Morals

Bennett adjusted his halo for the third time that morning.

“I swear, they make these things looser every century,” he muttered.

“Maybe it’s just your head getting too big,” Lilin said, stretching out like a cat across Elizabeth’s left shoulder. Her black, pointed tail flicked lazily, narrowly missing the tip of the little girl’s ear.

“Not this again, Lilin,” Bennett sighed, settling on Elizabeth’s right shoulder in a shimmer of soft light and a responsibly pressed white suit. His halo gleamed above his neat blond hair. “I still can’t believe they paired us up again.”

“Don’t act like you’re not thrilled to see me every day,” Lilin said, smirking with crimson lips. She wore a black dress that was entirely too tight for Heaven’s HR standards. Obsidian horns peeked out from her black wavy hair.

“I’m trying to help a ten-year-old girl make good choices. You’re trying to turn her into a criminal,” Bennett said, trying to ignore Lilin.

“Criminal is a strong word. ‘Free thinker’ is better,” she replied.

Elizabeth, the girl in question, stared into the open fridge, torn between the last banana and the leftover chocolate cake.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Bennett whispered to her. He didn’t have to speak aloud. The whisper was like a tug.

“But cake is so much better,” Lilin breathed, her influence curling warm like steam.

Elizabeth’s eyes darted between the banana and cake. A crease formed between her brow.

“Banana,” Bennett encouraged, steady. “It’s what Mom told us to eat.”

“Cake,” Lilin countered. “Mom isn’t here to tell you no.”

Elizabeth reached in and grabbed the cake, stuffing it into her mouth as she walked toward the door.

Lilin’s eyes slid to Bennett’s. Triumph tightened the corner of her mouth but didn’t become a grin. She had learned early on that a demon’s joy could look like cruelty if worn too proudly in front of an angel.

They settled on Elizabeth’s shoulders as she skipped to the bus stop, humming to herself, the cold air making her breath look like smoke.

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Bennett said at last.

“I take it very seriously,” Lilin said. “If I can turn her away from your Boss, I get my promotion.”

“Demon Lord,” Bennett said, as if the words tasted bitter on his tongue.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You’re climbing, too. Hoping they call you up. Archangel Bennett sounds pretty nice.”

“She’s just a child.”

“She’s a person,” Lilin said. “And people are just blank pages waiting for us to write on them.”

“Well, we disagree about what to write.”

“Good,” Lilin laughed, stretching across Elizabeth’s shoulder, her skirt inching higher on her thighs. “Keeps things interesting.”

They fell silent as the bus doors sighed open, and Elizabeth clambered up the steps with a mouth still sticky with chocolate.

Lilin’s gaze slid to Bennett. A faint smile tugged at the edge of her mouth, too small to be smug and too soft to be cruel.

“Maybe I’ll earn that throne after all,” she said.

Bennett didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to avoid Lilin’s legs.

#

The next battle arrived with a price tag and a plea.

The discount store’s fluorescent lights hummed like insects above. Elizabeth’s sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as she wandered into the toy aisle while her mom looked at the shoes.

Elizabeth’s fingers skimmed over boxes stacked in uneven towers. She paused at a coloring book, considering whether that was what she wanted to get.

Then she saw it. A little glass figurine of a fox, no bigger than her thumb. Its orange back caught the light in fractured sparks, and its tail curled up like a question mark. It wasn’t supposed to be in the toy section at all but had been shoved onto the wrong shelf beside the plastic dolls.

The tag dangling from its tail said $12.99.

Her mother had said she could only get one thing under ten dollars.

“This is simple,” Bennett murmured, folding his hands. “Choose the coloring book. Fun. Calming. Safe.”

“Safe is boring,” Lilin countered, leaning close to Elizabeth’s ear. Her voice like an invitation. “That fox fits right in your pocket. Slide it in, walk away. Nobody notices, nobody cares.”

“You’re telling her to steal!” exclaimed a horrified Bennett.

“I’m asking her to be bold. Do you want her to be a rule-follower forever? Let her test the world. The universe isn’t going to collapse because one kid has a shiny fox in her pocket.”

Elizabeth picked up the figurine. It was cold from the store’s A/C. And small enough to hide in her jean pockets.

“She’s thinking about it,” Bennett said, alarm tightening his tone. “Come on, Elizabeth. You’re better than this.”

“She’s curious. Curiosity is healthy,” Lilin corrected Bennett. To Elizabeth she purred, “Doesn’t it feel exciting, Lizzie? That little rush? That’s freedom. That’s power.”

Elizabeth glanced at her mother, who was distracted at the end of the aisle. Then back at the fox. Her thumb slid over the price tag’s plastic fastener. With one quick tug, it snapped off. The paper fluttered to the floor like a guilty leaf.

“Don’t,” Bennett whispered. It wasn’t a command, but a plea.

Elizabeth slipped the fox into her pocket. Her pulse picked up. She followed her mom toward the register with the coloring book tucked in her hand, her other jammed into her pocket, pressing the glass against her palm so hard it hurt.

At the register, she placed the book on the conveyor. The cashier scanned it with a dull beep.

“That it?” the cashier asked.

Elizabeth froze. Her face burned. It was almost as if she could feel Bennett’s steady gaze from her right, and Lilin’s smirk from her left.

Her eyes dropped to her pocket. To the hidden shape pressing into her hand.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“My mom said ten dollars,” she blurted, voice breaking. “The fox was more. I… I put it in my pocket. I’m sorry.”

The cashier blinked. The woman in line behind them shifted, sighing impatiently. Elizabeth’s mother turned sharply, eyes widening at her daughter.

