exhausted. I know Audiat has some excellent tea to help unwind the brain's nerves."

I bite at my lip. Two options are presented before me – nod and do as I'm told, or grill him, just slightly, with all the questions buzzing about like pestersome flies, growing thicker and heavier as the day progresses.

"…Is it true?" I ask in a small voice. "All that Luther's said about… your heaven?"

Irritation flickers across Lucius's features. Growling low in his throat, he shakes his head crisply, lips bared in a ferocious snarl. "No, Madam Young, it most certainly is not. If it's all the same to you – and it is – I have to leave you now. Good day, Madam Young."

"Wait!" I lurch forward ever so slightly. "Can I… maybe go there again, sometime? Just to… escape?"

He half-pivots towards me, the searing gaze of one dark eye trained on my again. When he speaks, his voice is cold and harsher than usual, like the sound of a blade hitting ice. "Good day, Madam Young. Must I repeat myself again?"

"N-no, she got your message!" Luther stutters, coming to my rescue. "Don't worry. You're understood. We all understand."

Lucius's frown becomes more irate, and he rolls his eyes, turning his back on us both and striding towards the door. "Remember, Luther," Lucius lilts, "my threat still stands. I will not hesitate to carve your balls off with a rusty spoon."

Turning with almost a theatric swirl of his jacket, Lucius prowls out the door. I flatten myself against the wall as he approaches, repeating Luther's wondrous words in my head – how can such beauty come from something so terrifying? I feel his gaze fix on me very briefly, boring a hole into my skull. Why must someone holding such a vicious past be so very, very vicious?

At last, Lucius disappears through the doorway, his heels clicking on the marble floor. I watch him go, watch the exaggerated patience in his stride, the way he seems to just itch with latent fury. A shiver tickles its way down my spine at the sight of the oily black barbs along his wings standing on end, like a cat's bristling hackles.

"Keep your head low, Penryn," Luther whispers quietly, sounding small and terrified, like a mouse that's just been eye-to-eye with an eagle. "Very, very low."

I turn to him with a frightened question in my eyes.

He shakes his head, biting at his upper lip with his underbite. "The last time I saw him with that expression… it was when a chancellor from the days of old drugged him up so that he'd be oblivious to the raping of one of his wives, a wife that struck a deal specifically to be safe from that abuse."

I stare after him, listening to the fading click-click-click of his heels. "What happened to the chancellor?"

"He released a plague upon the American continent and wiped out the entire human population out of hatred for one man. That's why the Nephilim were the only creatures living on it for so long. …Dear Lord, Penryn, if you value your life, keep your head so very, very low."

Lucius is pissed off as fuck. And everybody is going to know it, too.

His character has been doing his own thing until now – his own agenda, his own goals. They're going to be revealed.

Also. Yet another hint dropped about who he truly is. And you know what? The secret? It's not that he's a god. It's not that his fantasy world is actually a world. It's something so much more.

*quiet squeal*

POLL: Should Penryn or shouldn't Penryn keep Emilio by her side? He's a lame guard, but he's also very trustworthy… which should she prioritize?

Ciao,

~wolfluvermh