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Chapter Text

It had always been there after the Fall.

Once expelled, Lucifer had carried her battered body for untold miles before Hell had shuddered and submitted to the force of his despondency—the infernal palace erupting out of the hollow deep.

She did not see it happen, drifting in and out. One moment, in a wasteland too large to encompass the eye, stretching on endless. The next moment, the gossamer ceiling of a canopy bed, drapes roped back. Lucifer perched on a black chair, stillness inhuman, staring at her. Ichor crusted in his hair. Red horns ruptured out of skin. Shadows beneath his new bloody eyes.

“It’s called Pandemonium,” he whispered.

The air was molten. A sulphurous red glow on the skyline. She realized she had horns of her own—thick and curled like the ram she had named in the Garden. Her eyes closed again, weighted.

Time was unmeasured back then in that nether place, but Lilith estimated it’d be two days before she was fully conscious. Another day and a half before she could leave the cool satin sheets of her new bed.

Heaven was a white drop in the upper darkness, like a bead of spilled milk. The Garden was gone.

He drifted around the room as he waited for her to bathe, opening empty drawers, untwisting the knots of a wicker chair. His ichor dripped on the marble floor, which she wouldn’t notice until almost slipping on a puddle of it.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, holding his face in both palms.

“What could you do?” he said back, gentle, and lifted his flayed arms. His fresh spindled tail. A glittering wound gaped down his chest.

All six of his wings were crushed.

“I think I’m dying,” he said, and it was without any fear, with only a pinch of awe. Lilith would never forget the way he looked then, in that room of Pandemonium.

“Don’t be a fool,” she told him, for fear of saying anything else.

The Hellquake came on a Wednesday. Charlie was one-hundred ninety-three, walking home through a tangle of recent apartments in the Pentagram. The constructions of the sinners were of enormous fascination to her. She was tickled by how industrious they were. How they persevered still. She was in the middle of marveling at how high they had stacked the apartments when she felt it.

The world trembling.

Three paces away, the nearest wall split in two, brick coming off like fine powder. The ground tilted. Sinners sprinted out of the buildings, bewildered, shouting. Charlie looked at the sky. It wobbled and shook until she realized it was beneath her feet.

Everything ripped open.

The apartments folded like papier mache. Sinners splattered into the pavement. Crushed by stone and metal. Years from now, many of them still wouldn’t be regenerated fully.

By the time she made it back to the palace, all six of the Sins were there. Burnt ozone stench coated the grand hall, testament to their race here from across the rings.

Just like that, Charlie knew her mom was gone. She would never have allowed them to stand here unattended.

“She must’ve left this morning,” Aunt Bee said, “He wasn’t answering our messages. Oh, hon, I’m sorry.”

They wouldn’t let her see her dad. He had told them to keep her away from him. That it wasn’t safe. It didn’t matter how hard she cried and begged and struggled as Uncle Mam and Ozzy carried her to her rooms. For all their fondness for her, they would never defy her dad when he meant it.

Their head butler, Forcas, brought her supper later as Hell continued to shake outside. The maids were running around to Aunt Levi’s orders in the hall. Something broke in the foyer. The world would tremble ceaselessly for a week.

She didn’t get to see her dad for days and days and days and days. Her mom never again.

The first extermination happened a month later.

Though she tried, Lilith lost track of how many months they spent in the palace innards, exploring the countless apartments and wandering the tar-polished corridors.

They danced together in the barren rooms. Slept entwisted at any hour. He conjured a fiddle and played it for her in their chilled, vacant hall. Over time, he recovered. His horrific injuries healed and his wings mended. The skin of his arms regrew blackened and scarred. He joked that they looked like gloves.

It was bearable. Perhaps one day, Lilith thought it would even become joyful. Happy in the same way it’d been promised to her in Eden. (Though she had never been happy in Eden).

She told him as much. He grinned and said it would be so. Asked what she desired most. To say the word and he would recreate it in Hell. She knew he would. Knew he would give anything to her if he could.

It was as invigorating as it was frightening.

“Later,” she said, “Are you better now?” She rested a hand on his chest. Aside from his wings, the great wound there had been the slowest to heal. She remembered its ragged edges spidering across his skin, outward like fractures in porcelain.

Thankfully, it seemed gone.

“Of course,” he said, gently lifting her hand off.

The Hosts slaughtered the sinners. Charlie sat beside her dad, clutching his shirt as she listened to the rapid flapping of wings outside. The boot heels stomping on distant rooftops.

Through the large stained glass, the angels were dark streaking specks against a glowing sky of white. They wielded swords and javelins of pure light. Charlie could not make out their features. They stayed far away from Pandemonium.

Screams echoed. Stupefied, agonized screams. And where one scream ended, another one would rise.

