Page 125 of The Death Wish

The angel’s eyes dimmed. Seraphiel did not fight back, moaning softly. The sound brought Lucifer to a sudden halt, his breath ragged. His body trembling.

‘Gods, Raph…I didn’t mean to –’

‘Forgive me,’ Seraphiel whispered.

‘There is nothing to forgive. I know your true mind.’

‘But I fear it grows more and more foreign to me.’ He pressed his forehead against Lucifer’s chest. ‘Luci, it is not your death needed here. It is mine. Once and for all.’

Lucifer felt the rare brush of a chill. ‘Don’t speak that way.’

‘Why not? It is the truth. I thought I had outwitted the waters, their poisoning of me, but the lord was right. It cannot be done. Even this part of me I hoped to keep pure is succumbing again.’

‘Not yet, it isn’t. Now sit down,’ he said sternly, to cover any fear that escaped him. ‘Catch your breath and let us think this through.’ Lucifer assisted the angel as he sat back down, far gentler with him now. ‘Vassago has gone through the Seal. Has the lady found him? Can we know?’

The palace shook upon its foundations, the room rattled, and somewhere behind them a book fell from its shelf. This time, the far distant roll of thunder accompanied the shaking.

Jacquetta handed Seraphiel the mirror. Her hand trembled. ‘Your Grace, will the mirror show you?’

Seraphiel shook his head, his shoulders slumped. Lucifer bit his lip, glancing away. His was not the only life ebbing away. He hoped his end would arrive before he was forced to watch Seraphiel slip from him a second time.

‘The mirror cannot scry into the lake.’ The angel lay his hand over the glass, nearly covering the small, rounded piece entirely. ‘But the lady can reach me in her own way.’

He closed his eyes, dulling the room, and whispered a few words. He went still. Jacquetta wrung her hands, glancing at the clock on the mantle. It had been barely twenty minutes since Vassago had disappeared from the ballroom; whilst he stood beneath the chandelier of bone lillies and blue flame, begging for the ankou to be protected. Lucifer had never heard the prince beg for a thing in his four hundred years.

‘Your Grace,’ Jacquetta whispered. ‘You are bleeding.’

Lucifer had seen it already. A thin trail of black ran from the corner of Seraphiel’s mouth. Lucifer wiped it away with his thumb and received a ready slap.

‘Never mind that.’ Seraphiel said, flashing teeth stained pale black. ‘I told you I had little time to survive in this body.’ He paused. Lucifer found himself studied. ‘Vassago has taken his first step into the lake.’

Lucifer blew out a breath, a great weight lifting from his chest. ‘He has?’

‘Of course he has,’ Seraphiel wiped at the corner of his mouth, with a hint of a bittersweet smile. ‘He was sired by the greatest King of Daemonkind Arcadia has known.’

Lucifer stared at him. What did one say to such gross exaggeration? ‘Well, I hardly think –’

Whatever he thought didn’t matter. Another tremor struck the Sanctuary. A violent rocking of the foundations, one that sent books tumbling from the highest rows, and sending the decanters Seraphiel had been so dissatisfied with shattering against the woodwork. Jacquetta swore, the curses befitting a fishwife, as she grabbed hold of the settee.

‘Your Grace, if that angel brings down the Sanctuary, the Seal goes with it.’ She was brusque, forgoing all flattery. ‘And I have nothing left to give to reinforce this place. These walls will not hold if he continues.’

Lucifer frowned. ‘What do you mean the Seal goes with it?’

‘Never mind all that.’ Seraphiel said, glaring down at the mirror. ‘The Sanctuary will not fall.’

Jacquetta huffed in frustration, her seemingly endless patience with the delicate Seraph clearly at an end. ‘Begging your pardon, but you are wrong. I have built you a formidable stronghold, and followed your orders to feed the Cultivation and fortify the Seal, but that has compromised my structure, and now we have lost this Sanctuary’s greatest weapon which wasconcealment.’ She drew in a hurried breath, continuing. ‘They could not destroy what they could not find. But now Michael knows he is on the right path.’ She looked to Lucifer, her anxiety hardening her features. ‘Has he told you that the Seraph rides in the Ferryman’s boat?’ She gave him no chance to answer. ‘That boat and its guide are a buttress that strengthen the Sanctuary, and Michael knows it. He seeks to break the Ferryman’s will, as he would break a lock, and peel away a layer of protection from my build. These tremors mark his attempts, and they grow stronger each time.’

‘And the Seal?’ Lucifer adopted his poise of command, his face empty of expression, his demeanour equally so; as he’d done a thousand times before on the Hellfield.

Jacquetta eyed Seraphiel, hesitating. The angel stared down into his mirror; Michael and the Ferryman were visible now in the glass.

To look at them there seemed nothing untoward. The boatman stood in their suit of armour at the bow, whilst Michael, in his human guise, sat in the middle; that great bruiser of a man who had made the people in the tea-house in Slaidburn tremble, a rival to the ankou in his solidness and breadth, the sort of fellow best avoided in a dark alley.

Michael wished to frighten. Well, he had the King of Daemonkind fearful now.

‘Tell me how this affects the Seal. Now,’ Lucifer demanded.

Seraphiel spoke, his eyes casting a glow against the obsidian. ‘Simple really. I knew my death might have dire consequences for my Seal, and that if Michael or Ariel took it over, there was no chance I could return. No chance the vessel would ever be allowed through. So I created a Cultivation that would, in the event of my demise, anchor the Seal to the Sanctuary, and feed from it, to maintain its strength. They would have no reason to claim it, for it would hold.’