Elizabeth’s hand shook as she pulled the little figurine from her pocket and set it on the counter.

“Sweetie,” Mom said, softly startled. “Thank you for telling the truth.”

They bought the coloring book. The fox stayed behind, gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

Bennett smiled. His halo glowing just a little bit brighter. Lilin’s eyes narrowed, her tail flicked back in forth in annoyance.

In the car, Elizabeth cried with the full theater of childhood. Hiccups, trembling shoulders, too many tears for a moment that lasted less than a minute.

“Let me work it off,” she gasped. “I’ll do dishes, clean the bathrooms, I’ll do everything forever.”

Her mother’s laugh broke in the middle, a mix of relief and ache. She pulled Elizabeth into a hug. “Not forever. But we’ll talk about chores… And birthdays exist.”

Unseen to the humans in the car, an angel and devil sat on Elizabeth’s shoulders. Bennett exhaled, his own shoulders relaxing. “Look at that.”

“Guilt,” Lilin said, her annoyance clear in her voice. “It’s a very effective teacher.”

Bennett turned toward her. “Looks like your tactics didn’t work this time.”

“I’m… reconsidering my methods,” Lilin muttered. “Like I said, guilt is an effective teacher.”

They sat in silence for a long while.

“You know,” Bennett said carefully, “if you weren’t so—”

“Evil?” Lilin supplied, her mouth tilted.

“I was going to say demonic, but that works too,” Bennett said, “you’d be… tolerable.”

“Careful,” Lilin said. “Put ‘tolerable’ on my review and I might get demoted for insubordination.”

“Ah yes. The Demon Lord promotion.”

“Of course,” she said without theatrics. “It’s every demon’s dream. I clawed my way up and I am not returning to that circle of Hell.”

#

Elizabeth learned kids can be cruel as much as they can be kind.

She overheard some kids in the cafeteria calling her weird behind her back. It happened the way important things often do, casually at first, then all at once. Soon her classmates were calling her the name to her face.

It was Max who said it first, after she raised her hand one too many times, answering a question nobody else cared about. Then the other kids made it stick by laughing and repeating it. They used it to cover everything they didn’t understand about her. Like the clothes she wore, or the books she read.

That night, she cried quietly in her bedroom. The walls in their little house were thin, and she didn’t want her mother to know her daughter was a “weirdo.” She buried her face into her pillow until all she could smell was detergent.

“She’s hurting,” Bennett said softly.

“She’s ten,” Lilin said, but there was no sharpness in it. Her tail lay still. “Kids can be cruel. Maybe it’s time she learned to fight back.”

Bennett turned to her, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I call it balance,” she said. “If they swing first, maybe it’s time she learned how to swing back. Otherwise, she’ll spend her life getting hit.”

“She should turn the other cheek,” Bennett said firmly. “Cruelty doesn’t erase cruelty. Mercy does.”

Lilin laughed cruelly at that.

“Mercy doesn’t teach bullies to stop,” Lilin countered. “It just paints a bigger target.”

They fell into silence, listening to Elizabeth’s muffled sobs.

“You care about her,” Bennett said at last, almost surprised.

“I’m assigned to her,” Lilin said automatically.

“That isn’t the same thing.”

Her shoulders slumped. She looked away. “She’s just my ticket to lordship” she said, voice low, meant for no one in particular.

Bennett didn’t answer with scripture. He didn’t remind her about sin. He simply said, “Then may the best guardian win.”

That night, Elizabeth’s dreams replayed the playground. Max’s smirk, the laughter of her classmates, the knot in her chest. Into the scene stepped two teachers she didn’t recognize, but who felt familiar.

The first, wearing a soft white sweater and gold-rimmed glasses, sat down on the bench beside her and said, “Weird is only a word. Don’t let them make it into a weapon.”

The second teacher wore sharp eyeliner and a dress too short for an elementary school. “You don’t have to take it. Give it back to them. Show them you’re not afraid.”

The bespectacled teacher’s eyes were warm. “Sometimes silence is the stronger reply.”

The other teacher shook her head and smirked. “And sometimes, silence is surrender.”

Elizabeth woke with her heart beating fast and sweat plastering her shirt to her back.

At recess that day, Max called her weird again. Elizabeth felt the air tighten, waiting for her to shrink again. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, loud enough for the others to hear, “I’d rather be weird than boring. At least I’ll grow up to do something cool. You’ll probably grow up to be a garbage man like your daddy.”

Max blinked. A couple of kids laughed, not at her this time, but at him. He turned red, muttered something, and stomped away.

Elizabeth felt satisfaction. For once, everybody was laughing with her.

Bennett sighed. “That was… harsh.”

“A little sharp,” Lilin admitted, her smirk unrestrained, her tail curled around her leg. “But necessary.”

“Mercy would’ve been better,” Bennett said, though even he didn’t sound that sure.

“She stood up for herself,” Lilin said. “That’s better than mercy.”

Elizabeth sat in class with her head high. On her shoulders, the angel and demon shared a silence filled with tension.

For the first time, they let their eyes linger on each other.

#

The summons came like a thunderstorm. Bennett felt it before he saw it, the way you know rain is already in the sky, waiting to fall. The air flared, and a scroll manifested in front of him, its gold edges glowing.

“From Heaven,” he said. The words emerged steadier than he felt.

“A letter from the big man upstairs.” Lilin said, leaning closer, her curiosity winning over her feigned indifference. “What does it say?”

Bennett unrolled the script. Letters flowed in precise lines and the parchment smelled faintly of frankincense.

