The hole in his barricade, hardly noticeable, was enough for everything he’d fought to keep in to start slowly seeping out, pure emotions flowing through his body, mixing with the unadulterated sin that always seemed to flood his system. The need, the want, the lust—the pride, the greed, the envy—it screamed out to him, begging him to satiate it, to give in to the desire.

He tried to ignore it.

She made it impossible.

"Tell me about your brother."

Serah’s brow furrowed. "I’ve told you about Samuel."

"You’ve told me of him," he said. "Tell me about him."

"Oh, well . . . I guess it’s hard to describe him. He’s strong and loyal, full of love and compassion. He’s a beautiful soul."

"So a lot like you?"

She shrugged. "I suppose we're somewhat alike."

"What makes him so special to you?"

"He understands."

"Understands what?"

She hesitated. "My desire for more."

Desire. Lucifer knew all about desire.

"What will you do if you find him?"

"If? Don’t you mean when I find him?"

Lucifer nodded. "When you find him, then."

"I don’t know," she replied. "I suppose it depends on what happened to him."

"Are you at all worried about what you’ll find?" he asked.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Should I be?"

Lucifer shrugged a shoulder, his attention turning to his cards. Serah was pulling ahead in the game, leaving Lucifer down to only seven cards. He could sense her hope, strong in the room as it radiated from her, so potent he nearly felt guilty when he threw an ace and broke her winning streak.

"Phooey," she said, poking her lips out in a pout. "You can’t always win."

"We’ll see."

Thirty minutes later, Serah threw her last card with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest as he won again.

As days wore on, Serah spent more and more time in the pit with Lucifer and less time attending to her mundane duties. Things on Earth were steadily collapsing, natural disasters, one after another, battering the lands. Sickness was spreading through countries, deadly diseases infecting mortals, while evil started to slowly swell.

No one on Earth made the connection, but the angels knew what it meant.

It was hard for Serah to reconcile that madness with the creature in front of her, offhandedly overturning cards in game after game, as if there was nothing else in the universe he had to do. How could he be destroying humanity, plotting to take over, when he spent nearly every moment playing a silly card game with her? He didn't sneak off to attend secret meetings, didn't have evil armies training by his side. In fact, except for the one who showed her in the first day, she didn't encounter a single demon in his presence.

The atmosphere was light, any tension that had once existed fading away as the two of them joked and laughed, for the first time their games more like fun than an assignment. There were two sides to him, two vastly different beings somehow coexisting within one body. There was Satan, the red-eyed demon, who lashed out in anger and invoked evil . . . and then there was Lucifer, making the best of what he'd been given, still finding color in a dark, dark world.

And that part—the lingering bit of angel, optimistic and bright-eyed—fascinated her like nothing had before.

Lucifer shuffled the cards and split the deck down the middle. He was about to slide her half to her when she held up her hand to stop him. "This isn’t working."

"Excuse me?"

"The way we’re playing," she clarified. "It’s not working."

"Are you quitting?"

"No, I just want to do it differently."

Lucifer laughed dryly. "This is War. There is no other way to play it."

"Yes, there is," she insisted. "You can play it like a normal person."

"I’m not normal," he said, "nor am I a person."

"Maybe not, but you can pretend."

"Why?"

"Because I asked."

"So?"

She sighed. "Try, for me. Please?"

He stared at her, his expression blank. A small swell of tension swept through but whisked right back out as he stood up and sauntered across the room, coming to a stop beside her. He pulled out a chair, and Serah expected him to sit down in it, but instead he leaped up on the table in front of her, towering above her as he sat down, his long legs dangling off the side.

"Fine," he ground out, almost as if it were physically painful to concede. "Let's get this over with."

Their game started out normally, an equal share of give and take, as Lucifer manually turned over the cards for the first time. Serah started to pull ahead eventually, winning hand after hand. Lucifer’s deck steadily shrank as the game wore on, leaving him with only three cards.

Serah threw a king; Lucifer threw a six.

Serah threw a ten; Lucifer threw a six.

Serah threw an eight and glared at him as his hand hovered over his last card. "If you throw another six, I’m crying foul."

He chuckled, making no move to turn over his card. "I’m surprised you haven’t cried foul before. I won a hundred and twenty-three games in a row. You had to know something wasn’t right."

Her eyes narrowed. "You’ve been cheating?"

"Of course," he said. "Come on. You really think I play fair? If I want something, I get it. I told you—I make all the rules here."