by S. M. Reine
“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.
Elise was so distracted by the confusing tangle of thoughts that she almost walked past her mother on the highest platform.
Ariane was trapped against the trunk of the Tree, soaked in sap and utterly naked, just as Elise had been. The bark had all but crept over her face. Only the sphere of her pregnant belly protruded.
She touched her mother’s stomach. The baby stirred inside.
“She was on the verge of labor when I saw her,” James said. “I’m not sure how much time has passed, but it must have been…weeks, at least, if not years. Mnemosyne’s waters are holding her in time.”
Just like you? Elise wondered. How did you walk through Limbo for so long without dying?
She couldn’t bring herself to respond to him.
Freeing Ariane didn’t take long. Elise and James had only ripped away a few handfuls of bark when the Tree seemed to release her willingly. Ariane tumbled into Elise’s arms, eyes flying open.
A ragged gasp tore through her throat. “Elise!” Ariane said, face slack with shock. Then she looked over her shoulder and spotted James. The surprise turned to anger. Ariane’s expression was like a punch to Elise’s ribs, sucking all of the breath out of her lungs. If she hadn’t been certain before, she was certain now—there was something that James wasn’t telling her, and Ariane knew the truth, too.
“Where’s Nathaniel?” Elise asked. It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, but she would have to be satisfied with it for now.
“I don’t know,” Ariane said. “We were just in my apartment a moment ago.”
But Ariane’s apartment didn’t exist, so Nathaniel and Betty had to be somewhere else in the garden. Didn’t they?
What had been real? What had been illusion?
“Can you walk?” Elise asked.
Ariane took a few wobbling steps. She almost fell, but James pulled her arm over his shoulder.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
Ariane’s smile looked forced. “Merci.”
Elise picked up her pace as they headed down the Tree, mind whirling.
Angels didn’t have domain over life and death. They were meant to have escaped such petty mortal things as soon as Eve and Adam discovered how to pass immortality to their children. Bringing Nathaniel back from the brink of death by putting his soul into a duplicate body—that was the best that Metaraon could do.
Elise knew deep within that there was no way Betty could have been resurrected.
She’s a trick, the feminine voice whispered.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Betty appeared around the curve of the Tree, standing on the next platform.
She still wore her tan slacks and the cleavage-emphasizing blouse. There wasn’t so much as a smear of sap on her cheek. Betty hadn’t been trapped in the Tree with Elise and Ariane at all.
“James!” Betty shrieked. “Oh my gosh!”
He looked stunned when Betty slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his chest in a tight embrace. “I’m happy to see you, too,” James said, although he sounded wary. Elise wasn’t the only one that had noticed the disparities.
Betty and James continued to talk. Elise thought that they were discussing escape. Mouths moved, but the words made no sense to her.
There were thousands of questions tumbling through Elise’s skull, crashing together and forcing out all other sound and thought, including James’s emotions through the bond. Only one thing pierced the confused disaster that her mind was quickly becoming: a soft, feminine voice that Elise thought belonged to Eve.
They’ve all been lying to you.
“Let’s find Nathaniel and go,” James said, drawing Elise’s attention back to him. He was addressing her directly.
Elise’s throat closed. She swallowed hard. “It’s not that simple. Adam—”
“Forget about killing Him,” he interrupted. “It was a suicide mission from the beginning. Let’s just leave.”
Why doesn’t he want you to kill Him? wondered the voice.
“I don’t have enough marks to get through the gates on my own anymore,” Elise said, speaking over the voice in her head. The lack of marks didn’t matter now that Nathaniel was in the garden—if he was really there—but she wanted to see how James would react to that. If he were partially an ethereal creature, then he would probably already have one mark.
Elise was surprised when he peeled off a glove and showed his palm to her.
There was a mark on his hand, just as there was on one of her hands. Elise had to look down at her own palms to remind herself. One hand was blank. The other was tattooed with a black mark identical to the one on James’s palm.
“How?” she asked.
“I took it from the mother of all demons,” James said.
Which meant that it was her mark. One more piece of Elise permanently welded to James.
She tamped down her anger before he could feel it through their bond.
They couldn’t leave yet. Whatever James said—Whose side is he on?—Elise wasn’t done with her job. Adam still needed to die, and more than that, she needed answers. She needed to know why James had been lying to her.
You can have everything you want, whispered that feminine voice again.
Elise had been fighting to ignore the pieces of Eve creeping into her soul, but this time, she didn’t want to.
It was time for the truth to come out—both for her and for Adam.
“Okay,” Elise said, feeling dead inside. “I know where we should go to find Nathaniel.”