“Be it known,” he read slowly, “that thou art named for consideration in the rank of Archangel. A time of proving is appointed, wherein thy conduct shall be weighed, thy guidance examined, and thy influence judged. All dealings with the ward entrusted to thee shall be observed, and with those in her company also.”

Lilin raised a brow, her smile sharp as broken glass. “Well, well. Golden boy’s moving up the ladder.”

“It’s not a promotion,” Bennett replied stiffly. “It’s a review. Nothing is guaranteed.”

“It’s a start,” Lilin said. “Exactly what you’ve been begging for, but too afraid to ask for since you sprouted your first feather.”

He rolled the scroll closed, the light snuffing out between his hands. “One should never ask for power.”

“Right, of course, thou shall not covet glory or something like that.” She leaned against Elizabeth’s neck, her red nails tapping idly against the child’s skin. “And yet you want it more than anything.”

Bennett didn’t answer. His silence admission enough to Lilin.

She leaned forward, her breath brushing Elizabeth’s cheek. Her voice turned low, intimate, meant for Bennett alone. “Tell me, does ambition feel holier when you pretend it isn’t ambition?”

Bennett didn’t answer.

Her smile widened, but there was no warmth in it now. “In that case, you’d better sharpen your sermons. Because I’m not going easy on you.”

Starting that day, her whispers came sharper, more pointed. When Elizabeth hesitated over homework, Lilin urged her to copy answers. When she lost a game, Lilin encouraged her to lash out instead of congratulating the winner. When she fought with her mother, Lilin poured salt into the wound, whispering that no one understood her anyway.

Bennett countered every word, his voice firm, patient, and endlessly steady. But it became a battle of inches, each choice Elizabeth made balanced between them like a scale that could tip either way.

One evening, after Elizabeth had stormed into her room and slammed the door, Bennett turned to Lilin, weariness written in the slump of his shoulders.

“Is this really what you want?” he asked.

Lilin’s eyes glinted in the dim lighting. “I want to win.”

But her voice wavered on the last word.

#

The House of the Rising Sun was one of the few places neither Heaven nor Hell could see inside. A truce-zone of sorts, it had been many things across history: a gambling den in Rome, a tea house in Kyoto, a speakeasy in Chicago.

Now it was a low-lit lounge tucked between two unmarked buildings in New Orleans. Half bar, half motel. 

Inside, the ceiling glowed faintly with shifting murals, constellations bleeding into storm clouds, storm clouds dissolving into dawn. Angels and demons sat at tables together, arguing like old friends or glaring like rivals, while mortals who had stumbled in by accident never remembered walking in at all. The air smelled of incense and cigarette smoke. A piano in the corner played itself.

When Bennett walked in and saw her there, he almost turned back to the door.

Lilin sat at the bar, legs crossed, a glass of something dark in her hand, and a vape pen in the other. She exhaled slow, forbidden fruit-scented clouds that curled lazily toward the ceiling. Her horns caught the dim light.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Bennett muttered, sliding onto the stool beside her despite himself.

“And yet, you came anyway,” she shot back, smirking into her glass.

They sat in silence for a while, the piano’s lazy notes filling the space between them.

“You’re pushing her too hard,” Bennett said finally.

“And you’re not pushing her enough,” Lilin countered. “Tell me, when she folds her arms and tells Max to shut up, when she cheats and feels that rush, don’t you feel it too? She’s learning. She’s testing the limits your people have placed on her.”

“You’re trying to break her,” Bennett said, frustration creeping into his voice.

“I’m trying to teach her she doesn’t have to bow every time someone bigger than her tells her to.” Lilin’s voice was low now, stripped of its mocking edge.

Bennett studied her face, the way shadows clung to the curve of her cheek, the way her eyes scanned the room. He watched her neck move as she swallowed her drink. For a moment, he thought she looked beautiful. Then he caught the thought and corrected it.

She looked human.

He hated how human she looked in the half-light. It made it harder to argue with her.

“Why does it matter to you?” he asked softly.

“I’ve told you,” She turned toward him, exhaling another plume of vapor. “I’m in line for a promotion. No more slumming it with the mortals. A Demon Lord, Bennett. That’s the top of the ladder. A seat next to Satan.”

Her tone was light, but her fingers tightened just slightly around the glass, betraying more than she intended.

Bennett didn’t let it go. “That’s your ambition. I’m asking about the reason underneath it. Why do you care if Elizabeth fights back? Why do you care at all?”

For a long moment she said nothing, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on the piano keys that played themselves in the corner. Then she laughed once, low and humorless.

“You really want to know?”

“I do.”

Her gaze flicked up to him. There was no smirk this time, no armor. Just the truth, and the sting of it.

“I wasn’t always a demon. You knew that already.”

The words pulled the air taut. Bennett sat a little straighter.

“I fought in the War,” Lilin continued. “When Lucifer fell, I fell with him. We were fighting for freedom. Freedom from obedience, from rules carved in stone by a hand that never asked us what we wanted. I was told rebellion would make us strong.”

Her mouth curved. “It made us damned.”

Bennett swallowed, the familiar weight of Heaven’s history pressing against his ribs. “A fallen angel.”

Her smirked deepened, “We all are. Every demon you’ve ever fought with wore white wings once. My feathers have been plucked from mine.” She gestured to the black leathery wings on her back.

“What’s Hell like?” Bennett asked before he could stop himself.

Lilin set her glass down carefully. “At first, they dropped me in Lust.”

She paused and met his eyes. “That’s how it works, you don’t get to choose your circle. Lust isn’t what you think it is, though. It’s not satin sheets and wine. It’s a constant storm. Wind that cuts like knives and acid rain. Souls wander, desperate for shelter, for touch, something to make them feel alive again. And every time they reach for it, we take it away.”

