by S. M. Reine
He pressed his face to the grass, and the blades tickled his cheeks. It felt so marvelously novel that he never wanted to lift his head again. But he had to. He couldn’t lie there for eternity. If he had found grass, then that could only mean one thing.
James had finally reached the garden.
His knees were soaked with dew, his fingers were clammy, and when he stood, all of his muscles trembled. A vine hung in his face. He plucked a leaf free and pressed it to his nose, inhaling deeply. It smelled of wild places that humans had never known before. It smelled damp and dirty and incredible.
James was standing beside a stone wall rotten with age. It was at least four times his height, much too high to climb, and it extended as far as he could see in either direction.
James couldn’t see any hint of the fissure or any gates, but he knew he had to be on the outermost edge of the garden. The grass that he stood on only extended a few hundred feet before terminating in gray void.
A change in pressure made his eardrums pop , and the hybrid appeared.
It stood on the grass just a few yards away, briefly disoriented by the transition between universes.
James swore and ducked into a hole in the stones of the wall, letting the vines fall over him like a veil. Hard edges scraped at his shoulders, jabbed into his spine. He pulled his long legs to his chest and hugged them.
He could see the hybrid lifting its nose to the air through the fall of vines. Its eyes fell closed as it sniffed.
Then it looked straight at James’s hiding place.
His pulse sped. James grabbed a rock the size of his hand, and then dropped it—that wouldn’t do anything against a hybrid. What spells did he have left? Which of them might work in an ethereal dimension? He hadn’t forgotten what happened when he tried to cast a spell in Zebul, the holy temples of Heaven—it had felt like his entire thigh muscle was ripping off.
The hybrid strode toward him. But before James could decide what to do, another winged figure appeared.
A cherub dropped from the sky. Its eye sockets were empty, with silver blood staining its cheeks. Its sword flamed. It must have sensed something passing through the fissure—it didn’t look surprised to see an intruder outside the walls of the garden.
The hybrid whirled on the cherub, lips peeled back in a hiss.
It attacked, and the two of them grappled. They fought at super-speed, too quickly for James to see anything but the occasional flash of blade, the splatter of blood, the flare of wings. But he could tell that the cherub was only guarding against the attacks. It wasn’t fighting back—it was delaying.
A second cherub landed behind the hybrid.
James swallowed down a gasp as the pair of cherubim ripped into the hybrid, dismembering it with ruthless, brutal efficiency. The hybrid didn’t even get a chance to scream again.
The cherubim hacked at the hybrid until the body was in pieces and the grass was bathed in blood.
James didn’t dare breathe in his hiding place, lest they turn on him next.
But the cherubim didn’t even search for him. They grabbed the dismembered limbs and took off again, leaving James alone with a few fragments of torso.
Something about the sight of a pair of angels killing a hybrid had scoured the fatigue from his muscles. He climbed out of his hiding space and stepped back to study the impossibly high wall. It could be scaled—Elise had to have done it once before.
He leaped to grab a sturdy vine and began hauling his weight up the wall.
After the eternity that he spent in Limbo, the hours it took to reach the top of the garden’s wall was nothing. James let himself rest on top of it, taking in the sight of the garden spread before him.
The grass on the opposite side was dead. The nearest bushes oozed with ichor, poisoned from the inside, leaving thorns where there had once been blossoms. The river sliced through the dead parts of the garden, winding toward the massive Tree at the center, which was even bigger than James remembered.
He didn’t stop to study it for long. He was too vulnerable atop the wall.
James slid to the dry grass and walked through the garden.
Considering that he was only twelve years old, Nathaniel took dying fairly well.
“The eyes are cool,” he said, bending over to stare at his reflection in the amber lake. From behind, Elise could see that there were two long slices along his back, like new orifices between his shoulder blades. They didn’t seem to be bleeding. “I think I look good with blue.”
It had taken a while for Nathaniel to wake up after emerging from the egg, but after an initial panic, he had been calm. Even seeing his own corpse only seemed to inspire puzzlement, rather than fear. Hell, he was taking the garden a lot better than Elise had.
She shouldn’t have been glad to see Nathaniel in Araboth, but she was. He was a very special kind of witch that could open portals and manipulate dimensions—a skill that was so rare it might have been unique. If he had retained his magic through the rebirth, he might be the ticket to saving Betty and Ariane.
“How are you feeling now?” Elise asked. Nathaniel had struggled to breathe for a few minutes in the beginning, too, but he didn’t seem to be laboring anymore.
“I feel weird,” Nathaniel said. He rubbed the wound on his chest. “But okay, I guess. It doesn’t hurt as much as getting shot did.”
Elise forced herself to stop staring at the injury that so perfectly matched James’s.
“Who did it?”
“Some Union guy,” he said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “He wasn’t aiming for me. It was an accident. How I ended up here after that, I don’t know.”
“Metaraon brought you. He’s also the one that brought you back like this.”
The instant Nathaniel heard that name, his eyes shadowed. “Is he still alive?”
