Page 11 of Prince of Ruin
“Love you too. And tell Rodrigo the equivalent of wet panties is a tent popper.” She’d heard the others in the Brotherhood joke about it, though she’d never gotten up close and personal.
Something in her heart just wouldn’t let her.
Tay vanished.
But this time it was for good.
Sometimes a bull in a china shop was the best cover. Nobody would ever suspect they had a master thief on their hands if she just blew their wards like a rookie.
Sera strode straight through the laser beams.
“Wow,” she said, spinning around and looking up at the art on the walls. Enormous marble columns supported the ceiling. “Holy fuck. Is that a Michelangelo?”
Long dead, but then, his soul had to be somewhere.
And demons could sometimes hijack a mortal’s body, plug in a long-dead soul, and force it to create new masterpieces for them.
After all, there’d always been rumors that Michelangelo had sold his soul—and any information he could offer to his new masters once he was inside the papal palaces—for the gift of his art.
Lucifer stared down at her from the painting. She could see immediately that it was Lucifer’s Fall. A thousand stars streamed through an inky black sky with the former angel. A thousand angels, who served as his bannermen.
It took her breath all over again. The First of the First. The Morningstar. The most beautiful. And with him, all the others who’d fought free of their chains of Grace and Glory.
Staring at the painting was starting to make her eyes water.
She felt that call again, felt that moment when she’d stood on the edge of Heaven and reached out her hand toward Azazel—though he hadn’t been known by that name then.
“Don’t go. Stay. With me.”
“Come,” he’d countered. “Comewithme.”
Heaven cracked in that moment.
The damage was so immense it took centuries to repair some of the harm. And when the last fight had begun, those stopgap seals had torn open as Lucifer and his minions broke Michael’s forces upon the wretched earth, and brought about the Fall.
“A strange piece to stop a thief in their tracks.”
The whisper froze her heart.
Sera slowly let her gaze drop from the painting. She spun around, but there was nothing there.
Only shadows and whispers.
Showtime.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I’m not a thief.”
“No?”
There, further into the gallery.
Sera strode toward the patch of shadow, but it was gone again. And as she turned, she caught sight of a glass case in front of her. The one with the cask.
But right beside it, out of the corner of her eye, lay a single broken shard from an angel blade. Golden runes traced the blessed steel—it was fucking real—but she couldn’t get close enough to see if they belonged to the Sword of Grace, and she didn’t dare let her attention focus upon it.
“That cask holds one of the seals of Heaven,” said the voice, from behind her. It sounded amused. “Tell me again that you’re not here to steal it.”
Sera backed away from the seal. If she touched that thing, she’d level the building. “I’m not here to steal it. What is this place? What are these things?”