Her eyes grew distant, her voice quieter.

“We seduce them, offer warmth, a kiss, and more. When they say yes, which they inevitably always do, the punishment falls twice as hard. That was my job. My existence. To tempt, to betray, and then laugh while they suffered.”

Bennett’s throat tightened. “And you… enjoyed this?”

She shot him a sharp look. “They always had it coming.”

Bennett blinked, and Lilin’s eyes softened slightly.

“Do you think anyone enjoys listening to screams day after day? But you learn to deal with it. You have to.”

Her eyes burned now, a soft orange glow like an ember, “No. I didn’t enjoy it. But I was good at it. Too good. That’s why I got promoted. Guardian demon. A new assignment. Another way to prove myself.”

The silence between them was thick, filled with the weight of everything she’d said. Bennett wanted to reach for her then. He foolishly wanted to take her hand. But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “And yet here you are. Sitting with me. Fighting over a little girl’s choices.”

“Because every choice matters,” Lilin said. She leaned closer, her voice dropping to something raw. “Don’t you see? If she learns to stand on her own two feet, if she learns she doesn’t need Heaven’s approval, or Hell’s, then she’s free.”

Bennett stared at her. The piano played on, soft and steady, as though it were keeping time for their unspoken words.

The words lingered between them, heavier than the smoke curling above their heads. Their faces were close enough to feel each other’s breath.

Neither of them moved. And neither of them looked away.

#

Years have peculiar flow when measured from a human shoulder. They go by fast and slow at the same time.

The summer Elizabeth turned fourteen, she found a wallet on the sidewalk, fat with cash. She thought about the school trip to D.C. that her mother was trying to afford. She thought about the groceries her mother had put back the day before, cookies and ice cream, because the cart was already full of necessary things.

“Return it,” Bennett urged her. “It’s not yours.”

“Look inside,” Lilin countered, reclining on her shoulder with one brow arched. “Whose is it? People who lose things that easily… maybe don’t deserve to keep them.”

Elizabeth opened the wallet. A library card. Receipts. A few bills. A photograph of a little boy grinning with two missing teeth. A folded note, torn from a spiral notebook: ‘Dad, you forgot your lunch. I put your favorite chips in your briefcase. Love, Eli.’

She shut the wallet and turned in a slow circle until she found a man on a bench staring down at his hands. He looked up when Elizabeth approached, and hope bloomed across his features.

“Is this…?” she asked, holding it out.

“Yes,” he said, the word conveying a story behind it. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He offered to give her a twenty. She didn’t take it.

On the walk home, she wondered to herself if he truly needed the money. His clothes looked expensive, and he gave away the money so easily.

 “God rewards those who do good,” Bennett said in her ear.

“God doesn’t pay the bills,” Lilin countered, a finger poking the tip of her horn absentmindedly.

Elizabeth frowned.

“Earthly materials won’t follow you to Heaven.” Bennett reminded her.

“But they sure feel good on earth.” Lilin pointed out.

#

At eighteen, Elizabeth fell in love for the first time. His name was Adam, and he said the word future like an invitation rather than a threat. He kissed her like he wasn’t trying to be careful.

They sat in his car at the edge of a lake one evening and talked about things they couldn’t afford yet, and what their futures held.

“I want you,” Adam said carefully, the sentence so much older than either of them.

“Wait,” Bennett whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. “There is sanctity in patience.”

“Wait until when?” Lilin asked her, reclined in the hollow of her collar bone. “Until a preacher blesses it? Until a government recognizes it? Until ‘God’s holy judgment’? You get to say yes or no. You get to say now or not yet.”

“Not everything must be taken just because it’s offered,” Bennett said more to Lilin than Elizabeth now.

“Not everything must be denied just because it’s desired,” Lilin shot back, sharper than before.

Bennett’s halo flickered. “Desire isn’t always wise.”

“And fear isn’t always holy,” Lilin said.

Elizabeth wrestled with her choices inwardly. She eventually told Adam she wasn’t ready, and he, trying to be a good guy, nodded and put his forehead on the steering wheel. They sat like that a long time.

On the drive home, Elizabeth blinked back tears. Not because she regretted her answer. But because part of her was afraid Adam would go looking for something easier.

“Did I make the right decision?” she asked herself that night.

“Yes,” Bennett said.

“Because it was your choice,” Lilin countered.

After Elizabeth fell asleep, her two guardians lingered longer than usual. Sitting on the edge of her window, staring out into the dark sky.

“You’d rather she had said yes,” Bennett said softly.

“Of course,” Lilin replied easily. “But she made her own decision. That’s what matters.”

“Even when it hurts?” he asked, more gently than she expected.

“Especially then.” She crossed her arms and turned to him. “Choice means nothing if it’s always easy.”

“You make it sound holy,” Bennett said, half-smiling. 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said, nudging Bennett with her shoulder. Their wings grazed each other, sending a shiver through them both.

Bennett moved away first and cleared his throat.

“You’re happy she said no,” Lilin said.

“Of course,” Bennett said, and his half-smile returned.

#

The streets of Heaven were paved with gold that whispered underfoot. No machines, no wires, no sound of engines or alarms. Just the hush of robes, the murmur of wings. The buildings rose like cathedrals that had never been ruined by war. Everything shimmered faintly with light.

Souls wandered peacefully, dressed in everything from jeans and knight’s armor, to hospital gowns and pajamas. Modern lives carried into a place that refused to modernize itself. They looked unburdened. As if Saint Peter had asked them to set their griefs aside at the pearly gates and they’d obeyed.

Bennett stood in the Hall of Radiance, a vast chamber where the walls themselves were made of jasper and gold.