“Why’d they all have to come here anyway?” Her dad lifted a bony hand to rub his temples. “Wish they’d stop.”

Charlie jumped as the stones shifted overhead. Giant onyx blocks bulged out of Pandemonium’s walls, grinding past each other, overpowering the screams. Moving like some unseen monster up in the shadows of the vaulted ceiling.

“It’s okay, honey,” her dad slurred, as she clung to his arm, her eyes squeezed shut.

It went on for an eon and was over in a second.

Then silence so sudden that every hair lifted on Charlie’s nape.

When she dared lift her head again, all the windows were gone. Only smooth black walls remained. Forcas and the staff wandered the dark with candelabras. The windows would not reappear again until she managed to shake her dad awake the next day.

“How’d that get there,” he said, brushing a hand along the wall. The palace rolled to obey and groaned around them, moving like jaws pried back open.

Eventually, she wanted to know what was beyond the palace walls. He found this idea lacked both sensibility and appeal.

“There’s nothing.”

“How would you know?”

Lucifer shook his head. “There’s nothing, Lilith.”

But he was not Adam after all and following some persuasion, he agreed.

Beyond Pandemonium was a stretch of land parched of anything but dust. He flew her across its expanse against the rabid blistering winds, six wings out and startlingly white, barely beating. She wondered if this was the wasteland he had carried her through. Wondered where precisely they had crashed. The actual moment of impact would always remain broken for her, shards of fire and feathers. The world trembling.

When they reached the far edge of that desert, they found another boundless field of mud. Past that a field of ash. At the very end was a canyon. It was not particularly wide, with the other side plainly visible. The cliffsides were pale and mottled, indented with giant finger-like grooves. Below was a darkness that pierced into the bowels of Hell.

Lilith turned, cold and riddled with sweat.

He was right. There was nothing.

“I thought it might’ve been different on the other side,” she said, hair streaming over his shoulder as he flew them back, “I thought it may’ve been like the ocean.” Back in Paradise, she realized now, with a surge of embarrassment. She hated clinging to the past. If she could, she would sever it from her like a poisoned limb.

Lucifer didn’t move when she sighed and pressed against the back of his shoulder.

“There is no other side,” he whispered, “There’s no other side. Only this one for eternity.”

Her dad had made a deal with Heaven.

“There’s too many of them, Charlie,” he explained on one of his good days, “We’re overcrowded.”

They’re down in the kitchen and he’s flipping pancakes—a mortal confectionary they’re both terribly weak to. The jars and pitchers had glided off the shelves to the mixing bowl, beckoned by his clawed finger. Cinnamon sparkled in a fine shower. Goat milk poured out rich and sweet. Plump apples lined the counter.

The pancakes tasted ungodly good. She stuffed herself silly, not able to help the soft squeals of happiness that escaped her. Whenever she finished, a new stack appeared, fluffy and smeared with butter. After all, he quipped, he did know a thing or two about temptation.

Charlie pulled a face and he laughed, soft and easy. His hair was smooth and healthy again, shining like spun gold. His eyes were clear. He looked so beautiful. So alive. Charlie was filled with such inexplicable ache that she almost didn’t want to process what he’d said at all.

“You’re going to let them be killed once a year?”

“That was the deal.”

“They’re our people, dad.”

He gave her an odd look. “No hellborn will get hurt.”

“I meant the sinners.” She set her fork and knife aside. “And it’s not right. They couldn’t help being here.”

“Actually they could.”

“You know what I mean!” She shook her head and stood. “It’s cruel. It’s pointless suffering.”

“That’s what punishment is, Charlie,” he said, looking baffled, like he was watching something disintegrate before his eyes. His gaze was dulling, growing opaque. Panic spiked through Charlie.

“Never mind, dad,” she said and sat back down.

Later, when she lost him again anyway, she tried her mom’s number for the first time in a year. The dial tone rang twenty times, before going to voicemail. Charlie didn’t remember anymore what she’d said, but it had probably been long and rambly and unconvincing.

One day, they found the Sins on the outskirts of Pandemonium. Clustered together, shivering still in the hot bladed wind, newborn pelts moist with grime.

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth and Wrath.

“Man’s Ruin has birthed us in Hell,” they chirped, voices high and distorted, “to dwell where the Morningstar fell.” Their owlish eyes peered up at them, expectant. Strange little creatures, though Lilith was fond of their bright vivid colors, their flopping ears.

Lucifer was delighted and gleefully shepherded them through the gates. They were eager and curious, tottering in his shadow each day, perhaps drawn to the honey of his magic. At her suggestion, he gave them real names—twisted and corrupted ones she hadn’t been expecting.

Asmodaeus, Beelzebub, Mammon, Leviathan, Belphegor, Satan.

“The Great Adversary,” he mused, scratching Satan at the base of his leaf-sized wings, drawing chirps of bliss.

