Free Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy by Linda Poitevin Page A

there. Until the One stopped and faced him.
    “He shouldn’t have survived.”
    “Who shouldn’t?”
    “Seth. He should have died in the transition.”
    Mika’el’s entire being went still. “Excuse me?”
    “After Aramael killed Caim, when Mittron came to me to see what punishment the Power would face, I read his intent. I knew the Highest Seraph wished to eliminate the Appointed.”
    “Wait.” He shook his head to clear it. “You
knew
what Mittron intended and you let him continue? But why?”
    The One’s timeless, ageless face became old and weary and unbearably sad.
    “My son had become weak. Too weak to carry out what we asked of him. Something in him had changed. Turned wrong. He hid it from me and I couldn’t see what it was. I believe in humanity, Mika’el. I’ve always believed in them. I would never have suggested the agreement to Lucifer otherwise. You know that. But I no longer trusted Seth’s ability to become one of them, to learn to have faith in them as I do. I couldn’t allow the transition to go forward.”
    Mika’el shook his head, unable to believe what he heard. “You wanted him to die.” A statement, not a question. “Your own son.”
    The One’s chin lifted a fraction. “There were seven billion souls at stake. Whole and unharmed, Seth would almost certainly have chosen in our favor—at the very least we would have had an equal chance and an additional few years before I—” Her mouth pulling tight, she stopped and gazed into the distance. “I couldn’t risk it. I had no choice.”
    “You
did
have a choice. Then. Now. Six thousand years ago. Stopping Lucifer has always been a choice, but you just don’t want to see it.”
    “It’s not that simple.”
    “It
is
that simple,” Mika’el snarled, old angers surging up in him. He stalked the broad width of the path. “The only complication is you. If you had done what needed to be done when all this began—if you had let
me
do what needed to be done—we would not be here now. But you refused, because you wanted to believe in
him
, in his potential. Evenwhen your decision nearly decimated your angels, you would not move against him. Instead, you took away your angels’ free will—all that made them individual and unique, so you could try to contain the one who had
chosen
to fall from your grace.
    “Even now you engage in some kind of cat-and-mouse game with your former consort,” he accused, “and to what end? The hope he might yet change? That he might see the error of his ways? The mortals you created are suffering because of him, One. I’ve witnessed their torment every day since leaving your side, and now—now you tell me you would have sacrificed your own son for him?”
    Mika’el stopped pacing and looked down on her, and then, his voice hoarse, laid bare the depth of his own and Heaven’s anguish.
    “Why?” he asked. “Why choose Lucifer over all the rest of your creations?”
    For a very long time, the One stared past him, her face white and marble-still. Above them, a passing breeze rustled through the treetops, carrying with it the song of a distant bird.
    “Is that what you think?” the One asked at last.
    Mika’el could not answer past the thickness in his throat, could not tell her it was what all her angels thought. What they’d always thought.
    His Creator shook her head. “You’re wrong, Mika’el. It is not in my nature—not in my capacity—to favor any one life over another. Every living thing in this universe is a part of me, created from me. Who I am,
what
I am, demands I love them all.”
    “But Lucifer is evil, damn it—how can you continue to love him when you know what he has done? What he is capable of?”
    “Because I must,” she snapped, taking up the pacing Mika’el had abandoned. “Because I am the One, and all life flows from me, and I cannot value that life based on whether or not it meets your standards any more than I could based on Lucifer’s.”
    Mika’el’s