The Tangled Tree Read online

  Elijah’s temporary spouse, Arytha, had sadly died from pneumonia when her son had still been a child so she’d never gotten the chance to return to her old flame, but the bottom line was that the Barachiel line had found a way around God’s strict rules that had seen everyone’s needs getting met without tears being shed, children being abandoned, or feelings being hurt.

  Naturally, the people that hadn’t been directly involved had been suspicious of the odd arrangements in the beginning, but the truth was that the woman that Elijah had ‘used’ had been well provided for and content with their lot, as Elijah’s child’s mother had been, so where was the harm in it all? Besides, it would have been pretty dangerous to suggest that being prostituted was beneath anyone, as Elijah’s mother Gabriella had been a sex worker once too- so if that had not prevented an archangel from falling in love with her, or hampered her ability to be the female ruler of the new world, then who was anyone to suggest that the life of a prostitute was a wasted one?

  I don’t think the Barachiel’s had actually intended to keep that arrangement going for centuries, but breeding had continued to be difficult but also a priority for all in Arcadia for a very long time, while falling in love had remained a high-risk activity that was not to be undertaken lightly or easy to find, so I guess it had made sense to fashion our country’s laws around the Barachiel’s example of having it all originally: around the concept that love, procreation and lust were three very different things that ought to be kept separate, especially if it meant safeguarding their souls, while keeping re-population under control.

  Yes I could easily understand how it had all come to pass, of course, but at some point, the women offered to the crown had stopped being the penniless, infertile, voluntary and easily pleased variety, and had started becoming the reluctant sort, and that was what drove me insane. I did not know when it had been decided that all women given to the crown must be virginal, accomplished, indentured, attractively presented, sit with their hands to form a bowl and trained to heel and ‘fixed’ as far as fertility went despite having no fertility issues to begin with- but I suspected that it had something to do with the ushering-in of the third-born rule, and that it probably wasn’t a story that I was going to like very much, which was probably why I had never looked very deeply into it. It, or the reason why after all of these years, the royal family had yet to give us a female heir. There were just some questions that I didn’t want answers to, not if I wanted to sleep at night while under the same roof as a Barachiel, let alone in the same bed!

  And THERE you have it! The disembodied voice slithered through my brain like a snake, causing me to jump and knock my champagne onto the floor. Find the Barachiel daughters, and you will find an answer to every question you’ve ever had regarding this family, little bird, and your place in it! And why not? It’s not like you’re sleeping at night anyway, is it?

  I screamed, but no sound came out.

  7.

  I cringed to see the puddle spreading over my freshly-cleaned tiles before looking around for Satan accusingly, searching for her with a stuttering heart, but of course, she wasn’t in there with me- not in the physical sense anyway.

  Thanks for that! I told her silently and angrily. And then I thought about what she had said and snarled at her as I got off the bed and began mopping up the wine mess with the towel that had been wrapped around my head earlier. And what Barachiel daughters are you talking about? There are no Barachiel daughters! They’ve only birthed sons since the beginning of our time!

  That’s true. But there is a difference between being birthed and being conceived, isn’t there? And just like that, the book fell off my bed and opened at my feet with a splat. I told you to read between the lines, so if you can’t manage that sober, perhaps you should stop drinking, hmm? You ever heard of a smart drunk? Because Hell is filled with people who thought they could be both!

  A prickly heat travelled up the back of my neck and I lifted the book, straining to read the elaborate, old-fashioned cursive on the swollen, brittle paper. At first glance the family tree looked like a slightly more amateurish version of the printed one, but when I peered down at the page, I saw that there was more writing on this one than on the others. Not as far as the kings went, or the duchesses- but the siblings lines were more clustered than the others starting from AA36, when Elijah had had his first child, Michael, and written beside Michael’s name was something I’d never seen before, not in the second edition that I’d read, and certainly not on any family tree I’d ever lain eyes upon before!

