I woke up feeling like I had been sliced into a thousand pieces and then haphazardly put back together. My head felt like it was spinning. I felt nauseated and dizzy. I opened my eyes, feeling overwhelmed by the level of brightness in the room. Blinking several times, my eyes took a few minutes to adjust. None of this was normal. As my vision cleared, I recognized thirty-six gold stars floating, suspended miraculously just below the ceiling.

Memories came flooding back of what had just happened. I was in my bedroom. Someone must have carried me there. How embararring. I had tried to teleport myself to the Library of Arcane Spellcasting, a restricted library in Agapi, which was Venus's heaven. I was angry at the archangel for removing me as crown prince. If he was going to be that difficult, I would just take my crown by force. Teleportation was forbidden for everyone, except for the archangel, of course. I knew that, but I didn't care. He made me angry. Somehow, I ended up here, feeling horribly sick with the archangel and the annoying unicorn brat standing over me.

“Lulu! I mean, um, Lucifer, you’re okay!” Selena exclaimed. She sounded relieved, but I wondered why she bothered to care about me. We were never close as siblings.

I heaved myself over to the opposite side of the bed and vomited onto the floor. “Yeah, something like that.”

“I thought you were going to die,” Selena said.

“I feel like I’m going to die,” I groaned.

Selena frantically looked at the archangel. She looked like she expect him to do something, but he just stared at me with an expression I had never seen from him before. It was disappointment mixed with pity.

“You did die, Lucifer. I brought you back to life,” he finally said. “You disobeyed me. The teleportation spell you used shattered your spirit into thousands of pieces. I bargained with Satan for your soul and put them back together. But you’ve been gone for ten months.”

“Ten months!” I exclaimed. I felt dizzy again and heaved what was left of the contents in my stomach onto the floor, moaning. “Where is Beryl? Is she okay?”

“She didn’t come to ask about you or anything, so we didn’t tell her anything. We thought she would take it better if she found out after you were already awake,” Selena said. “I made a “Get Well Soon” card and Michael and I got you sunflowers to brighten up your room," she added quickly.

“Brighten up my room? Thanks, but you make it sound like I’m going to be feeling like this for a while,” I laughed nervously. “My wife didn’t ask about me at all?”

“Michael and I were really worried about you, Lulu,” Selena soothed. “Even Prince Swarovsky would come and keep checking on you. He checked on you a lot.”

“I want to go see my wife,” I urged, lifting myself up by bracing against my bed pillows. I felt another surge of dizziness and it took all my strength resist to resist vomiting on my bed.

“Please, you should rest,” Michael urged. “You’re still recovering. I don’t want you to hurt yourself again.”

“This would have never happened if you hadn’t demoted me away from being the crown prince,” I argued.

“I understand that you are hurt,” the archangel said. “But I gave you another chance to earn your place as king under the condition of learning to be respectful. In any case, I think you should take a break from worrying about your greatness and get some rest.”

“Why didn’t my wife ask about me?!” I screamed. It was then, that I noticed something strange in my sister’s eyes. I had never noticed it before because her eyes were so strikingly blue and gold, but her eyes were shaped just like Beryl’s. In fact, her white hair flowed down her back in just the same style and curve of my wife’s mauve-colored locks. She had grown to look like Beryl in almost every way except Selena was a unicorn angel and my wife was elven, like myself. Was this the mythic Curse of the Evil Twin?

I choked back the tears welling in my eyes. There was nothing evil about my sister, but my wife? She was obviously selfish and absorbed in her own interests. But I never thought she wouldn’t care about my injury or even ask about me while I went missing, dead, for ten months.

“Selena, I need you to leave for a moment. I want to have a word with your brother,” the archangel said.

“Yes, Michael,” she curtsied in his direction, her eyes still full of worry. Nevertheless, she still turned away and left as instructed.

“Everyone makes choices, Lucifer,” Michael began to explain once she was gone.

“Please spare me the lecture…” I urged.

Michael held up a hand. “I’m not lecturing you about teleporting. I’m talking about what you were thinking in regard to Beryl and Selena.”

He was annoying when he read and answered my mind. Didn't he know that thoughts are private. Just because he's God's archangel and at other times, the second person of the Trinity, did not mean he had a right to use telepathy any way he say fit. “Why does my younger sister look like my wife!” I yelled. “They aren’t even related!”

“You know what it means if an angel looks too much like another angel and it’s not genetic, don’t you,” he continued. “Which tells me you’ve been looking into forbidden knowledge in the restricted access libraries meant for the guardians.”

“They don’t have any protections against telepathic probing or astral projection,” I grinned. “Which makes it pretty easy to hack.”

“And you found out something painful that you shouldn’t have,” the archangel said. “That if two angels coincidentally lookalike, it means the first one will fall, or already has, and the second one was created to either call them to repentance and take over their place and responsibilities in the heavens.”

“Beryl is just rebellious,” I defended. “She’s like me, an anti-hero…kind of. But she’s not demonic. She’s not evil. She doesn’t deserve to be replaced!”

“You don’t know what she’s become. The day she first became demonic was the day your sister was born,” the archangel explained. “Your sister, Selena, is the angelic replacement to Beryl and when Beryl loses her kingdom, it will become Selena's in addition to whatever you may forfeit if you continue to rebel.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “No, you’re wrong! There's nothing wrong with my wife!” I tried to hoist myself onto my feet, but the archangel placed a hand on my shoulder to hold me down. He was about to say something, supposedly to comfort me, but I yelled out “don’t touch me! Get away!”

“Lucifer, I’m sorry. She’s falling fast and for your safety, I think you should stay here in the palace, away from her," he soothed, anyway.

“You can’t tell me what to do! She’s my wife!” I screamed. "Leave me alone!"

The archangel's eyes welled with tears. "As you wish," he said.

To my surprise, he left without another word.