“What?”

“It’s what they’ll call him.”

Lilith settled her teacup on the tray. She watched the red shadows swim across his hair.

”Why would you give them such names?” she asked, “What are they meant for here?” There was always a reason for better or worse. That was how the universe turned.

Lucifer tilted his head.

”I don’t know, Lili,” he said, “I just know it will be.”

And that was that. Time passed and the creatures grew like weeds, instantly outstripping Lucifer in height, before eventually surpassing her as well. Until they woke one morning with Satan gone from Pandemonium. They found him again far away, in a boiling land of steaming tar and belching flames. He declined to return and in time, the other five vanished as well, scattered to the wide rings.

“What did I tell you,” Lucifer said softly, amused, “Can’t keep ‘em home forever.”

On the second extermination, her dad slept through the whole day. Charlie lay in the library, sprawled on the floor between shelves. It was a room even more soundless than the rest of the palace and maybe with the most physical impossibilities as well, extending as endlessly as it did. As a child, it had unnerved her so much that her dad had created singing birds which flew eternal in the library, landing from rail to rail.

She stroked one on the head as she read through a stack of human novels her mom had gifted her long ago. They were quite romantic, dashing swordsmen and painted dancers, an injured warrior nursed by a blushing maiden. She loved every happy ending. It was easy to wade into these stories and let them tug her inside. Much harder for her to stay.

So when the angels departed at midnight, Charlie left the library, snuck past Forcas and went through Pandemonium’s gates. In hindsight, she did not know at all what she’d been expecting.

The streets were incandescent with blood. Soaked and slippery like a second skin. Ethereal steam rose from the grates. Corpses of sinners dotted alleys, bushes, rooftops, trees, everywhere. Charlie breathed slowly, her heels echoing overloud on the sidewalks. Heat blobbed her vision. The air was rank.

Before her brain could even catch up, her legs were bolting back to the palace.

It was fate alone that caused her to slip on the pool of ichor. Nearly tumble down onto the dead angel’s body.

It lay prone, thrown down into the gash her dad had struck into the earth seven years ago. The sinners must’ve been trying to refill the ravine with concrete, because chunks had hardened over the angel’s legs. Gold blood coated a perfect hole in one of her eyes. She had the whitest hair, like the silk gowns of human brides.

And she looked up at Charlie and blinked.

He ate and slept much less than she did. Granted, by virtue of his nature he had never required something as human as food or sleep in the first place. Not even breath, at the heart of things. It was unnerving, but it was also true.

So he was often awake by the time she stirred in his arms, though he never moved a muscle before that.

“I like holding you,” he said, in his distant, simple way sometimes, “I’m glad I still get to.”

Lilith smiled, brushing a thumb over the charred ridge of his knuckles. One century ago, as they fell, he had shielded her in his arms the same way. She had watched his wings and skin flay and crinkle like burning paper—his form as witheringly hot as the tailfeathers of a comet. He had not screamed then. Would never have permitted his brothers to hear him scream. It was only after they‘d hit the ground. She could hear him sometimes still.

“Me too, darling,” she whispered and brought him close.

She hid the comatose angel in her rooms for a week before Forcas told on her. The staff had been jumpy in general, recoiling at the divine stench in the air, the sterile and serrated edge of holy blades. She supposed she didn’t blame them for running to her dad, but still. It was crazy they thought the angel could hurt anyone now, when she couldn’t even turn on her side without Charlie’s help.

“She’ll die out there,” Charlie said, shielding the bed from him, “Please, Dad.”

He rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. “I told you not to go outside.”

“I know,” she said, “I know, I’m sorry. I just wanted to see. I needed to see it.”

“See what?”

“All of it, Dad.” His stare was blank. Frustration bubbled in her gut. “The exterminations! How they’re massacring our people! You should’ve seen those streets, e-everyone was—” She sucked in a breath. “A-and I’m glad I did go too. It’s wrong. They have to stop.”

“Charlie.” He sighed softly. “I really don’t want to fight.”

“Then let her stay.” Charlie grabbed his hands, sensing give. “She won’t hurt anybody, I swear. Forcas doesn’t even have to come in here. I’ve already been taking care of her for a week by myself.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said, a note reproachful, “The Hosts wear blessed armor. You could’ve burned yourself bad.”

“But I didn’t! And I was super careful.”

“Not the point.”

But he was faltering. Since that morning in the kitchen, they’d both been delicate about the topic of exterminations. Her anger had startled and troubled him, and though Charlie knew guilt would eat her alive later, she pounced then for all she was worth.

“Please, Dad.” She squeezed his hands. “Let her stay. It’s what I want more than anything.”

His face crumpled. In retrospect, Charlie wondered if this was why her mom had always been so cross with her when she tried to bypass her and ask him for things instead.