  Michael Elijah Barachiel. Gabriella-Rose Barachiel (Dec).

  My heart was pounding hard enough to make my blood throb in my ears, and the further down the family tree I looked, the harder my head throbbed.

  Dec… as in deceased? Michael had a twin sister that didn’t survive? Oh my God!

  I knew that multiple births were a thing in the Barachiel DNA, but what I hadn’t realised that not one set of multiples had ever been born successfully together until Kohl and Kohén had come along. There had been other sets of twin boys born, and we all knew that, but now I saw that they’d all originally been triplets, and I was flabbergasted to realise that it had been kept a secret from us all!

  Cadence knew, though! She worked this out during her research somehow, recorded it- and then omitted it for some reason! Was she silenced by force, or did she trade this secret for the chance to marry a monarch? I shook, and the book trembled in my hands. Why? Why would she want to keep this secret? Why would anyone want to silence her? And what the hell is going to happen to me if someone works out that I know…?

  That’s one question you should avoid having answered, believe me! Satan offered unhelpfully and I pursed my lips, thinking hard. What did I know, exactly? That the Barachiel’s had some sort of reproduction defect that prevented their spouses from having girl babies…if that was all it was, then I had no problem. But if it wasn’t...

  Despite my brain screaming at me to beat myself in the head with the book until I was rendered unconscious, I read on with a racing heart, inhaling the information the way I ought to have been inhaling food and water. The stillborn issue hadn’t arisen with every generation of Barachiels, for there were plenty of times when there had been just the one successful birth, or one or two brothers birthed by the same mother with a few years and no tragedies lapsing between... but sadly, at least every second or third King had suffered multiple births that had ended with one child perishing, evidently as a stillborn and always a girl. Sometimes it was two boys born with one girl not making it, sometimes it was one boy born and one girl deceased… but there was a pattern emerging in Cadence’s penmanship that suggested that breeding with a Barachiel could see both father and mother nursing a stillborn female infant after, and that was incredibly sad. The most shocking revelation concerned Michael’s twin (our third king could have been a queen and no one had ever mentioned it?) and the most awful incident involved a set of twin girls that had been born before King Aidan, to a woman that was not his mother. The twin girls he’d fathered first had both perished, and their mother had evidently been replaced by the next duchess of Arcadia, who had gone on to give the king a healthy son, which made me feel sick to my stomach. I opened the second edition copy of the text to the same age and compared, feeling heartsick for the poor, forgotten duchess when I realised that she’d been written out of Arcadian history all together in the published text.

  Oh my goodness! How could such a thing happen time and time again without it becoming common knowledge that the Barachiel genes have issues, just like any other? Has this been hidden from the public because they were saddened or embarrassed by it… or for more sinister reasons?

  I went cold then, remembering what Constance had told me- about how Elijah had immediately suggested switching the babies, Kohl and Kohén, to make it appear that the first-born twin had been the healthy one instead of the other way around. Had these infant daughters of his ancestors been born dead… or had
they been discarded to prevent the inferior sex from ruling one day? I was going to vomit, and quickly- all I was waiting for was to hear Satan confirm my worst fears to trigger it... but her voice didn’t come to me, and so I swallowed down the bile and looked back to the book, shaking my head.

  No, no the Barachiel’s couldn’t be that evil, could they? They’re not as pure of heart as they’ve led us to believe, but killing their female heirs to keep the crown on a male head? That’s ghastly! That’s demonic! And what reason could they possibly have to do such a thing? The people in this kingdom WANT to see a female heir- one would be celebrated! The Barachiel’s would never fob off the opportunity to win so many people over, would they?

