Page 9

He spun Lucifer’s coin between his knuckles with practiced ease. It was a black coin made of a metal that seemed to absorb light. On one side was the face of a beautiful man, and on the other was a ram’s skull.

I don’t turn, my gaze fixed on the document suspended in the still air before me. “I’m working.”

“Working? Or perfecting your brooding impersonation? Because you’ve been standing there for two hours. The dust bunnies are starting to file a complaint about a hostile work environment.” He ambles closer, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. “What is that anyway? Looks important and glowy.”

Before me, the Tribunal Edict 1014-H—a formal tribunal writ—shimmers with a light that offered no warmth, only the stark, unforgiving clarity of the law. I had taken it from Sera’s town house. It had been lying on the kitchen counter next to a shattered lamp, discarded. An instinct had compelled me, and I had pocketed it without a word. Now, it is the only piece of this damned puzzle that feels real.

“It’s the warning they had sent Sera,” I say, my voice flat. “The one about Kael.”

Jareth peers at it and whistles softly. “Oof. Cease all interactions? A trial of final judgment? They don’t mince words, do they? Pretty though. Very official. Smells like sanctimonious bullshit, but the calligraphy is top-notch.”

I ignore him. The formal celestial script is perfect. Each line is an unyielding stroke of authority, each sigil a testament to an order older than the stars themselves. It is a document of absolute truth. And yet…it feels like a lie.

Something is wrong, a dissonance I can feel in the marrow of my bones. My gaze drifts to the last seal, to the sigil for judgment—the mark of Malakar’s authority. It is flawless.

And that is the flaw.

A true tribunal edict carries a unique resonance—the cold logic of Malakar, the veiled sorrow of Calithra, the chaotic spark of Lucifer—woven into a harmonious, impersonal whole. It feels like absolute law. This…this feels singular. Arrogant.

My senses, honed by millennia of service, trace the flow of power within the script. There is only one dominant current here: a chill of absolute authority, a current of pride so profound it practically hums. I focus on the last seal. And there it is: the echo of the essence that forged it.

A memory surfaces, sharp and unwelcoming. A century ago, perhaps more, I stood sentinel within Michael’s private study in Heaven, a chamber of white marble and gold filigree that was always colder than any winter. He was at his desk, composing a decree. The tip of his quill was a pinprick of black against the luminous parchment. I remember watching his hand, the effortless grace. And I remember the flourish.

The almost imperceptible, arrogant hook he added to the tail of the sigil for judgment. A cruel, elegant curl. A signature of pride.

I see it now, as clear as a fresh wound, on the edict meant for Sera.

It is his hand.

The realization is not a thought but a physical blow, a void opening in my chest. The air leaves my lungs in a ragged gasp. This edict, this weapon that threatened to sever Sera from Kael, was not the tribunal’s will. It was the will of Michael.

“Hey. Are you with me?” Jareth asks, his voice pulling me back. His hand is on my shoulder. “You look like you’re watching the universe die.”

I shrug his hand off, trembling. “He lied,” I whisper, the words tasting of ash. “All of it. A lie.”

“Who?”

“Michael…”

But why? The question is an icy dread, a serpent coiling in my gut. Why would the archangel of justice, her own father, forge a tribunal writ to torment her? Why the elaborate deception?

My mind, unbidden, plunges backward, not a century but nearly two. It pulls up the projection I had reviewed countless times in the celestial archive, the official record of the sisters’ fall: Tribunal Writ 564.

The scene materializes behind my eyes with chilling clarity. The sky over Ireland had roared as they had fallen. I had watched them crumple on a hillside slick with mud and rot, the failed crops sagging under the weight of famine. I saw Sera bleeding into the earth, the stumps of her wings still pulsing with faint holy light. And beside her, Cassia was a crumpled shape of gold hair and matted blood, one arm still flung outward as if reaching for her sister.

The official charge was a breach of sacred duty: Sera, the watcher of passage, had refused to release the soul of a mortal child, defying the cycle of life and death. A crime worthy of annihilation. But Cassia… Cassia had stepped forward, offering herself as an equal party and stating a shared will. It was her sacrifice that had tempered the initial sentence to exile.

But the cold bureaucratic language of the writ never captured the image’s truth. The aftermath. Michael’s absence. His silence. The writ stated that the authority of the court delivered the judgment, but every angel in this universe knew Michael’s voice carried the weight of the final verdict. He had stood by and sentenced his own daughters.

But why? What was so threatening about an act of compassion? What was so dangerous about Sera’s bleeding heart that it required not just exile but mutilation? Corruption of her essence could not be the sole reason.

And now, this forged edict. It is not a separate act; it is a pattern. Another move to control, to steer the narrative. He didn’t want Sera aligned with power like Kael. He wanted her broken. Manageable. Alone.

Panic, an emotion I thought I had mastered, claws at my throat. I have to warn her. I must warn Cassia.

I stride to a recessed alcove where Jareth’s scrying basin of polished moonstone rests, a tool for tracking essences across the veil.

Jareth watches me, his easy humor replaced by a tense curiosity. “Trying to call someone who doesn’t want to be found?” he asks quietly.