Elise hadn’t seen Metaraon since stabbing him in the chest, but she somehow doubted that it had taken him down. It could never be that easy. “If he isn’t dead yet, I’ll change that soon.”
“Good,” he said forcefully.
Elise considered asking him when he had gotten such a taste for murder, but it didn’t seem important in comparison to the more urgent tasks at hand. Namely, accomplishing the murders themselves.
“I need you to help me.” She flashed her palms at him. “I only have one mark, so I can’t escape through the gates. Is your magic intact? Can you open a path out of the dimension?”
“I think so,” Nathaniel said. “I’ll have to see what I can do. But Metaraon—”
“He dies first.”
He stood up straight and tall, at eye-level with Elise. He had done a lot of growing since they had traveled through Hell together. “I’ll see what I can do. What about James?”
Elise frowned. “What about him?”
The cavern shuddered.
Her vision blurred, darkening at the edges.
Nathaniel’s eyes widened. He reached for her hand, but his fingers only slid through her skin, as though she weren’t actually there.
“Elise?” he asked, and his voice sounded distorted, muffled.
He vanished, along with the cavern.
At first, she thought that Adam was dragging her away, forcing her into a new vision. She expected to reappear beside his throne, or in the dance studio, or by a much younger Tree, at any moment.
She didn’t expect to open her eyes and see James.
James reached the platforms ringing the Tree without being seen. There had been apples the first time that he had unwittingly entered the garden, but the branches were dead now. There was no indication that the Tree was alive at all anymore, aside from the occasional groan from deep within its trunk.
He found Elise captured against the trunk of the Tree, tightly secured to its base with wooden fingers. A branch had locked over her eyes. Others pinned her ankles.
He stepped up and touched her lips. Warm breath gusted over his fingers.
“I’ll get you out of here, Elise,” he sa
id.
James was exhausted from his time in Limbo—too tired to stand for long, much less try to run again—but he found new strength when he locked both hands around the branch growing over Elise’s eyes. He snapped the wood with a dry crack , showering splinters over his feet.
He tore at the branch until her entire face was exposed. Elise’s eyes were dancing beneath her eyelids, as if dreaming. Her head drooped without the support.
“Almost there,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder before continuing to tear at the tree creeping over her arms, hips, and knees.
Once her upper body was free, she sagged against him. The contact brought the bond to vivid clarity again for the first time in what felt like thousands of years. James caught glimpses of a strange cavern, a glassy lake, and Nathaniel—Nathaniel , of all people.
But something had changed. James couldn’t quite tell what. It was as though the tenor of her thoughts had changed, warmed at the edges with a magnanimous kind of love that was entirely uncharacteristic of Elise. The garden had changed her mind. He could only hope that it wasn’t permanent.
He finished extricating her legs, and she fell from the Tree. The branches shuddered at her departure. The Tree oozed sap out of the crevice that Elise left behind.
James lowered both of them to the platform. Where he touched her back, warm sap stuck to his fingers, gluing his body to hers. “Elise,” he said. “Elise, wake up.” He could feel her swimming through the haze, struggling for the surface, as if desperate for oxygen.
Her brow creased. Her eyelids fluttered.
Then her eyes opened.
She struggled to focus on him, and when she did, what little color remained in her cheeks drained to a ghostly pallor. “James ?”
Relief swept through him. “Yes,” he said, “it’s me.”
Anger swelled within her, powerful enough that it coated his tongue with the bitter flavor of copper.
Elise pushed him. She was still weak from being contained within the Tree, so it was ineffectual. “Not this. Don’t you fucking dare,” she said.
James caught her wrists. “Stop fighting, it’s okay, you’re free—”
He tried to hang on, but even a weakened Elise was too strong for him in his current condition. She scrambled away from him on all fours, getting to her feet with the support of the Tree, and glared at him as if he had tried to stab her.
James stood slowly, hands extended in a soothing gesture.
“Whatever you’ve seen in there, it isn’t real,” he said. “Whatever you may think I’ve done, whatever you’ve experienced—it’s been an illusion. But I’m real, Elise. I’ve come to get you out of here.”
“Come near me, and I’ll kill you.” There was no real force behind the words. Her voice quavered, and she pressed one hand to her temple. “No. I’m not…” Elise shook her head. “Yes, I’ll definitely kill you.”
What battle was being waged in her mind? James reached out with their bond, trying to see inside of her thoughts, but she had locked down tightly. It was like tracing his hands over a blank stone wall. “We’re still bonded. You can look into my mind and know that it’s me.”
“I won’t go through that fucking door!”
He didn’t bother asking what door she was talking about. As far as James could see, there were no doors anywhere in the garden.
James kept his tone soothing. “That’s fine. No doors.”
She faltered.
“Everyone wants me to go through the door,” Elise said.
“But not me.”
Her hair shimmered and skin flickered, momentarily exposing the bone underneath. Her demon form wasn’t designed to survive in the ethereal lights of Heaven. It must have been agonizing. James couldn’t tell—she was still blocked to him, and it was painfully frustrating. “Relax,” he said. “Let me show you what’s happened.”
