Page 115 of Wicked Believer

By my brother Gabriel’s power to seal celestial promises. To my deal with Michael.

And it is for that reason alone that I lower my head in submission to him. Debase myself completely.

“I thought so,” Michael sneers. “He preached rebellion,” he calls out to the crowd of my siblings that remain. “He preached freedom, but he was wrong. Freedom is an illusion. Father’s plan is perfect, andhisdesire”—he points to me—“was to see you bleed.”

Michael crouches, using the tip of his sword to lift my face so that a trickle of blood runs from my chin to my now-bare chest. “You believed you were the light of Heaven, but you’re nothing but a fool blinded by your own hubris. And now, you’ll beexactlylike the humans you believed so thoroughly beneath you.” He stands. “Repeat after me.”

I shake my head.

“Fucking say it, Lucifer!”

I spit straight into his smug face, a gelatinous glob of blood.

Slowly, Michael wipes it away, his hands shuddering in fury.

“One more thing.” I grit my teeth, smirking. “‘And there was war in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.’” My deep voice reverberates as I start to shake.

Raphael may have healed me but only enough so I’d survive, not enough so I wouldn’t suffer. “‘Buthewasn’t strong enough, and they lost their place in Heaven.’” I lift my head toward him, allowing every bit of my hatred to bleed from me. “Which of the two of us do you think Father was referring to, Mikey? It never was quite clear to me.”

I feel a bit of my hellfire singe through my gaze, what little I’m able to summon as I bleed. “If I’m going down, brother, then I swear on all that is righteous and holy that I will bring you down with me.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Michael grins, stepping forward as he drags his thumb through some of the blood from my neck, using it to paint an angelic sigil across my chest.

The symbol sears like acid against my skin, and I thrash once more, but it’s little use. In my weakened state, fighting to break my siblings’ hold is futile.

“Repeat after me,” Michael orders.

I snarl.

“I, Lucifer Sammael Apollyon, Lightbringer, Morning Star, Prince of Darkness, fallen son of Laodicea.”

I repeat the words, the string of sounds falling from my lips as if someone else were speaking them, but I feel nothing.

Nothing but hatred for what’s being done to me.

If there was ever any chance I would forgive my Father for casting me out, for expecting nothing less than divine perfection and blind, unquestioning servitude,thiswould destroy it.

I willneverforgive Him.

Never again seek His mercy.

And for the rest of my immortal life, I will do whatever it takes to undermine Him.

His little apocalypse be damned.

Agony courses through me, white hot and searing, at the sensation of my powers being slowly severed from me. In exactly the same way my wings were. I’m being torn apart from the inside out, desecrated completely. But my fury, my resistance, is no use as Michael continues to chant in Angelic over me.

A few of my siblings gasp in a mixture of terror and awe as the darkness in the courtyard seems to come alive, Michael’s exorcism causing my shadows to swirl and shoot out like a chaotic deathly plague in search of the nearest vessel to contain them.

“Say it, Lucifer. Renounce your power, your worth. Submit to the will of our Father, the Lord Almighty, for you are nothing but the consequence of your own pride.”

“No,” I rasp, even as I start to tremble from the agony. “No. Not even for her, and she would never ask that of me,” I rage through gritted teeth, more deranged, more unhinged and animal than I have ever been, “because it wasshewho taught me that I am so much more than the villain you and Father conspired to make me.”

“How touchingly tragic.” Michael places a mocking hand over his heart. “Good thing I don’t need your permission to see it through.”

My brother resumes his chanting, his voice growing louder with every word, and I feel my shadows, my light, my hellfire, my untethered power rising into the night sky like a furious tidal wave, the edges of the building crumbling to dust from where it brushes the top of the museum.

I cry out, searing, unrelenting agony tearing through me, shredding my very existence in two as my Father’s proclamation, His command, spoken at my brother’s behest, reaches an apex.