  I looked back to the first page, to where Michael’s birth (and the death of his twin) was recorded, and then noticed that his name fell adjacent to Lucinda’s, only where his legacy went on, hers ended. There was nothing much interesting there, but I was just about to turn the page again when I realised that above it, and above Rosa’s entry, another name had been written and then crossed out with a series of violent slashes. I wondered if maybe Cadence had just made a mistake when she’d started printing the tree that she’d corrected, but when I flipped the page over, I saw the indentations that her pen had originally left in the paper- and that the name had once been connected to Rosa’s via a strike-line that had been used to represent a sibling connection in the rest of the other family trees. That indicated that Rosa had had an older sister but not one that had been connected to Miguel or Gabriella in any way, and my jaw dropped. The name was printed backwards and barely legible, but as I squinted at the little bumpy loops, I realised that it was a name written there: A-T-E-I-L-U-J

  Julieta? Rosa Fernandez had an older sister named Julieta?

  O-G-N-I-B! the voice whispered in my head, and after an embarrassingly long pause for consideration (I really wasn’t a smart drunk) I sucked in a breath.

  Who was her father?! I asked Satan, and then blinked, realizing that I already knew. Not the name, of course, because Gabriella’s life had never been investigated, pre-Armageddon, but if it was Rosa’s sister, then I already knew that the man that had sired both girls had to have been a rapist, and if he’d been a serial rapist, then there was every chance that he had been a dark Nephilim... and if he’d been a dark Nephilim, then that meant that there was a chance that his two daughters could have been as well...

  You don’t know that this Julieta was conceived with rape! I told myself firmly, once my initial hysteria had subsided. The circumstances of Rosa’s conception could have been completely different to hers! And if Julieta’s mother had gone to bed with this man willingly, then there’s no reason to assume that he was a serial rapist let alone a dark Nephilim, is there? Normal men do fucked up things all the time- look at Kohén!

  But Satan snorted and just like that, my hysteria came crashing back over me. If Rosa Barachiel had been a dark Nephilim, then instead of the world starting over fresh here in Eden, full of light and purity as we’d been led to believe, it had been tainted from the very beginning. Not just here in Arcadia, but wherever this sister had lived out her life too. How much influence had Rosa had over her step-brother? Had her line been poisoning the Barachiel one from the beginning? Was Adeline dark? Martya? No! But had Rosa encouraged her half-brother to do what was right and good, or had she played the devil’s advocate from the very beginning, damning mankind the second time around out of loyalty to Satan?

  I heard Satan snort derisively again. Because all dark Nephilim are evil, and all white-plumed Nephilim pure and good? Was it one of my descendants that locked you in here little bird? Or one of the saintly Miguel’s?

  You asked me to read between the lines, and that is what I have done! I told her, growing angry. You show me evidence that suggests that something was ‘wrong’ with Rosa’s family tree, and then evidence to suggest that the Barachiel line was corrupt almost from the very beginning, and then mock me when I draw parallels between the two branches? If I did not decipher this correctly, then it is your fault for giving me such vague hints!

  Satan sighed. I am trying to show you that things are not as they appear, and all you are doing is taking things at their most basic face value!

  I’ve been reading between the lines for seventeen years, and it has gotten me nowhere! I hollered back at her silently, standing up and flinging my comforter off my bed so that the book fell to the ground. Do you think I WANT to be here, you stupid bitch? Do you think that it felt good to have my heart smashed time and time again by these Barachiel bastards? Do you think I wanted to fall in love with a man who I knew could very likely be my undoing?

  I don’t know… sometimes I think that yes, maybe you do want to be here, you sensual little ingénue…

  NO! Tears were rolling down my face, as it had finally dawned on me that not even Satan had the power to pluck me from this world- the way I’d sort of hoped she’d had- no one did! I couldn’t turn to the boy I loved for help, because he was the one enforcing all of the pain, I couldn’t turn to the three women I trusted the most: Ora, Constance and Cherry with my secrets, because not only were they more fond of Karol than they were of me, but because there was nothing they could do that wouldn’t make it worse... and I couldn’t get help from anyone else because there was no one else- just me and my stupid, fried, drunken brain. My situation had seemed like a complicated one for days, one there might be no escaping from, but now I knew it for sure- I was hopeless and it was all my own fault.

