Wonder, with her curvy proportions, long tresses the color of yellow marigolds, and scarred hands. Wonder, in an off-the-shoulder blouse and harem pants. An elastic band cuts across her forehead, holding a posy of blooms to one side of her face.
Each of them has elaborately crafted archery strapped to their backs, the quivers loaded with varying breeds of arrows.
Envy, glass. Sorrow, ice. Wonder, quartz.
Envy crosses his arms. “Well, old furious friend? Don’t you have anything to say to your infamous class?”
Anger doesn’t have anything to say. But he has something to do.
He’s got Envy jammed into a trellis of plants before the archer has time to simper. A lot of henpecking ensues, Wonder and Sorrow clamoring for Anger to stop this instant. Meanwhile, Envy flaunts a look of mild cynicism.
“Still so beautifully aggressive,” the bastard taunts. “I take it this means you’ve missed us. Go ahead, abuse my debonair self.”
Anger asks, “Does that include your face?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Gracious, Anger.”
Merry. Her voice streams toward him, the sound tugging at his wrists. It’s not that the radiance of her voice pacifies him…or does it?
It has to be something else. There’s no skip in her tone, no drama to indicate that she’s been taken off guard.
Visibly, Merry’s composed. She isn’t surprised to behold these archers.
One of them, at least. Her expression of familiarity means that she’s seen Wonder before.
How? When? Why?
Anger releases Envy. He backs up, rolling his eyes as Envy smooths down the starched shirt. The vainest of vain Gods prefers high-maintenance clothing, hardly practical for fighting.
Sorrow’s elbow jabs into Anger’s side. She shoulders past him, hustling up to Envy and shoving him. “You had to bait a rage god, didn’t you?”
Envy flashes his teeth and collects her hand, pressing it to his pecs. “I love it when you worry about me.”
“Idiot,” the female mutters, hiding a grin behind her purple hair—and not pulling away from him.
The sight brings Anger up short. “What the…you two?”
“Don’t blame her,” Envy teases. “Everyone finds me irresistible.”
“You just wore me down,” Sorrow says as they weave their fingers together. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a tryst thing, a carnal understanding.”
“Is there any other kind of understanding?”
Lust partners. So it’s that way between them? When did that phenomenon occur? After they rebelled and endorsed Love’s right to become human? After they swept Anger’s plight from their minds?
Loyalty aside, this pair used to insult one another on a regular basis. Envy had once considered Sorrow a deal breaker, one of the rare deities that he wouldn’t fondle, joking that she’d only depress him in bed.
They haven’t changed, yet they have. Anger wants to smash something, but he’s already smashed into Envy, so he’ll have to be satisfied with that.
Merry and Wonder whisper to one another—until Anger rounds on them, considering who to glower at first. But with Merry clad in her nightgown, his eyes settle on Wonder. “In about three seconds, you’re going to explain how you know each other.”
Wonder cants her head, in the way Wonder always cants her head, like she’s musing and concluding simultaneously. “This is the Celestial City, dearest.”
“And I was born a love goddess,” Merry adds.
“Why wouldn’t I find out about that?” Wonder contends.
“And get curious,” Merry finishes.
“Stop doing that,” Sorrow pleads.
Anger agrees. And why does their duologue sound like a hoax?
If he knows Wonder, and he does know Wonder, there’s more to this. The goddess likes to call herself an Archive diva, a researcher of the sky’s secrets and the enigmas of their mythology. She has stuck her two cents into conflicts before, disturbing the flow of fate.
Breaching the Hollow Chamber’s restricted section is how she discovered Fate lore—a sacred cliffhanger that changed everything for their class. She’s the reason Love learned how to become a mortal, how to trade her blessings for a meager existence with a human boy.
It seems that Wonder has acquired a taste for forbidden findings and imparting them on beneficiaries. Or perhaps, she developed this penchant long ago—longer than Anger’s aware of. In which case, old habits die hard.
Respectively, her tendencies mirror Malice’s. Albeit less warped.
She must have given a repeat performance, advancing on Merry instead of doing her job: targeting humans who’ve either lost their awe or inspiration, or are too caught up in enchantments to function. That has steered her to houses of worship, artist communes, and mental institutions, among hundreds of other locations.
She has tasks to attend to. But instead, she’d met Merry prior to Anger’s arrival in the city.
For what purpose?
Perhaps her business is private business. Nothing to get skeptical over. After all, Wonder is a meandering goddess with an unreliable attention span that combats her thirst for pondering. It might be as elementary as that.
It’s not.
It’s very likely not.
Envy appraises the diaphanous nightgown accentuating Merry’s figure. It doesn’t faze Sorrow when he licks his lips. “Hubba, hub—”
Anger’s arm lashes out, swiping Merry’s robe off the ground—he’d dropped it while rushing Envy—and whipping the garment at her. His fist chokes the material, blocking her breasts from view.