“Alright, if you can promise you’ll be careful.”

She bobbed her head eagerly, making him smile. Then her heart skipped a beat, when he walked around her to the bedside. The angel slept on, bandaged chest moving in pitiful wheezes. He tilted his head, hands folded over his cane.

“Wow, never seen such a young one before.”

Charlie blinked, doing an unthinking circuit of the angel’s taut muscles, wide hips and big breasts, before the blood rushed to her face. “W-What do you mean?”

“She’s a year tops. Must’ve just popped out of the factory.” He tapped his left brow. “That eye’s a goner.”

Charlie’s heart sank. It wasn’t a surprise though. No matter how she’d tended it, the eye had been near-obliterated. The poor thing would be blind.

“Do you know anything else about her?” she asked, always curious of how much knowledge her dad acquired from every entry into his domain. He shrugged.

“Not much to know about a yearling,” he said, before making a face of idle disgust, “Maybe she’ll tell you more herself later.”

Charlie nodded, two bunched fists of resolution, as she gazed at the angel. She would need to get more bandages for the eye and talk to Forcas about making something for the fever. The wings worried her. Every day, they seemed to diminish a quarter inch. They were already half the size they’d been when Charlie found her.

“Thanks, Dad.” She kissed him on the cheek, before studying him. He didn’t seem too tired, so she ventured, “You feel like helping me make some poultices? I don’t want her wings to get infected.”

Joy surged through her as his eyes lit up. “I’d be delighted to, sweetie, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course it is, Dad,” she said and looped her arm through his. She was getting too tall for him, but she persevered. “And by hand, alright? Forcas said most of the herbs we need are too hard to be manipulated by magic.”

“Too hard for Forcas maybe,” he noted, and she rolled her eyes. But he refrained from magic. And as a result, was so little help that she relegated him to the supervisor’s chair within the hour. He seemed content with that, if not embarrassed.

Every once and a while, she would glance over from her work to see him staring at her, as though he could not believe his eyes. As though he was trying to burn every detail into memory.

Pandemonium contained a library that had shelves extending into near infinity. Lilith spent much time perusing it, stacking volumes numerically, seated at the great stone table which rotated at the room’s center. Each tome housed a piece of his memory from Creation, scrawls of glowing ink appearing as she turned the pages. Each spine hummed. This one contained the scent of wet leaves. This one drew the oldest hills. This one snarled at her, hissing beneath its scaled alligator cover.

What was, what is, what will be.

“Not everything though,” he said, with a cool wisp of irritation, “Only the parts I’d been delegated.”

They were extraordinary parts indeed.

Lilith learned of humanity after Eden—Adam and his much-deserved toil, which was also forced upon his perhaps less-deserving wife. Their pallid, fallen sons. She read of mankind, which would build itself kingdoms and empires, and one day wildly proclaim themselves gods.

Over her, Lucifer’s shadow perched on the balcony, golden dust reshaping between his fingers. A leathery wing. A coned ribcage. The magic was sharp, metallic, frenzied with frustration and heat.

“Sit here with me,” she called and he swooped down. She nudged her current book over, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and scooping him close. “What’s this one about?”

He smiled, glancing at the page. “A place called Constantinople. It’ll appear someday as one of the grander cities of mortals. ”

“It’s beautiful.” She traced a finger down the painted column of a domed building. Felt the bumps of elaborate colored tiles, the smooth pedestal of an altar. “I wish I could see it.”

He turned around, glancing up at her with still, luminous eyes. “You could,” he said, “Is that what you desire?”

“Not to live in, Luci,” she stressed, because it was still mortal and therefore a sickly shade of Pandemonium, “But it might be nice to look at and visit occasionally. I don’t know how you can stay cooped up in here every day.”

“The company’s enough for me,” he said, grinning, and darted away before she could snort and elbow him off. He cracked his knuckles, scanning the book again. “Well, if that’s what you want, then I’ll get to work. It’s been a while on this one. My memory’s pretty rusty.”

Another week passed, before the angel woke. Charlie had walked into her bedroom to see her crawling toward the door, half-dragging herself by her nails. Much to Charlie’s own embarrassment, she screamed. Dropped her entire stack of towels onto the disoriented angel.

Brief chaos reigned, before she managed to get the poor thing untangled. The angel gawked at her, silent through Charlie’s babbling apologies, eye climbing her up and down repeatedly. Blood loss and fever had drained the color out of her skin. Normally, it looked like it would be dusky, the loveliest contrast with her hair.

“Anyway, I’m Charlie,” she said, cutting herself off, “I’m so glad you’re awake. Do you remember what happened?”

The angel sat on the floor, frozen.

“That’s okay. You were hurt pretty bad.”