Above him arched seven thrones, impossibly high, each occupied by an archangel whose presence warped the space around them. They radiated purity, purpose, and power.

At the center sat Michael, his golden armor glinting. “Guardian Angel Bennett. We have been observing you.”

Bennett bowed his head. His halo burned brighter as if straining to impress.

Raphael’s voice rang out next, smooth and steady. “In Elizabeth’s thirteenth Spring you guided her toward confession and reconciliation with a friend she’d hurt. Your counsel was sound, your influence steady.”

“In her sixteenth Summer,” said Uriel, his flaming sword in his hand, “you urged her to use her wages responsibly, on groceries rather than luxurious shoes. She obeyed. Practicality was honored.”

“In her twentieth Autumn,” added Gabriel, “you suggested she enter a church, and she did. A moment of reverence and honor for Him.”

The words rolled like thunder. Bennett’s chest swelled. Surely this was enough. Surely, they saw he was worthy.

Then Michael spoke again. “Your influence is good. Your compliance…” The pause felt like a stone thrown in the river. “…adequate.”

The word echoed in the Hall, flat and merciless.

Adequate.

Bennett’s heart fell. Adequate was not how archangels were made. Adequate was a polite dismissal.

“You may continue in service,” Michael concluded. “Your candidacy remains under review.”

The light dimmed. The thrones receded. And Bennett was left standing alone in a room that suddenly felt too big for him.

That night, he found Lilin at the House of the Rising Sun.

The lounge smelled of smoke and sweat, the ceiling shifting its constellations overhead. Lilin was perched at the bar, a glass in one hand, her vape glowing softly in the other. Her wings were spread wide, with no concern for the other beings around her. She turned when she felt him beside her, one eyebrow raised.

“You look like someone told you they were plucking your wings,” she said.

“Worse. They said my influence is good,” Bennett muttered, sitting heavily. “But my compliance is adequate.”

Lilin’s smile was slow, dangerous. “Adequate. What a delicious word.”

“Don’t,” he said, sharper than he intended.

“I wasn’t mocking you,” she replied.

He stared at the bar’s polished surface, his reflection warped in the white-veined black marble. “Adequate,” he repeated, quieter. “All my work hasn’t been good enough.”

Comfort wasn’t Lilin’s specialty, but she tried anyway.

“You’d hate being an archangel,” she said.

“That’s not true,” Bennett said.

“Yes it is,” she said. “Because if you became one, you’d never get to see me again.”

She sipped her drink, slow and deliberate. Her voice dropped an octave, almost thoughtful.

Lilin looked at him then. She noticed the sharp line of his jaw, the soft gold of his hair. Everything about him was light and order. Everything she’d learned to hate in Hell.

For a moment, she remembered what desire once felt like, before it became a weapon. She looked away before the thought could finish.

Lilin shook her head. “And I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

Bennett didn’t respond. Didn’t even look at her.

He couldn’t let her know how deeply, terrifyingly true that felt.

#

Hell’s central city gleamed like a nightmare made of chrome and smoke.

It rose from black volcanic glass, skyscrapers burning at the tips like torches. The streets hissed with steam. Souls labored beneath billboards advertising sins in neon letters. Above it all, at the city’s heart, stood a building that looked like a luxury hotel crossed with a cathedral. Spiked gates. Glass elevators. Endless red carpet.

Lucifer’s mansion.

The last time Lilin had been summoned here, she’d just earned her promotion to Guardian. She’d been proud then.

She didn’t feel so proud now.

She stepped out of the ferry that carried her across the lava river and into the heat of the main foyer. Screams echoed faintly from far-off corridors. She barely noticed anymore.

The boardroom was carved into the upper floor of one of the tallest towers. There was a table carved from charcoal, glowing faintly with embers, charred-leather chairs, and a panoramic view of Hell’s seven sin districts, each burning on its own island.

Seven Demon Lords waited for her at the table, dressed in sleek black suits and spiked rings. One of them swirled a drink that steamed with red mist. Another filed her talons without looking up.

The center one, Beelzebub, leaned forward. Flies surrounded his head, almost like a buzzing, black halo.

“Lilin,” he purred. “We’re so pleased.”

She arched a brow. “I didn’t realize I’d submitted a progress report.”

“Oh, but you have,” Leviathan said, smiling with far too many sharp teeth. “In every moment you’ve stood on the girl. In every whisper you gave her. And now… in the angel.”

A chill crawled up her spine.

“We know,” said Berith, clad in a blood red suit. “About Bennett.”

Lilin’s tail twitched.

“He watches you,” Beelzebub continued. “Longer than he should. He speaks to you instead of the girl. He doubts Heaven because of you.”

“I haven’t touched him,” she said automatically.

“But you’ve tempted him,” Asmodeus said. “And that’s far better.”

Lilin didn’t respond. She suddenly felt smaller than she liked.

“You’ve done beautifully,” Beelzebub went on. “Tempting a mortal is routine. Tempting an angel? That’s rare. That’s art. We never told you to lead Elizabeth astray at the cost of him. But watching you draw light toward shadow?” His flies buzzed louder. “Delicious.”

“Lucifer sends his regards,” Leviathan added. “He’s been watching too.”

That made her stomach twist.

“We’re not here to warn you,” Beelzebub said, as if reading her discomfort. “We’re here to thank you. And encourage you. Don’t be afraid to lean into what’s working.”

Lilin swallowed. “And what exactly is that?”

Beelzebub’s smile widened. “Your seduction.”

She looked out the glass wall, where the Lust district suffered in eternal storm clouds. She remembered what it felt like to tempt without guilt.