The walls surrounding her mind eased open a fraction. James took the moment of weakness to take her hand and open his mind.
He forced himself to remember everything that she had missed: spending months developing new magic in Fallon, his momentary incarceration with the Union, Hannah’s death, the journey through Heaven and Hell. He flitted through the memories in a heartbeat, like paging through a book.
By the time Elise jerked back and shut her mind again, he knew that she had already seen enough. It was probably too much to make sense to her. James could only hope that the imprint of his mind would be familiar enough to convince her.
Elise’s lips drew into a frown. Her black eyes searched his face.
“Wait,” she said, “let me see again.”
Hesitantly, she twined her fingers with his, pressing their palms together.
Elise guided herself through his memories. She focused on Malebolge and Coccytus, then jumped further back—all the way back to their brief time in Dis together. She lingered in the memories of the fires as if basking. Then she pushed back through his memories, much further back, and settled on his memory of finding her in Oymyakon so many long years ago.
Sadness touched her at the sight of the dead angels. That emotion didn’t belong to Elise or James. It was like a third person was looking in on the memory, lamenting the loss of life.
James pushed her away gently.
“It is you,” she said, sagging against him. James couldn’t hold her weight, slight as it was. He was too exhausted. They sank to the floor together, and Elise buried her face in his chest.
James pressed his lips to the top of her head. He wanted to tell her that it would be okay, but he couldn’t make the words come out.
It wasn’t okay. Nothing was “okay” in this gray, miserable place.
Yet holding Elise filled him with a sense of rightness, of being completed. The idea that a jealous God might find them at any moment seemed small in comparison.
Well, maybe not that small.
“We should leave while we can,” James said.
Elise gazed up at him, and James saw himself through her eyes. She thought that he looked younger. It was like the lines in his face had filled out, while his cheeks hollowed, and the rings around his pale irises grew darker. But his hair, to their mutual surprise, was completely white. She had to run her fingers through it to convince herself that it was real, like the rest of him.
For some reason, looking at James filled Elise with despair. She was imagining him dead. The garden must have warped her mind even more than he had feared.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll get out of here.”
James dipped his head and kissed her. Immediate shock jolted through Elise, followed quickly by fear of what would happen if Adam saw them. God filled her mind and heart, leaving no room for her to enjoy the kiss. But her hands clutched at the back of his neck anyway, in a gesture of desperation. James pulled her against him hard.
He wouldn’t have let go, given the choice—the thought of Elise was all that had carried him through Limbo, and he wasn’t about to allow fear of a jealous, tyrannical deity to prevent him from enjoying their reunion. But Elise broke away quickly.
She stood on wobbling legs. “We have to go,” she agreed, letting their kiss pass without remark. “But first, we have to find Nathaniel, Ariane, and Betty.”
Ariane was no real surprise. But the other names…
“Nathaniel? Betty ?” James asked, eyes widening.
She smiled weakly. “Yeah. It seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.”
They walked around the Tree in search of the others, but the doors that Elise had used to get in and out of Ariane’s apartment was gone. That had been an illusion. Everything with Ariane had been an illusion.
But Elise’s mother was there. She was still certain that her subconscious would never summon Ariane from memory.
She was increasingly less certain of everything else.
They kept climbing, and Elise couldn’t tear her eyes from James as they searched for any sign of Ariane. If James was alive, and his body was under
the Tree, then that meant he really was like Nathaniel. He had been sacrificed and bound to the garden.
Which meant that he had been there before she ever had.
Their kiss had left her lips feeling bruised, and Elise traced her fingers over her mouth, remembering the contact.
It was wrong. It was all wrong.
Oblivious to the direction her thoughts had taken, James said, “How did Betty get here?”
“Metaraon said that he brought her back to life to motivate me,” Elise said, and the words felt like a lie. That may have been Metaraon’s story, but there was no way that it could be true. She had just seen the ritual Metaraon used to bring people back to life. That definitely wasn’t what had happened to Betty.
“I encountered him on Earth before coming here,” James said. “He searched through my memories for a way to motivate you. He must have decided that Betty was ideal. I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? she wondered silently.
Elise searched his pale eyes—why hadn’t she recognized that color before?— for any hint of the truth. Did he realize what he had been through? Was James a victim, or had he deliberately deceived her?
“If Metaraon brought Ariane and Betty, then how did you get in?” Elise asked. Her fingers had been wandering toward James’s shock of white hair, but she stopped herself.
“Fissures. Junctures between universes. And…a lot of walking.” He smiled weakly. It barely lasted a heartbeat before slipping off of his face again. “Elise, I’ve searched for you for so long.”
His mind was blank of any kind of explanation for his eyes, his scar, the ritual she knew he must have undergone. How could he be in the garden again and not think of it?
The omission was as much a lie as if he had told her that it hadn’t happened at all.
“We should keep looking,” Elise said when he looked like he might kiss her again.
She walked on.
James had always been the one perfect thing in her life. He was her partner, her hero.
He’s tainted, whispered a feminine voice in the back of her mind. He’s been lying to you for so very long.