Her eyes widened. "You cry?"

He scoffed. "I said I could, not that I do."

"Then how do you know you can?"

"I’ve shed a few tears a time or two," he admitted. "Hitting the gate hurts like a son of a bitch."

"I saw," she said. "Yesterday."

"I know."

"You shouldn’t have come after me," she insisted. "You couldn’t have stopped me."

He laughed dryly. "That’s where you’re wrong. I could’ve stopped you at any time. You left because I let you leave."

Her brow furrowed. "Then why did you put yourself through that? Why didn’t you just stop me if you could?"

"I told you—I’m not in the business of taking away free will. I wanted you to choose to turn around, to choose to come back. But you didn’t, even after the reapers attacked me. Message received, angel, loud and fucking clear."

"How could you have stopped me?" she asked. "You can’t hurt me."

Lucifer snapped his fingers, the room fading away to pure blackness. Serah felt like she was hovering in a void of space with no way to escape—no entrance, no exit, no nothing. Her Hell. "Okay, I get it. Enough."

No response.

She spun around in a circle, searching for Lucifer, but there was no sign of him anywhere. She tried to run, but she had no sense of direction. It was like gravity no longer existed. "Stop this!"

Still no response.

Time withered away, her panic escalating. She tried flying, her wings rapidly expanding, but she couldn’t tell if she was getting anywhere with no ground to soar off from. It could’ve been a minute or an hour, a day or a week—time meant nothing in a vast pit of nothingness.

Terror ran through her, a cold sensation overtaking her body. "Lucifer!"

At the sound of a snap, Serah was instantly back on her feet in the meeting room, eyes wild, hair windblown. Lucifer sat in his throne, not appearing to have moved an inch. Most of the flowers lay in a heap at his feet but he held one—a pale pink wildflower. "Terrifying, isn’t it? Being trapped? No wonder it's your Hell."

"You’re horrible!"

Lucifer ignored the jab and motioned to the table in front of him for the second time since she’d burst into the room. "Have a seat."

Serah tentatively approached him. Instead of taking a seat in one of the black chairs, she hoisted herself up on the table, feet dangling off the side as she faced him. She was so close she could thrust her foot out and kick him if she so desired.

With the mood she was in, it was certainly a possibility.

"Why’d you do it?" she asked quietly. "That’s all I want to know. Why?"

"I've done a lot, so you're going to have to be more specific," he said. "Why’d I rebel? Why’d I give everything up? Why’d I cheat at War? Why’d I crash into the gate like a fucking suicidal imbecile?"

"No," she said. "Why'd you kiss me?"

He twirled the flower between his fingers, bringing it to his nose and inhaling. "Why not?"

"That's not a good answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

Serah shook her head exasperatedly and looked away, frustrated. Lucifer sat up and reached over, grasping her chin and pulling her face back so she'd look at him again.

"Tell me something." His voice was low, a gritty whisper. "Have you ever done something simply because you wanted to? Not because you were ordered to, not because you thought you had to, but out of selfishness? Pure greed? You did it, because you couldn't imagine not doing it? Consequences be damned."

She shook her head slowly. "No."

"You're lying," he said. "You wouldn't be here with me otherwise."

"I was sent to ask you—"

"To stop the fighting," he said, cutting her off. "And you've asked me . . . more than once. And I've denied you . . . more than once. Yet here you still are. Why?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "Why not?"

Lucifer smirked. "Exactly."

They stared at each other for a moment before he slowly, deliberately inched forward. Serah's breath again hitched as he pressed his lips to hers for the second time, kissing her softly. She trembled, kissing him back, for the first time tasting the mint in his mouth, tingling her tongue. She groaned at the sensation, the sound spurring Lucifer on. He tried to deepen the kiss, but Serah pushed away from him, both hands pressed flatly against his chest, keeping him at arm’s length.

"We can't do this," she said. "It's wrong. It's all wrong!"

"So?"

She stared at him incredulously. "It's a sin!"

"Ah, sin," Lucifer said. "Like the serpent that tricked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. She devoured it, knowing she shouldn't."

"And she was punished for it."

"She was," Lucifer agreed. "But if you think for a moment she truly regretted it, you're wrong. That fruit was the most glorious thing she ever tasted—the sweetest, the ripest—and once you experience something so breathtaking, you never forget it. You never regret it."

"How would you know?"

"Because it's the same thing with feeling," he said. "Once you know what it's like to smell a flower, you can't go back to seeing it as just a plant. It's more than that—much, much more. And it's the same way with pleasure. Once you feel the shiver from a lover's touch, you can't go back to being numb again."