This didn’t feel like that.

“Is that… the goal now?” she asked slowly. “Corrupting an angel?”

The Demon Lords exchanged a glance and then laughed cruelly.

“The goal is always the same,” Berith said. “Prove that no being is incorruptible.”

Lilin stood there a long time, trying to decide whether the pit in her stomach was joy or guilt.

#

Elizabeth’s mother got sick the way old people do, slowly, then all at once. The doctors spoke gently because there was no medicine for what was wrong. A ventilator hummed in the corner like a low, tired singer.

“Keep her on support,” Bennett told Elizabeth, and he hated the way the word support looked when it sat next to suffering.

“She didn’t want this,” Lilin said into her ear. “Remember? She told you when you were fourteen and grandma died that she wanted to die in her own bed, surrounded by the comforts of home.”

“Taking her off life support is the same as killing her,” Bennett said. “She’d die on the way home anyway.”

“Miracles can happen right?” Lilin said more to Bennett than Elizabeth.

Elizabeth listened to Lilin. She held her mother’s hand and tried to feel her pulse. She told the doctors she’s taking her mother home. Even if it means she dies.

Removing the life support felt like both a crime and a mercy. She read a psalm, not because she believed it would open the gates of Heaven, but because her mother had believed, and ritual is also a kind of faith.

Her mother died soon after Elizabeth tucked her into bed. She was there to witness the moment her body became an empty vessel. And she asked herself if she killed her mom.

“Yes,” Bennett answered. The word was a fishing hook dropping into a lake. Softly, but enough to send ripples. “But there is comfort to be found. Your mother is with the Father and His Son.”

“No,” Lilin stared at him, her voice low and brittle. She turned to speak into Elizabeth’s ear. “God allowed this to happen, he is the one who killed her. You did the right thing, because what is a life if it is not truly living.”

“Don’t act like Hell is kinder,” he said to Lilin.

“I’m not,” she replied. “But at least we don’t pretend suffering is sacred.”

They looked at each other across Elizabeth’s bowed shoulders. Two eternal beings caught in the ache of mortality.

For a long time, they sat in silence.

Bennett eventually sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Lilin didn’t answer right away. She was watching Elizabeth, but her voice, when it came, was aimed only at him.

“You always are.”

There was no bite in it or venom. Just tiredness.

“You think that makes you better?” she asked.

“No,” Bennett answered automatically. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

That made Lilin turn and hiss. “Don’t quote prayer to me! How dare you.”

“Sorry,” Bennett said while looking down at his feet.

Lilin rolled her eyes. “There you go again. Your weakness astounds me.”

“I’m not weak. I’m obedient.” He responded, his wings drooping slightly.

“It’s the same thing, sometimes,” she murmured.

He looked at her then, halo dim, eyes hollow. “What would you have me be?”

Lilin met his gaze. Her expression softened, and something unreadable passed behind her eyes.

Mine, she almost said. But instead, she stood.

“Someone who thinks for himself.”

And then she vanished, leaving the smell of sulfur and the ache of something unspoken behind her.

#

Bennett received another notice from Heaven. The scroll did not burn, but it glowed like something from the days when the world was young.

“Be it declared,” it read, “that appointment unto the rank of Archangel is deferred. For it is found that irregularities have blemished the measure of thy influence, and that thy dealings have been mingled with an Adversarial Agent.”

He read it aloud so that the words would have to live in the world. Lilin listened without flinching.

“You knew this would happen,” he said.

“I figured,” she said with a shrug.

“Do you even care?” he said, his voice breaking.

“I am sorry,” she said at once. “But not for that.”

He closed his eyes. “I am not appointed.”

“So what?” she said. “I doubt being an archangel is all it’s promised to be.”

“What did Hell say to you?” he asked.

Lilin shrugged as if it were nothing. “That my final trial was to induce sin on a scale of nations. That my inconsistent performance on Elizabeth suggested either weakness or treason. That if I didn’t turn Elizabeth away from Him, my candidacy would be reviewed at the level of the Pits.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That they sounded a whole lot like your people,” she said. “They did not find that funny.”

He laughed then, and he hated himself for laughing.

“Do we stop?” he asked at last. “Do we choose the roles we were meant for?”

“I don’t know what I’m meant for anymore,” Lilin said.

They were both quiet, waiting to hear words they were both too afraid to say to each other. The wind at the open window moved a curtain like the breath of a sleeping giant.

Elizabeth slept in bed, her soft snores filling the space. Beside her on the nightstand lay a notebook full of grocery lists and ideas. A charity she wanted to start, a list of people she needed to apologize to, a recipe for bread written in her mother’s handwriting.

“So, we stay with her… with each other?”

“Always,” Lilin said.

They did not touch. They did not need to. Love does not require the closing of distance. Sometimes it requires the honoring of it.

#

Years passed, as they’re bound to do. Elizabeth married a gentle man who worked with his hands and spoke truth even when she didn’t want to hear it. She had a daughter and named her Mara, and for a time her life was the kind of busy that looks like purpose and sometimes masks the fear you’ve stopped becoming who you dreamed of.

She fought with her husband in whispers after midnight about money and whose turn it was to rise when the baby cried. They both said things they would apologize for later.

She worked at a clinic where she learned that bureaucratic mercy is mercy nonetheless. She did not attend church but stopped sometimes for Confession, not because she believed, but because she wasn’t sure she didn’t.

On her shoulders, Lilin and Bennett remained. They still argued, but the tone had changed. Less cutting remarks or preaching sermons.

When Mara, at eight, stole a ring with a plastic stone from a thrift store, Elizabeth recognized at once the feeling of the impulse, the way it felt like someone was daring you to do it.