  I wanted to raise cotton, and play soccer with my best friend, and exchange books with his brother, but no matter how hard I strove to make those dreams come true, something else has always come between them and me. I have not made the best decisions, but I have not had many options have, I? And I don’t have them now!

  You only think that but once you get out of here-

  Satan if I leave this place, Kohl will DIE- you’ve said it yourself- and he doesn’t deserve that fate. And Kohén will be the one to kill him- and he doesn’t deserve that fate either! No, I don’t want to sit here and rot until Kohén loses interest in me, but that is what I must do to keep Kohl and Lindy free and alive… so if you truly want to help me, then use whatever power you have and smash my brain to pulp so that I don’t have to torture myself over all I have done wrong any more! And if you cannot do that then please, just leave me alone! Don’t draw my attention to how corrupt this palace is- let me believe in Kohén’s love! Let me believe that there is something good inside Karol and Elijah. LET ME BE NAIVE BECAUSE IT HURTS TOO MUCH TO BE OTHERWISE!

  I cannot stand idly by and watch you destroy yourself over these boys-

  WHY? They are Nephilim- I am NOTHING!

  I think we both know that you’re a lot more than nothing! Honestly the last woman that caused this much scandal and chaos on earth was me!

  I shuddered at the comparison, and I had a feeling that she wasn’t exaggerating as much as I wanted to believe. I flushed hotly, feeling ill. Then WHO am I? WHAT am I?

  You’re a pain in the ass! And a card player, which means you ought to know that I’m not showing you anything until I know that you’re a safe bet, and all you’ve ever proven is that you’re too honest and kind to keep secrets that matter from anyone! Besides… I can only see where you’ve come from, and who you might come to be- your future isn’t set in stone, stretching out with certainty with a final destination in sight the way a highway is, but subjective to exterior forces, as a ship voyaging across an open sea. Many factors could see you blown off course, sunken or capsized, Larkin- wind, rain, lightning, storm surges… but the only thing I do know for sure is that right now, I’m the safest harbour available to you, so if you refuse to follow my instructions, than it’s very likely that you’ll be smashed across the rocks soon enough. And what’s worse is- they’re submerged rocks- the sort you cannot yet see yet because you are too busy looking for the thunderbolt to strike from above, like every other god-fearing idiot since the dawn of tim
e! But you will see all soon, and as soon as you do, it will be too late for you to do anything but abandon ship!

  I rubbed my forehead. Well that was fucking poetic. Did you have a word count minimum there, or did you eat the soul of a bard before you popped in here for desert?

  Don’t be a wanker.

  A what?

  Stop mouthing off to me- and think for yourself instead of demanding answers! You have a responsibility to uphold here Larkin-

  I’m not responsible for anyone, not even for my own actions! I pointed out, bewildered by this conversation, which was becoming more and more like a riddle with every second that it dragged on. I’ve tried sleuthing as you suggested but according to you, I interpreted every clue incorrectly, so if you want me to read something other than what I have, then spell it out for me, because I am too drunk, tired and defeated to take this shit anymore! My rage was silent, but I kicked the book across the room in anger and it made a satisfying ‘thwack’ sound.

  It is not I that has to grow and change here, Larkin- it is you! If I have to spell the truths in your life out for you because you cannot- or will not- work it out for yourself, then there is no way that I can help you get to the bottom of what is truly going on here, or help you get out of it! Oh believe me I would if I could, but I am a fallen angel, not a puppet-master! Your destiny is your own, as is your free will, but the path you are on is going to lead you to death here, and I am powerless to stop it unless-

  ‘Then GO TO HELL and LEAVE ME TO DIE HERE ALONE!’ I screamed, and my voice filled the room with as much brittleness, volume and violence as a stack of plates being shattered. My throat burned and instantly felt hoarse and my ears rang, but as soon as I’d shouted out the command for Satan to leave, I felt her presence dissipate from the air completely, with no trace lingering after her.