Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

The fate you’ve cursed us to.”

I had subjected him to that—only to save myself.

A devil seeking redemption.

So I hunted you down and killed you instead. Partly out of hatred, but also because I thought it would free me from the futile bargain. But as soon as you took your final breath, I died too.”

“The second I turned eighteen, I was wrenched back into the Underrealm and brought before the Mother. You were there too, but it wasn’t…” He searched for the right words. “We weren’t corporeal. I think our bodies were left behind in the mortal world, and our souls descended to the place they were forever tied to.

The suffering … it’s her lifeblood.

“Because I wanted to tell you what I’d inadvertently discovered the first time I killed you. That if I killed you, we both died, and the clock would essentially reset. We would be born into new lives and have another eighteen years before we were torn back to the Underrealm. And we could keep doing that forever. We wouldn’t have to reap anyone, nor would we ever go back to the hot coals, as long as we kept dying at the right time. No matter how much I resented you, it seemed a mutually beneficial solution.”

And god … I hated you for it. Because I hated you so much for the miserable existence you’d sentenced us to—I was beginning to understand, then, that I would never again be able to live or love the way others did—and you just did not remember. And in that moment, nothing could’ve felt worse than being in your debt. My pride wouldn’t allow it.”

You still believe in love? asked the voice. After all this time, your fate has not bled you dry of it? You still have not learned that love cannot conquer all? Love is the only thing worth believing in, I replied.

That to be human was to love and love and love, knowing it could only end in tragedy?

To love was to live, and to live was to die.

If your love is as true as you believe it to be, you will find each other.

“That depends upon how fiendishly inventive I can be. Perhaps in your next incarnation … yes. You will return to the Underrealm with me, and I will raise you as my own. I will make your love”—a scathing gesture toward Calliope—“a lowly mortal commoner, and have you reap them. And they will always remember that as your beginning, always bear that scar of resentment. A terrible foundation for a relationship.”

Nothing tortures the human mind quite like the unknown.”

So there it was. Live without Calliope, or live with her forever as a devil.