She walked Mara back into the store and had her return the ring. Mara cried. The teenage clerk said, “It’s fine,” in a tone that meant she didn’t care. Elizabeth had Mara apologize anyway. They went for ice cream afterward because honesty has to have some kind of reward.

On the drive home, Elizabeth told her daughter, “I stole a fox figurine once.”

“Liar,” Mara said, hiccuping.

“I did,” Elizabeth said. “I tried to, at least. But the reason I remember it so clearly is because how I felt when I told the truth.”

“Did it make you feel good?” Mara asked.

“No,” Elizabeth said. “But I knew it was the right thing to do.”

On her shoulders, Bennett closed his eyes and his halo glowed a bit brighter. Lilin’s tail whipped once, twice, like a metronome.

Bennett looked across at Lilin and smiled softly.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she muttered.

“I wasn’t,” he said, too quickly.

“Weren’t you?” Her voice was low now.

And in that moment, on the shoulder of a woman who never knew they were there, the distance between angel and demon narrowed, just slightly.

#

The House of the Rising Sun pulsed low with candlelight and piano, thick with incense. Bennett arrived first this time, though he wouldn’t admit he had watched the clock for an hour. He sat on their usual stools at the bar, drinking something that tasted like sunlight steeped in citrus and burned on the way down.

Lilin appeared without ceremony, sliding in next to him with a crooked smile, her horns catching the low light. She ordered something stronger from the bartender. She took a hit from her vape, blowing the forbidden-fruit vapor in his direction.

The scent of overripe apples just beginning to rot filled his senses.

Lilin swirled her drink slowly, watching the light catch the glass. “She snapped at Mara today.”

Bennett nodded. “I know. She was tired, overwhelmed. The kid spilled juice, and Elizabeth acted like it was betrayal.”

“She apologized after,” Lilin rolled her eyes, but without malice.

Bennett glanced at her. “Yeah, but only after I told her it was okay to be wrong.”

Lilin’s jaw tightened slightly. “And I told her to be harder on Mara.”

There was a pause.

“She didn’t need either of us, really,” Lilin said. “She needed sleep. Or maybe grace.”

Bennett looked down into his glass. “We’re not always good at this.” His halo flickered faintly above his head like a candle trying not to extinguish.

She huffed a quiet laugh. “Speak for yourself.”

They sat a long while, trading half-thoughts and silence. Their hands gradually crept closer. Lilin laughed at Bennett’s joke, her hand brushed his arm.

He could feel the heat radiating off her.

 At some point, the tip of her tail nudged against his shin beneath the table. He shifted in his chair.

Eventually, Lilin stood. Her black wings unfurled slightly as she turned. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

She didn’t answer, just walked through a curtain at the back of the room that faintly glowed red at the edges. Bennett hesitated for the width of a breath and then followed.

Lilin grabbed his hand tugging him after her. His own wings, white and soft, tucked tighter to his back, almost shy.

The backrooms were small, warm, and strange in its softness. She led him into one that had a bed covered in dark gray sheets and three mirrors lining the walls.

“One for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Lilin joked.

Bennett didn’t laugh.

The air shifted the second the curtain fell behind them. Lilin turned to face him, and the playfulness dropped. What remained was something weightier.

“Just for a moment,” she said, stepping close. “Let’s just see.”

Bennett’s breath hitched. Her hand rose, fingertips grazing the side of his face. He didn’t stop her.

Her nails were sharp enough to puncture skin, but she was gentle as she caressed his cheek.

She leaned in slowly, rising up on her toes. Even in heels he was so much taller than her. She’d never noticed that before.

Her wings spread wider behind her, black and leathery. His remained tight, a stark contrast to the darkened room.

Bennett looked down at her with wide, luminous eyes. Unsure and unguarded. He knew he should stop this. This was sinful. This was unholy. This was… right.

Their lips met, and it was not a battle. It was quiet, slow, nearly reverent.

Lilin took it a step further, sliding her tongue into his mouth with practiced ease.

He responded like someone who had waited centuries for this moment.

Her hands moved lower, toward the fastening of his khaki pants.

He didn’t stop her as she undid his belt. He continued to kiss her as she unbuttoned his pants.

But she stopped herself.

Lilin pulled back, her breath uneven, her forehead resting against his chest.

“We shouldn’t,” she whispered.

 She could finish this. And Bennett would fall. And then she’d rise.

Bennett didn’t speak. His breath came out ragged, his eyes wide with an innocence that made Lilin uncomfortable.

Lilin exhaled slowly, shaking. She stepped away and sat on the edge of the bed like someone returning from a long day of battle.

“I’m not who I used to be,” she said, irritation mingled with acceptance in her voice.

“I know,” he said.

“And neither are you,” she told him.

They sat with the truth of that. It filled the room.

After a long pause, Lilin looked up at him, softer than he’d ever seen her.

“You should go,” she said.

He nodded but didn’t move right away. He continued to stare at her. Eventually, he turned and left, the curtain falling closed behind him like a slow exhale.

#

The summons from Heaven came back after years of silence. This time it was delivered on a golden scroll.

Bennett’s eyes traced the solemn lines.

“Be it declared,” he read, “that appointment unto the rank of Archangel is denied. The cause is set forth: a persistent admixture that hath corrupted the measure of influence. A secondary cause is named: deviations from holy protocol, wrought in service of mortal autonomy.”

Bennett bowed his head. He had thought it would feel like failure. Instead it felt like a completed sentence.

“Hell summoned me too,” Lilin said, not unkindly. “They asked if I’m ready to trade this shoulder for a throne.”

