D E V I L ' S  P L A N

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THAT NIGHT, LUCIUS felt particularly sour. The bones beneath his skin ached, mind throbbing as a thousand thoughts raced across them, and no matter how much he tossed and turned in his sheets, sleep was an escape that he could not quite reach. Begrudgingly, Lucius sat up straight in his bed, pulling his knees closer to his chest as he ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

Even though the moon was already high up in the air, surrounded by the sparkle of a million stars, Lucius had yet to set out on his journey to the sacred spot in which he met up with Adelia on most nights. In fact, Lucius had not even wanted to do such a thing.

After all, what would be the use of it?

The angel of night was an entity that could never belong in his arms. She was the magic of the wind, caressing his face but never within his grasp. If she was the wind, Lucius would have to be the trees. No matter how strong the trees were, they still bent in the direction of winds fierce and wild. One look from her would send Lucius weak at his knees, crumbling his entire being into nothing more than fragments of what he once was.

Heaving a great sigh, Lucius carelessly threw his covers off of his body, swinging his legs off the bed in which he rested on. All of his life, Lucius had never felt his body as heavy as it was now. It seemed to pull his entire soul down deep beneath the ground, filled to the brim with dread and fatigue that Lucius had never thought was humanly possible.

If there was a pain more severe than what he was feeling at the moment, Lucius did not know of it. All he could think about was the crack that split his heart into two, separating both sides and crippling his soul at the very core.

However, there was still an annoying voice that spoke at the back of his mind. It begged and pleaded him to go to the very spot in which he had spent most of his existence loitering around. If he was digging through even the minutest of corners to head there before he had witnessed what he did during the day, he was doing the exact opposite now by attempting to convince himself not to go to Heaven's Falls.

However, whatever argument he had put up with himself was all to no avail. Lucius was drawn to Adelia like a moth to a flame. Wherever the fire burned, he wanted to be near it even if it meant that he would be burnt by the heat.

In no time, Lucius found himself moving like clockwork. He had thrown on a simple white cotton top, pulling the sleeves up to his elbows before rushing out of his quaint little hut and taking off to the skies. It took him less than five minutes to reach Heaven's Falls.

No matter how many times he had already been at the sacred little spot, he still found the view breathtakingly beautiful. If the North Garden was hailed as the most magnificent garden of all of Heaven, the Heavens Falls would be the grandest icon of the realm. Like the North Garden, not a lot of angels dared to venture so near the edge of the realm. They all had one common fear.

They feared the fall.

The process of losing their wings and turning into a monstrosity like nothing before was never a thought that angels entertained. Loitering so near the edge of Heaven was to flirt with death, a concept that immortals never fancied. Yet, being so near to the possibility made Lucius alive.

There was no other location that could rival the view that Heavens Falls provided. It was the heaven in Heaven.

Before Lucius's feet had even grazed the emerald grass, Adelia had already turned around to look at him. Slowly, the light in her eyes sparkled in the dark, dancing like a brazen flame which knew no limits. Her red lips slowly curled into a sirenic smile, hands reaching up to comb her long black hair backward before she gracefully rose to her feet with a powerful flap from her wings.

"Lucius!" She exclaimed, taking a few steps towards the day angel to close the distance between them. "You are late," she chided playfully.

Although the friendly interaction would usually make Lucius's heart flutter with the warmth of a thousand suns, this time, it made his heart frost over. The grim smile on his face slowly melted away, completely disappearing into a frown as he took a step away from Adelia.

"I did not know if I should come," he replied honestly.

As if immediately sensing his sudden drop in mood, Adelia's own teasing smile vanished. Taking a carefully plotted step towards him, she pressed the palm of her hand on his cheek. For a split second, Lucius allowed himself to revel in the soothing cool of her touch, betraying his purity with thoughts that made his heart race. However, it was no more than a second before he realized his mistake, pulling away from her as if her touch scorched his skin.

"Is something wrong?" She asked, eyebrows wrinkling in confusion at Lucius's cold attitude.

It was strange how the world worked. The colder Lucius was to Adelia, the more distant he became, the more Adelia seemed to want to befriend him. He could still remember the look on her face when they had first crossed paths. Even if a millennium had passed, Lucius did not think he could ever forget. Her eyes were the ice of winter's coldest storms, a flurry of frost that seemed to creep past the boundaries of her eyelids and into her words. Her posture was strong and powerful, like a towering tree that stood watch over the entire forest and her lips flung words that stung as if laced with venom.

However, now that Lucius was attempting to distance himself away from her, she became drawn to him like bees to the sweetest of nectar. He thought to himself that he had never seen Adelia so compassionate. Her eyes were now the skies of day, filled with clouds of white that reflected the golden sunlight into the azure beyond. Red roses painted her lips, contrasting with the pearly white of her teeth that caught that silver of moonlight whenever she spoke. Adelia's skin was blended into the night, stars dotting the bridge of her nose in the form of freckles that formed constellations as if she herself was the night.

Yet, with all the beauty of the world trapped in the body of Adelia, Lucius had never felt more lost. How could he possibly just stand there and admire her as an art in which he could never possess? Lucius did not have the power in him to do something as such.

"Why did you go to the North Garden yesterday?" He countered, completely avoiding her question. At his words, her eyebrows raced high up her forehead in surprise.