She knelt too fast and the angel flinched hard. “Oh, shoot, sorry! It’s alright, I’d just like to help you off the floor. The bed’s a lot more comfortable, trust me. Like stuffed with gryphon feathers and—“

“Where is this?” Her voice was deeper than Charlie had expected. Husky from disuse. Suffused with the deepest dread. “Are you a demon?”

Charlie hesitated, mulling over how to proceed. Based on appearance alone, she did not look too demonic. And aside from the voicemails she left her mom, no one else knew about the angel’s improvement over the past few days.

She just had to be tactful.

“Not technically—”

The door opened.

“Your Highness, is everything alright?” Forcas asked, with his three pairs of eyes, three beaks and three heads.

The angel fainted.

She didn’t see him for some time after her request in the library. He locked himself away, carving out a workshop in the aviary of the palace.

Lilith didn’t try to crowd. Lucifer had always been single-minded with his artistry, wholly preoccupied with his vision. Only occasionally would she visit the aviary to stare up miles into the rafters. From here, she could just discern the door, small and glowing and golden, much like himself. Spiraling chains hung from the ceiling, seared Enochian and adamantine.

Hell beyond hissed and tapped at the tripartite glass panes.

It was strange to be without him for so long. They had never been apart longer than a day since the beginning. Perhaps freeing, if Lilith let herself feel such a way. She had her books and her tea.

But mostly, it was lonely. There was nothing else that lived in Hell.

So when she walked into the aviary one day and saw him sitting at her table, she already knew what her next wish would be.

“Come outside,” he said, laughing after she had kissed and squeezed the breath out of him, “It’s ready.”

He flew them to a plain far from Pandemonium, where the behemoth palace flickered in the dust clouds like a shadow on the horizon. Lilith was settled on a boulder, the smaller stones rocketing up to accommodate her feet, plush moss bursting out like pillowing.

“You are ridiculous,” she called as he zipped off, all cheek, and disappeared into darkness.

Then the world purred beneath her legs.

Lilith gasped as the ground sank. Or perhaps she was being lifted. The surrounding rocks spidered with pulsing cracks, brimstone smoking from within. All of the ground stretched and pinched, as though made of clay, until she realized she sat now on a towering outcropping.

Below was the abyssal valley, nothing but darkness and steam. Lucifer hovered over it, six wings open. His arms spread wide.

Hell moved to obey. Great walls of stone crunched and heaved, releasing gouts of smog. The valley twisted and the ridges crimped around him, rising, corroding and smoothing, until urged into the incredulous skeleton of a city. Perfect arched bridges. Titanic layered walls. Lush murals. The dome of pure gold.

Lucifer lifted his left hand and a hole appeared in the rockside. Hell revealed its underbelly and expelled a geyser of precious stones. Diamonds. Garnets. Opals. Tobernite. Rubies. Every jewel imaginable. They spiraled out in winking rivers, studded columns, rails and the obelisks of the elegant spina in the marketplace. Canals flowed with sweet lavender water.

It was the city of Constantinople.

Lilith did not breathe. He glided up, flaming eyes aglow.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I do,” she whispered and tugged him out of the sky, “Of course, darling, I do.”

The angel refused to leave Charlie’s room. She never went back into the bed, adamant about curling in a corner behind Charlie’s credenza. The wings were gone. Despite how many of Forcas’s balms and ointments she slathered the angel’s back with, they never returned. Only two patches of scarring remained, dark as bruises.

Charlie was at a loss. Her mom had recounted how her dad’s wings had eventually regrew and healed after their fall. But that was her dad of course, and perhaps impossible for a normal angel.

Ironically, the angel was less distressed about her wings than Charlie was. She seemed to know they were a lost cause. Her abject horror was reserved for when she discovered Charlie was the Princess of Hell.

“You should probably keep clear for a while,” she told her dad, “I don’t think learning you’re actually just upstairs is going to go over well right now.”

He blinked slowly. “Sure, duckling,” he murmured, “Who is this again?”

Charlie swallowed her sigh. “The angel, Dad. From last month?”

“Oh, yes.” He lay his cheek on his desk, swinging the weight of a clock-less pendulum, which hung suspended in space. “The fallen yearling.”

His eyes were a pale insipid pink. Charlie’s heart began to pound.

“C’mon, sit up.” She reached over and took his shoulder, moving him upright. His magic pulsed through her palm. Charlie resisted the urge to flinch. The heat had always startled her with its intensity. As though her dad’s inconceivable power recognized her and beckoned her, ready to leap from Lucifer’s body into her own.

“She tell you what happened?”

Charlie blinked, confused, before realizing he meant the angel. “No.” She rested him back against the chair and released his shoulder. “Forget that, I don’t even know her name yet.” Charlie worried her lip. “I think she still doesn’t trust me, Dad.”

