"Why," Gabriel said quietly, "did you have to poke him."
It wasn't really a question. Not the kind that expected an answer, anyway.
Her voice carried the calm inevitability of someone who had already lived through the consequences, who had already seen the mountains fall, the sky fracture, the desert ripple like water, and was now circling back to the one small decision that had set everything in motion.
Lucifer lay half-reclined against a section of stone that had once been part of a wall.
The stone was cracked now, hairline fractures spidering through it, dust still clinging to his coat in a way that suggested he had not yet bothered to clean himself off.
He looked up at the ceiling -- or what remained of it -- and followed the sunlight pouring through the four jagged openings overhead.
Three of them let in warm desert light, the fourth still smoked faintly.
He exhaled slowly, as if testing whether breathing was still worth the effort.