"I could not sleep," she said slowly, suddenly wary of Lucius's strange behavior. "Why do you ask that?"

"You barely even spared me a glance before dancing off into Dimitri's arms. Why?"

"What I do and how I act is my business. I do not have to answer to you." In an instant, Adelia's tone harshened. Gone was the soft and caring angel that had grasped his attention. Just like that, she was back to the same person as when they had first met.

Cold.

Cruel.

Distant.

"You kissed him." Lucius had to burrow his nails deep into the palms of his hands in order to stop himself from yelling. His voice was a sort of calm that could send shivers down the recipient's spine but whatever frost that Lucius had laced his words with was melted off by the boiling rage that now erupted from Adelia's tone.

"So what?"

"It is forbidden!" Before he could stop himself, Lucius was thrust back into the blind rage that had destroyed his day. He threw his hands up into the sky, voice raised notches higher than usual as he took a bold step towards Adelia. She showed equal defiance by not even flinching at his tone, standing straighter than before and squaring up to him. "If it eluded your memory, acts of affection are banned here in Heaven."

"And what is it that you have been doing, Lucius?" She fearlessly queried, tilting her chin upward so that she could look at him properly in the eye. Dynamic courage colored her eyes, fuelling her words as she shot her words at him like arrows hidden by the dark of the night. "Do you think that I am daft? I know that you hold a sort of fondness for me so don't you dare even question what it is that I am doing. If I am in the wrong, then so are you!"

Her words made Lucius stagger back a few steps as if he had just been shot. His lips parted in shock, breath clogged up in his throat as he squinted at her in disbelief.

"You..."

"Knew?" She supplied for him. "Of course I knew. You were too obvious about it. Walls could talk, Lucius, and I have heard from more than a single pair of lips that you hold affection for me. We may be angels but gossip is not unheard of in this realm. You ought to be more careful about the information that you pass onto your friends."

"At least I did not act on it!" Lucius all but yelled.

"Stop trying to deny things that are already done, Lucius! You and I both know that we are both damned and there is nothing that we can do about it. We can only pray that the Almighty will forgive us for our impure thoughts and emotions."

Pausing for a second to take a deep breath and collect her emotions, Adelia took a deep breath before releasing it, a sudden calm fogging up in her eyes to conceal the onslaught of emotions that she had just released. Just like that, she had assumed the usual cool façade that she put up, completely void of sentiment.

"Now, if you will excuse me, I will have to report to Lucifer about tonight's progress. Maybe it is for the best that we no longer meet, Lucius. What belongs in the day should bask in the light and what belongs in the night should hide in the dark."

With those as her parting words, Adelia took to the skies with a powerful flap of her wings, feathers cascading down due to her sudden increase in speed. Lucius caught one that was falling, clutching the pure black feather in his hands before examining it carefully. In an instant, determination masked his features before he, too, was off in the air, flying after Adelia with as much speed as he could gather.

Since she had a boosting start, Lucius reached Lucifer's hut seconds after she had. She was already in the straw establishment located at the very heart of Heaven. There were soft lights coming from inside, signaling that the people in there were awake but Lucius did not even hesitate for a single second before pushing the door open.

"I am so sorry for barging in but I need to—" he started to say but was swiftly cut off when he noticed that there was only one other angel in the hut other than him.

There Adelia stood, hovering over Lucifer's wooden desk with her eyes furiously darting across the words of a single scroll. Her eyebrows were furrowed like before, scrunched up in concentration as she glanced through the lines of information.

"Where is Lucifer?" Lucius asked, closing the door from behind him as he stepped into the hut properly.

Adelia did not reply. Instead, she picked up the scroll that she had been reading, her hands trembling as she scurried across the room to where Lucius stood. When she finally raised her head to look at Lucius, her eyes were filled with fear, a quivering anxiety that did not seem at home on her heavenly features.

"We are too late." That was all she said before she shoved the scroll into Lucius's hands. The latter fumbled to catch it, fingers latching onto the parchment before casting Adelia one last confused look. He proceeded to slowly examine the words that had gotten Adelia into a mess, the characters slowly blurring before his very eyes when he realized the intensity of the situation.

On the parchment, written in ink as black as night, were plans of creating a new domain. It depicted tales of overthrowing the almighty and the world that he had created, detailing a land beyond Heaven and beneath Paradise. In bold, titling the work that Lucius held in his hands, were the words 'The Realm of Demons: Hell'. Lucius could not even read them out loud for it sent a thrill beneath Lucius's skin, causing goosebumps to rise all over his body.

"No," was all he could whisper, dropping the scroll to the ground as it landed with a thud.

"He is planning an apocalypse." Faintly, Lucius could register Adelia's logical deduction from behind him but he was too numb to reply. "If he succeeds, he will bring all of us down with him and create war. We must stop his conquest over the realms before it is too late."

Just as she spoke, screams erupted from outside the hut, the dark of the night suddenly brightening up when an explosion rang through the area. Fire raged across the fields, sending straw and wooden huts ablaze as a chorus of shrieks ensued.

Outside the hut, chaos reigned supreme.

Without a second thought, the two ran out into the open, throwing the door open with all their might only to stop dead in their tracks at what they saw.

"Oh no," Adelia gasped, her hands rising to cover her lips.

Lucius gulped. "We are too late."

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