Lucifer chuckled. He gazed out the window, dulled hair soft against his eyes. “Just keep being you, Charlie. She will soon enough.”

“People?” he asked.

“Yes, Luci,” she said and danced from the pews. She spun under the cathedral, her dress twirling, a kaleidoscope of mosaics overhead. The jeweled portraits of supplicating mortals, all in various poses of worship. Her heels echoed against the floor. An earthly echo, like the caverns of Paradise. It was breathtaking. Perfect.

“This city is too big just for the two of us,” she said, turning back to where he sat, “What do you think?”

He smiled, a hollow thing that did not reach his eyes. “I could never create a human, Lili. They have souls.”

“Could you not create a soul?”

Lucifer chuckled. “No,” he said softly, “that is beyond me.”

She frowned, thoughtful a moment, but undeterred. “Then perhaps demons? Or other creatures that do not require souls, like the Sins.” It did not have to be humans after all. Just something more. Anything more.

Then this would be a world. One full of life and culture and witness and freedom. Even damned. Even in Hell.

“I suppose I could try,” he said, with more confidence now and extended a hand out, palm up. Golden dust swirled, a small twister of light. The bones materialized. The ribcage. The torso spun in his hand, skinless and incomplete. A long moment passed, before Lilith sat down beside him.

“What’s wrong, darling?”

He was staring at nothing, brow furrowed. “I can’t remember anymore. I used to fix the image in my head. That was how we created all living things. I can’t remember anymore.”

“Remember?”

“What He looked like.”

The silence drifted between them, unmoored. Blood had slowed in Lilith’s chilled veins. She did not ask who he referred to.

“Think of something close,” she said, “The closest that you can. You’ll be able to do it, I promise.”

Who was she to promise such things, but she didn’t let the conviction waver. It always comforted him.

The glow of his hands swelled again. A skull appeared above the ribcage, sculpted with perfect symmetry. A spine sluiced down from the back. A pelvis. Thick bones, before the muscle knitted over them. It floated again, limbless.

He inspected the creature. The spinning dust intensified around it, growing hotter and brighter. His shoulders tensed, breath hitching. She saw in his desperate gleaming eyes the reflexive attempt to grasp Infinity again.

“Something close,” she reminded him, hand on his back, “Just something close.”

Lucifer breathed. His shoulders slumped. Then something seemed to occur to him. He lifted his other hand, sliding it across the gold-bathed body.

The eye sockets reshaped, enlargened, while the torso divided and shrunk. Its bones thinned, grew fine and brittle-seeming, before the skull distended. Long it stretched and ended at the point of a beak. The muscles regrew.

“It will have to be black,” he muttered, and his voice vibrated through the empty cathedral. As soon as the words landed, feathers sprung out, blazing across the expanse of the body, glossy-dark as night. A pair of wings. Tail feathers. It was very tall when it landed on the ground, upright on taloned feet, the same height as her.

The four eyes were lightless still. Even inert though, she smelled the immense magic within it. And though it was not made under the Creator’s image, Lilith did not care. It would live.

“Oh darling, it’s extraordinary,” she whispered, hugging him. She wanted to ask who he had thought of instead, but resisted. Perhaps another of the seraphim, though how could any of them carry the power to conduit creation if Lucifer could not. He had been the first of them all. Second to the Creator. Who could be closer beyond him?

But it did not matter. She brushed the faintly dull hair out of his face. It was usually so well-kept. He’d been working too hard.

Lucifer smiled. He looked past Lilith’s shoulder, gaze roving over his creation.

“We knew her as His Speaker,” he said, “And she was much taller and the feathers were gold.”

That was all he ever said on the matter.

Forcas created a special tincture for the angel’s fever. The swirling liquid took the quality of twilight, colors shifting like a sunset as she rotated the vial—scarlet to pink to rose gold. She was surprised to learn it was Aunt Bel’s formula and that Forcas had spent a century or two in Sloth. She’d always thought he’d served her parents in Pride since the very beginning.

“Her Majesty selected me personally from the Goetia,” one of his heads said, utterly neutral, if not for the slight puff to his feathers, “She thought she could find use for my medical expertise here.”

“Really? There aren’t many hellborn in Pride.”

“Indeed.” Forcas said, with a wrinkle in his beaks to convey exactly how he felt about the topic. “She asked me here for the sinners, in anticipation of the influx arriving. There was to be a hospital.”

Charlie looked away, setting the tincture back on the kitchen counter. She ignored the warm softness in her chest trying to rise, because beneath was an ocean of ache.

“Oh, I see,” she said, chipping at the counter varnish, “That’s really…That was great of her to think so far ahead.”

“She had enormous vision,” Forcas agreed. He did not offer how there clearly remained no hospital in Pride and she did not ask.