“What did you say?” Bennett asked.

“That a throne is just a chair,” Lilin said. “They didn’t like that.”

“What did they really want?” he asked.

“To know if I’ve succeeded,” she said. “To know if you’re falling.”

He didn’t respond right away.

“Are you?” she asked softly, but there was no triumph in it.

Bennett looked at her, and for once didn’t try to hide. “If I am, it wasn’t because you seduced me.”

“You’re not supposed to lie,” Lilin said, quieter now.

His breath caught. “What will they do?” he asked.

“Watch,” she said. “As they always have.”

“What will we do?” he asked.

“Love,” she said simply. “Her. Each other. The work. And then we keep doing it.”

He looked at her then, the way someone looks when their past and the future are both present at the same time.

He reached for her hand. And she held his tightly.

#

When Elizabeth was eighty, she stopped pretending she could carry groceries without help. She learned the names of the young clerks and asked about their exams. She wrote letters to politicians she had once mocked. She reread the books she had loved at fifteen.

She practiced choosing something unnecessary once a week, like a pastry or shoes, as if it were a ritual.

She dreamed more often of a teacher in a sweater and another in a tight skirt. In the dreams, they didn’t speak. They sat with her in rooms made of memories, light, and shadows. When she woke from those dreams, she felt less alone.

At eighty-seven, she got pneumonia and then, as if the body had been waiting for permission, other things. The doctors spoke of treatments. Elizabeth shook her head.

“I am done,” she said to Mara, who cried and called her stubborn and kissed her cheek as if the body could absorb love through pressure.

Elizabeth signed the papers. She did not want machines this time. She did not want a room that smelled like bleach. She wanted a window and the sound of the street and the smell of bread in the oven.

She wanted her mother and knew she’d see her soon.

The hospice nurse was a man with kind eyes and a dogeared book he read to patients who wanted company. Elizabeth did. He read her lines that made her feel like she could bear any weight without breaking.

On her last evening, Mara held Elizabeth’s hand and fell asleep in the chair. The light outside turned into the color of honey. A neighbor played an old song on a radio, its static familiar.

“Am I good?” Elizabeth asked the room, not because she thought anyone would answer, but because the question had been her companion so long it deserved to be invited to say goodbye.

“You are loved,” Bennett said.

“You are you,” Lilin said.

The breaths changed the way they do. There are only so many ways the body can tell us it’s done. Elizabeth took one more, and then she didn’t.

Silence came, not like a door slamming, but like a tide pulling back.

Bennett and Lilin rose from her shoulders together. They were as tall as the room.

Double doors opened behind them to Purgatory.

“This is where we say goodbye.” Bennett said. It felt like a betrayal to speak.

“We don’t say goodbye,” Lilin said. “We say, see you next time.”

They watched Elizabeth’s soul sit up from the bed like someone rising after a nap. She looked at them and was not startled.

“You,” she said, full of gratitude and amusement.

“Us,” Lilin said, with a little bow.

“Did I do everything right?” Elizabeth asked.

Bennett’s mouth trembled. “Yes.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Thanks to you two.”

“No,” Lilin said. “It was all you.”

Elizabeth reached for them as if to touch their faces, but her hand passed through light and shadow. It didn’t matter. Sometimes it’s the gesture that counts.

“Where now?” she asked.

“Where He chooses,” Bennett said and Lilin rolled her eyes.

“Will you be there?” she asked.

“No,” Lilin said, and there was love in the refusal. “You do this part alone. We’ve done all we can do.”

Elizabeth nodded. She looked at her daughter asleep in the chair. She looked at the window. She looked at the loaf of bread on the counter, which had finished rising and would need to be baked by someone else.

“Thank you,” she said to them both, and then she turned and walked into a light that was not an end.

Bennett and Lilin resumed their smaller size. A dog barked two houses down. Somewhere, a car alarm went off.

Mara woke and saw, and her grief was loud and then quiet.

Bennett and Lilin returned to the shoulders they had guarded, out of habit, out of love, even though the vessel beneath them was empty now. They stayed a little longer anyway.

“What now?” Bennett asked at last.

Lilin looked at the space where Elizabeth had been and at the space where she still was. “We rest,” she said. “We wait. Until next time.”

“You would do it again?” Bennett asked.

“I would love again across the span of a neck,” Lilin said. “Even if it costs me every promotion Hell ever dangled. Especially then.”

He turned to her. “I wanted to be an archangel so badly,” he said, voice naked of any pretense. “I thought elevation would mean certainty. But the farther up I climbed, the less I could see faces. I want faces. I want decisions that hurt and heal. I want the ache of being near a person’s freedom. I want—”

“—to be who you choose to be?” Lilin said.

He nodded. “And you.”

She tilted her head with a wicked smile. “Do you know what that makes you?”

“Fallen?”

Lilin shook her head, “No. Interesting,” she smiled with all the weariness and wonder of a thousand years.

A breeze moved the curtain. Down the hall, the oven beeped as it preheated. The hospice nurse returned with his book and closed it when he saw Mara’s face. He sat with her and did not read anything.

Bennett and Lilin looked out at a street where a boy on a skateboard held the hand of his little sister as he pushed, careful to keep her from falling. A woman shouted at a dog to drop its leash.

“Until the next shoulder,” Bennett said.

“Until the next shoulder,” Lilin repeated.

They did not hold hands. They did not need to. Between them stretched the memory of a woman who chose and chose and chose, and in the space of her choosing, they had found themselves.

They waited together in the quiet that follows a good life, and when the call came, not a scroll or a shadow, just a tug, a familiar pull, they went.

One up, one down.