Elise led them through the garden, navigating its cobblestone paths with familiarity. She looked calm, but occasional stabs of pain flared through the bond—James could tell that being in the garden was hurting her.
But that was all he could tell. She had closed her mind to him, sealing away every thought. It had to be deliberate. Without the warding rings, it was difficult to block one another out.
James passed Ariane’s weight to Betty, then stepped to Elise’s side.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured, catching her hand.
Whether deliberately or simply because she was walking too far away, her hand slipped out of his immediately.
“Just a little farther,” Elise said. “Nathaniel’s up this way.”
She took them to a path that dipped bel
ow the roots of the Tree. A distant dripping sound echoed over the cobblestone. The only sources of light were luminescent blossoms, which splashed patterns of blue on the skulls set into the roots. It was too hard to see the path—James kept stumbling over rocks.
“Elise,” Ariane said. “Wait.”
Her daughter didn’t look back.
Ariane stopped walking, forcing Betty to stop, too. “I don’t think this is the right way,” she said.
James paused. “Elise?”
“This is right,” Elise said, continuing to walk. “Nathaniel’s just up here.”
“Come on,” Betty said, and she dragged Ariane on.
Elise led them to the end of the path under the roots, which was blocked by bushes. James could hear Mnemosyne rushing somewhere beyond. She hesitated with a hand on the branches, gazing up at James with wide black eyes. Elise’s mind was blocked to his, but he could see the question in them.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
Elise shook her head. “Nothing.”
They pushed through the bushes to find the river Mnemosyne just on the other side.
Two other people were already there. James glimpsed a man crumbled beside the river, gushing silver blood from his chest—Metaraon. Another man, tall and brown-skinned, stood over him. James could only look upon Him for a half-second before blazing gray light blinded him.
James’s head filled with the roaring of chimes. He fell to his knees, muscles instantly liquefied and head throbbing.
“It’s Him!” Ariane cried. Her voice was distorted. She collapsed beside James, unable to stand in the presence of God.
James reached for Elise, thinking that they should run, escape before He took them in His grip—but Elise wasn’t looking at him.
“Adam,” she said, as if happy to see Him.
Then Elise stepped into the circle of His arms, and James passed out.
XIII
Elise’s entire body hurt to be in Adam’s embrace, but she didn’t pull away or cry out. She even managed to smile.
Adam wasn’t smiling back.
“What is the meaning of this?” He asked, indicating the people that Elise had brought with her. James and Ariane writhed on the ground, hands clapped over their ears. Her heart ached at the sight of their pain. But she kept smiling as much as she could.
“I’ve come to make amends,” Elise said.
“For nearly killing my son?”
Metaraon was curled on the ground behind Adam, still bleeding out of that chest wound. It would have killed anyone else already, but angels were hardier than that. Not only was he conscious and breathing, he looked furious to see Elise there.
“I did that to save you,” she said, forcing herself to take His hand. She didn’t look at James. She didn’t want to see the betrayal on his face when she could already feel it so clearly through their bond. “It’s time that you know the truth, Adam.”
“Silence,” Metaraon groaned. “Don’t listen to her.”
She raised the volume of her voice to talk over him. “Metaraon was in love with Eve, and he’s been trying to kill you ever since.”
“Lies!” Metaraon dragged himself toward Adam. His arms shook with the effort.
Adam gripped her hand hard, ignoring the angel at His feet. “How could you say that? He is my most loyal son.”
“He’s misled you for centuries, and I can prove it.”
“She’s trying to confuse you! Look at what she’s done—she’s brought that woman with her again, that woman that she loves better than you!” Metaraon jabbed an accusing finger toward Betty.
It wasn’t love that surged in Elise’s belly when she looked at the blond woman now. She wasn’t affected by the presence of God like Ariane and James were. Adam’s presence should have been unbearable to most mortals. Betty looked lost standing behind Ariane and James, and the expression seemed so genuine.
It was a lie.
Elise stooped to pick up a river rock, hefting it in one hand.
“That’s the woman that you brought into the garden, Metaraon,” Elise said, biting out every word as she approached her so-called friend.
“Elise?” Betty asked.
It wasn’t really Betty. She was an illusion. Just one more way for Metaraon to fuck with Elise.
She slammed the stone into the back of Betty’s skull.
The blood that poured out of her head looked real enough. Her scream sounded genuine. When Elise crouched over her, grabbing her throat in both hands, the fists that beat against Elise’s shoulders caused real pain.
Elise pressed her weight into Betty’s throat and held it.