He stacked the medicinals into a neat filigreed box for her, rearranging tubes of ointment and poultices. “Here we are, Your Highness,” he said, handing her the box, along with tincture, “Remember to administer the tincture during a meal. Under the tongue for quickest effect.”

“I will.” Charlie smiled, hugging the package, “Thanks, Forcas.”

“Of course. It is the pleasure of the Ars Goetia to serve the child of the Morningstar.” Forcas collected the pestle and mortar in a tray. “But you’ll forgive me if I leave the rest of the girl’s care to you, Your Highness. Frequent bouts of fainting aren't good for her blood pressure.”

Charlie scratched her cheek, vaguely embarrassed. “I hope you weren’t offended by that, Forcas. It wasn’t really ‘cos of how you look. She was just in a lot of stress by that point.”

Forcas huffed. “I would not dream it was for any other reason.”

Charlie stifled her giggle. For a moment, there was silence as he turned the sink on and water rushed into the basin. Charlie picked at the filigree pattern of the box.

“You know,” she said, “for a second I actually thought Mom might’ve brought you here for Dad. She was so worried about him. We must’ve had a different healer here each month.”

Lilith had been looking for a cure that Hell could not give her, that Charlie could not offer her. Looking away always.

Forcas did not respond. When she glanced back up, his middle face maintained his expressionless measure. The left face was resigned. The right one strange and melancholic.

“His Majesty has always been a different story,” he said, “And I do not presume the ability.”

He deemed them the Ars Goetia.

There were all different kinds, bright feathers in multitudes, three-headed, serpent-tailed, powers that were ice-raveled or fire-laced or plucked from night. Bereft of souls, he wove in their personalities himself with braids of infernal thread.

Group by group he placed them, until there was an entire population filling the hollow city. Singular. Coupled. Family units destined to become dynasties.

When he finished, he flew high. Far past the city’s great dome and the outcropping where Lilith watched.

He flew until the celestial chains flashed into existence around his throat and wings, binding him from further ascension. Icy fear flooded Lilith’s human heart, but he did not look alarmed or surprised, so she kept watching.

Raising his manacled left hand, Lucifer gazed down upon the city of his creations. His wings beat powerfully against their chains. His voice boomed in the red, hissing sky.

“Look up, grand demons of the hollow deep.”

And the Ars Goetia breathed.

The third extermination came on the dot. Charlie caught the exact moment they arrived—light bleaching out the red sky as a portal of Heaven blinked open. The great swarms of wings descending through. They killed less this time. Following the first two exterminations, the sinners had adapted. They reinforced their buildings and shelters, hunkering down for the worst.

But it was still slaughter. Always would be.

The angel was mad with terror. She backed into the corner of Charlie’s room as far as she could go, angling the credenza to block her exposed flank. Her hands shook even as she hugged her knees.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, “What’s happening?”

Charlie knelt down, lifting the quilts the angel had kicked aside in her scramble across the floor. ‘Just your people murdering mine,’ didn’t seem like the best reply.

“It’ll be over soon,” she settled on, glancing at the pink hands of her clock. Ostensibly, there was only an hour left. She could never be sure though, since all the clocks in Pandemonium sped forward when her dad was feeling impatient. “I think so anyway. But we’ll be alright. They leave at midnight.”

The angel’s eye widened. Her head snapped toward the ceiling, realization dawning on her. “The mission,” she said, and if there was any secret concern on Charlie’s part that she would try to use the extermination to reunite with her ilk, it vanished then.

Charlie smoothed the stack of quilts and spread them back out on the floor. “You’re safe here. They never come near the palace.”

“Because of the Morningstar.” It wasn’t phrased like a question.

“Yes.” Charlie tried not to make her smile too nervous. “B-But don’t worry. Like I said, you’re safe. Dad could never hurt you.”

The angel stared at her, bewildered. “Yes, he could,” she said, “He could do absolutely anything to me. Anything. There is no ‘never.’”

Something exploded in the distance. Charlie hurried out of her bedroom and peeked through the window of her antechamber. Black smoke plumed in a small cloud far away. A gas tank or a main in one of the sinner towns.

“Nowhere now can I find redemption.” The angel clutched her hair, the luminous locks pooled around her. Her nails dug into skin. Tears flowed out of her remaining eye.

“That’s not true.” Charlie knelt in front of her. “Please, just calm down—”

“I am judged fallen—”

“—you’re hurting yourself—”

“—condemned to Hell for eternity—”

“--listen to me—”

“--it’s over.”

“No, it isn’t!” Charlie said and yanked the girl into a hug. When she was a child, Lilith had made sure to drill into her the proper forms of etiquette and mannerisms befitting of her title. No interrupting. No raising your voice. And certainly no touching without consent.

She hoped her mom would not mind too much.

