Book 2 began as a puzzle.
If Book 1 was about the cost of defiance, this book had to ask what happens to the one who carries that cost forward into a new life. Uriel was not supposed to be the protagonist. He was, in Book 1, a footnote—the one who spoke the word “Humans live” into the council and then stepped back into the background. He was the trigger, not the story.
And then I asked: what if he was the story?
The thing about Uriel is that he is defined entirely by light. He is light—the bearer of it, the bringer of it. His purpose is illumination. So what happens when that function is hollowed out, when the light is handed over to others and distorted into something he does not recognize? What happens when you are reborn into a world that needs your light, and you watch it turned into lies?
The title is precise. “A Son of Light and Lies” is Samael—who is Uriel, who is a prophet-figure carved out of miracles he performed and then overgrown with legends he never asked for. Every land he reaches calls him something different. Every people makes him their own. By the time he is old, he is not a person anymore. He is a myth with memories.
I know that territory. I have spent years building something—an idea, a relationship, a version of myself—only to watch others inherit it and transform it into something I would not recognize. The loss is not dramatic. There is no confrontation. You simply look one day and see that the story of you no longer belongs to you.
Samael’s crucifixion was, for me, the most personal chapter in the entire saga. Not because of the violence, but because of the choice. He chooses Plan B. He chooses to die on the understanding that death is the only portal back to where he belongs. And the thing that moves me, still, in that chapter, is Zachariel showing up—the one who fell before him, arriving as a Reaper, at exactly the right moment.
There is something about being witnessed in your worst hour by someone who has been there.
Lilith in this book is my favorite version of her. She is dangerous and precise and completely honest about her motives—“I want to” is one of the best lines I ever wrote—and she carries the thread of the story forward with a pragmatism that I needed someone to have. Charon is introduced here as the ferryman of souls, which is the only role appropriate for a character whose entire function is to carry what others cannot bring themselves to hold.
I hope you feel it the way I did when I wrote it.