Love as a Double-Edged Force in Our Infinite Fates

The Double-Edged Nature of Love in Our Infinite Fates

In Laura Steven's Our Infinite Fates, love is not a simple consolation or a romantic ideal; it is the engine of both the story's tragedy and its liberation. The novel's central thematic claim is that love is a double-edged force: it is the very thing that binds Evelyn and Arden to a cycle of mutual destruction, yet it is also the overwhelming power that ultimately breaks that cycle and destroys the entity that feeds on suffering. This paradox runs through every major plot turn, from the prologue's fatal wedding to the Underrealm's climactic confrontation, and it is embodied in the novel's most potent symbols—the red ribbon, the poetry book, and Arden's leather notebook. By tracing love's dual role across the narrative, we see that the same emotion that condemns the lovers to endless death also grants them the strength to refuse that fate and, in the end, to annihilate the devil who profits from their pain.

Love as the Origin of the Curse

The prologue establishes love as the catalyst for the cycle. On a late-summer day, a wedding takes place on a pebble beach. The couple's wrists are bound by a red ribbon woven from the groom's late mother's tunic, and instead of rings they exchange knives forged by the bride's brother, engraved with the Valknut. The elder's blessing fails, and in a sudden, violent turn, the bride slashes the groom's throat, killing him; she then collapses and dies as well, though her own throat is unharmed. The last image is the red ribbon still binding their wrists. This scene is not merely a shocking opening; it is a microcosm of the entire novel. The red ribbon, a symbol of union and intimacy, becomes the instrument of their shared death. Love here is not a gentle force but a binding that leads to mutual destruction. The exchange of knives instead of rings underscores that their bond is inherently violent, and the Valknut—a symbol associated with Odin and death—foreshadows the endless cycle of killing that will define their existence.

This pattern repeats across lifetimes, as seen in the El Salvador chapter (2004) and the Wales chapter (2022). In El Salvador, Evelyn and Arden, then enemies under a truce, tumble into a pool where Arden's throat is slit, and both drown together. In Wales, Evelyn's love for her sister Gracie, who has leukaemia, drives her to undergo a stem cell donation, but it also makes her vulnerable to Arden's hunt—if he finds her before the procedure, Gracie could die. These episodes show love as a double-edged force in the present: it motivates self-sacrifice and devotion, but it also exposes the lovers to pain and loss.

Love as the Cause of the Eternal Bond

The novel's origin story, set in Greece in 986, makes explicit that love is the reason the cycle exists at all. Daphne and Calliope return from a comedy in Athens when Calliope suddenly collapses and dies from poisoning. A devil appears, admitting she killed Calliope to exploit their love. Daphne demands she save Calliope, but the devil says necromancy is beyond her power. Instead, she offers a deal: Daphne and Calliope will be reincarnated together across infinite lives, but they must become devils and serve her, enduring seven days on burning coals. Daphne, unwilling to live without Calliope, accepts the terms. This is the foundational act: love is so powerful that Daphne chooses eternal suffering over separation. The devil explicitly states that their suffering will feed her, and that Daphne will not remember the deal. Thus, love is the direct cause of the curse—it is the emotion that makes Daphne vulnerable to the devil's manipulation, and it is the bond that keeps the cycle alive.

This origin is echoed in the Underrealm scene (chapter 42), where the Mother admits she became addicted to the protagonists' suffering and reveals she needs more than pain to survive. She offers to drain the love between Evelyn and Arden, killing them but granting them freedom from the tether in their next life with no memories of each other. The Mother's plan is to consume love itself, which she calls