The angel froze, pressed to Charlie’s chest. Despite her lingering fever, her body was clammy with sweat. A human heartbeat hammered through her pulse.

Charlie talked fast, words tumbling out. “You’re not condemned, alright? You’re not. I won’t pretend to understand how you feel right now, but I promise, promise this isn’t the end. No one is going to hurt you. Everything you’ve lost, you can get back.”

She squeezed the girl’s shoulders. The walls groaned around them. Through the ajar door, the windowlight from her antechamber vanished. And as staff upstairs rushed to her dad’s chambers, Charlie felt the wet heat scorch down her face in trails.

“Anyone can be saved,” she said, “It has to be true.”

The angel was silent. In hindsight, Charlie probably bruised her up worse than she could’ve ever done to herself, but she couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t move. The angel didn’t push her away. They sat together behind the credenza for who knows how long. Until her clock struck midnight, and blared stupid pop music into Pandemonium’s dark.

Then Charlie dropped her as if burnt. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her face. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Vaggie.”

Charlie blinked. “What?”

The angel fell back against the wall, hair sliding against Charlie’s lap.

“My name,” she said, “It’s Vaggie.”

It had always been there after the Fall.

Following their birth, Lilith began organizing the Goetia immediately. They would need infrastructure, leadership and ways to manage the abundant resources of the city. There was much to be done. For their part, they listened carefully. Absorbed her words with rapt attention.

What was more, they were quite opinionated among themselves, jockeying for her favor and regard. There were rivalries and calculations. They formed memories with each other, past the scope of her or Lucifer’s awareness. They lived.

And as their civilization blossomed, they constructed more cities of their own and expanded beyond the limits of Pride. Satan wandered back, badgering for instruction on how to make creations of his own. In a fit of annoyance, Lucifer taught him and from Satan (to the best of his ability) came the infernal imps. Then, because if he showed one then he had to show the other five, Lucifer taught the rest of the Sins as well.

Hell teemed with succubi, incubi, hellhounds and monstrous ghost-fish from the deep.

It was not the Garden, Lilith knew, and never ever would be. She dared to believe it was better.

“So, Dad, this is Vaggie. And Vaggie, this is my dad.”

With a flourish, she gestured Vaggie forward. Vaggie stood rigid. Charlie settled her hand in the middle of her back. The corded muscles there were locked into knots. Charlie tried to hide her smile.

“Now that she’s all better, she wanted to come up and introduce herself.” Gently, she nudged Vaggie into the room. Motion seemed to break whatever trance Vaggie was in, because she stiffened and took two quick steps forward.

“Y-Yes, a pleasure to meet you,” she said, a pronounced croak in her throat, “Thank you for your hospitality, um, Your Majesty.”

Her dad stared at them from his desk. For an exasperated moment, Charlie wondered if he’d forgotten who she was again, before he tilted his head.

“Sure thing. Any friend of Charlie’s is always welcome here. No need for the majesty stuff.”

“Yes, Seraphim—I mean, sir. Morningstar, sir.”

Charlie winced.

Lucifer snorted as Vaggie’s face drained of color. “Anyway, sad to say you won’t be able to sample the rest of the rings. All fallen get an exclusive ticket here with me. But I’m sure Forcas could give you a tour of the Pentagram if you wanted one for whatever reason.”

“Actually, Dad, I don’t mind just taking her around,” Charlie said, before sidling up to his side of the desk, “There’s one other thing. Vaggie and I were talking and I wanted to run it by you first.”

“It’s truly amazing,” she said one day, spreading her arms upon the balcony rail, where Hell bustled beyond Pandemonium, “Can you believe all this has happened, darling?”

Lucifer smiled. He reclined in a chair beneath the shade of the balcony, hands folded in his lap. He was much stiller than he used to be. She wished he would dance with her again, like he had at the beginning, but he said he preferred to sit and watch these days.

“Anything you desire,” he said, “If you want it, then it’s yours, Lili.”

“You mean it’s ours,” she said and drew up to him, kneeling down to see him unobscured of red shadows, “And the best is yet to come.”

A strange look came over him as he observed her, not dissimilar to the way he’d first looked at her in Eden. Like he saw something mystifying. Shocking. His gaze fell to her hands, before rising to her belly.

Then he grinned and despite the wan shadows beneath his eyes, there was not a being in Creation more beautiful. More divine.

Centuries later, Lilith will wonder if he had known all along what would happen to him. If he had realized someday she would be forced to watch the light bleed out of him piece by piece, bit by bit, over and over again. That a year from now, she would wake to him sitting at the edge of their bedside, hands limp in his lap, staring into nothing.

For it had always been there after the Fall.

“Yes,” he said and tucked the loose hair from her face, “The best is yet to come.”

“I have this idea, Dad, about the sinners.” Charlie framed her hands. “Picture this, a hotel.”