People were shouting at her—James, Metaraon, Ariane—but Elise couldn’t hear the words over the roaring of blood in her ears.
The expression on Betty’s face faded. Her eyes rolled into the back of her skull, and she died at Elise’s hands.
Elise straightened. Her entire body was trembling.
By the time she returned to Adam’s side, Betty had vanished. She didn’t even leave behind a bloodstain.
A ghost.
“See?” Elise asked, and it was all but a miracle that she could keep her voice stable when inside, she was screaming. “Metaraon’s been manipulating us, Adam. ‘That woman’ was fake. Every woman he has brought here to be your bride has been a human with her mind twisted to believe that she was Eve.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “And he brought me here to kill you.”
Nobody was shouting anymore. Everyone stared at her.
When Adam spoke, it was with a soft, dangerous voice. “You said that you have proof?”
“No,” Metaraon said.
Elise swept a hand toward James and Ariane. “This is my proof. The two of them have the whole story. Open their minds and look.”
“Don’t trust her!”
Adam wasn’t listening to Metaraon anymore. He studied the two mortals, unaffected by Ariane’s sobs. “This one looks familiar,” He said, pointing at James.
Elise’s heart skipped a beat. “Yeah. I thought he might.”
Adam clapped His hands.
James and Ariane’s bodies stilled, frozen in time, as their minds opened to the garden.
The images crashed over Elise and Adam all at once, playing out in flashes and flickers among the trees. It was as though the memories were projected onto the surrounding world like home movies. Elise saw herself in several of them—as a small child with unruly red curls, as an older child with a sword in each hand and glaring eyes, as a woman drenched in blood.
Adam walked among the visions, dismissing some with a wave of His hand and lingering over others.
Elise turned to watch everything swirling through the fog, searching for the individual memories she expected to find. She wanted to see what James remembered of the garden. But she didn’t see anything—only his recent arrival.
“The man has wiped his own mind,” Adam said, flipping through a few images dragged from James’s mind with a twitch of His fingers. “He’s missing many memories. Those that remain are muddy.” He sneered with disapproval. “Witchcraft. I will break through his spells in a moment.”
Elise gazed at James’s rigid features, heart sinking lower and lower.
He had wiped his own mind of the garden. Why? So she wouldn’t see those thoughts through their bond?
“There,” Adam said. “I have cleared much of the fog.”
He played James’s memories in rapid succession. Elise watched everything unfold with growing dread: James’s early lessons with his aunt, Pamela Faulkner, and the moment that he walked through the door in Landon’s basement. She watched Metaraon order him to hunt her down and drag her back to the garden. And she saw the moment that he had realized that God had taken her, and the relief he had felt at knowing their running was over.
None of the memories were detailed. His magic had effectively burned the worst of it from his mind. But it was more than enough for Elise to know she had been betrayed.
“I on
ly see Metaraon guiding you to my doorstep,” Adam said. “That’s hardly a conspiracy.”
It took Elise a minute to find the strength to reply. “Look at Ariane’s memories.”
Adam seized upon a memory, snagging it from the air like a firefly.
“This one,” He said, and they stepped into it together.
“I need you to bear a child,” Metaraon said.
Ariane was shocked by the proposal, thrown so boldly in her face without a hint of humility. “I’m only fourteen,” she said, rubbing her arms to warm them against the bite of the cold winter wind. It was too cold to be talking outside Pamela’s cabin, but Metaraon was unbothered. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
Metaraon looked impatient. “That won’t be a problem. I have a match for you. He is a kopis, and you will bind as his aspis.”
Ariane tugged on her hair, twirled the curls around her fingers, licked her chilly lips to warm them. She fidgeted to delay her response.
Landon and Pamela were waiting for Ariane by the front door of the Faulkner cabin. She was tempted to run to them, begging for escape. Yet she didn’t move.
Having a child so young—it was ridiculous. Ariane wasn’t sure she ever wanted to have babies. But this handsome, powerful man was offering to give her a kopis—a real kopis—and the only cost was a child.
“People have babies all the time,” Ariane said. “You could take any of them.”
“This one will be specially made to be a weapon. She will be a kopis, like her father, and the greatest hero ever known. She will live to conquer the most terrible villain. You will all be a part of history.”
Power. A place in history. Her future secured.
“Why do you want so badly to make this…weapon?” Ariane asked. Easier to think of the child she might have as a gun, or a bomb, than a baby. “What did this great villain do to deserve such a special death?”
His composure slipped. Tension corded Metaraon’s neck. “He killed the woman I love.”
Somewhere, underneath all of that anger, was a shattered heart. And Ariane’s heart broke for him, too.