Merry takes the robe gleefully. The members of his class gawk in his direction.
“What?” Anger barks, because what the Fates do they find so hilarious?
Envy shakes his smug head. “I’m thrilled that I actually got to see you do that.”
“You’re delusional. You have been since birth. I’ve merely neglected to sit you down and tell the truth. Therefore, you saw nothing.”
“I’m offended. Of all illustrious beings, I think I know the difference between modesty and jealousy.” Releasing Sorrow’s fingers, he drags his thumbs up and down his shirt buttons. “You might call me a specialist in envy.”
“You’re jealous?” Merry asks Anger.
Her sparkler eyes fasten onto him, the wattage of which surges up his chest. It’s not a pleasant sensation, nor entirely unpleasant.
Why is he routinely caught in the middle, torn between one reaction and another?
“What a coup! You haven’t lost that protective impulse.” Wonder claps her mutilated hands—blemished by starburst scars, wrought from torturous cuts—and makes introductions between Merry, Envy, and Sorrow.
Merry’s passionate and lengthy dissertation about Envy’s “enviable” magnetism and Sorrow’s “exquisitely woeful” features give them pause. But her gusto and rhetoric win them over.
Also, she’s Merry. Other than Malice, who wouldn’t befriend her?
Anger drums his fingers on his belt, intruding on the pow-wow. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh-oh, behold those digits,” Envy says, faking a conspiratorial whisper. “That means he’s getting testy.”
Anger’s hand falters. “I’m not jealous. And I don’t have all day.”
“Actually, you have eternity,” Sorrow jeers.
“Gossip circulates. We heard you were here,” Wonder says.
“No, you learned I was here,” Anger corrects.
No one matches Wonder’s propensity to snoop, with the exception of a certain demon god who’s got a few loose arrows.
“The image of our classmate in the capital of exiles had appeal,” Envy says. “Plus, we were feeling nostalgic.”
“Your friendship is touching,” Anger remarks, then redirects his attention to Merry. “And you.”
“And me. You’ve noticed,” she gripes, knotting her robe. “It must be my lucky day. Yes, for a glorious
moment I’d thought you were covetous of Envy’s attention, that you were finally acting like a soul mate, but I can see that my rapture was hasty—not because I’m a hasty exile, but because you’re an imbecile. I never expected to be enamored of an imbecile, but I’m not going to question the stars. I suppose it’s more triumphant when bonds are earned, the culmination of trials and tension, so only time will tell if you’ll stop being a nitwit. In the meantime, keep your hands off my robe, and don’t do me any jealous favors. I’m walking away now. Maybe someday you’ll come after me, like a soul mate would.”
She aims an inflated hostess grin at Anger’s classmates. “Lemonade?”
Then she stomps off, her hands bunched and swinging at her sides.
Sorrow and Envy give him intrigued looks before accepting the hospitality. Before Wonder trots off with them, Anger grabs her elbow, which feels like squeezing a cushion. “Why are you really here?”
She peels away his fingers and pats the side of his face. “Oh, Anger. You worry too much.”
She hasn’t outgrown that clucky lecture voice, despite everything that’s ever happened to her.
Despite what their class did to her in the past.
What the Fate Court ordered them to do to her.
Anger still can’t glimpse her scarred hands without shuddering, without wanting to crush his own fists to smithereens. There’s that, in addition to another unspoken and regretful experience that he’d once shared with her. A private interlude. A lapse that had revealed too much from both of them.
It’s the reason why he’s never been able to conceal his yearnings from Wonder.
He doesn’t stop her from leaving, doesn’t reply when she calls back to him, “Come have a reunion with us.”
The ensemble deposits weaponry against a wall. Via the stars, Merry petitions for more lounge chairs, and a circle of comfort appears, a ring of five seats. One of which Envy drapes himself across like a siren. Another of which Sorrow rests upon, reclining on her back like a psychiatric patient. Wonder perches on a third lounge chair, crossing her harem-panted limbs as if she’s about to meditate.
Which she is, because she closes her eyes.
Which means they’ve lost her for about a half hour.
Anger sits on the precipice of his own seat while Merry presents a tray of glasses dripping with condensation. Sorrow slurps. Envy raises a pinky. Wonder drinks with her eyes shut, inhaling the tartness before each contemplative sip.
Merry rests on her stomach, her calves cranked into the air and crossed at the ankles while she guzzles. Anger’s too busy watching her throat pump to bother quenching his thirst.
In the Peaks, refreshment is initially savored in silence. They maintain tradition by mutely draining portions of their lemonade. It’s a companionable lull, which grates on Anger.
He’s missed this. He’s enjoying this.
Like Fates does he want to get attached to this.
Not long after, Envy encourages Merry’s chatter. “Wonder, our veritable grapevine, has shared a fascinating tidbit. Another reason we had to satisfy our curiosity. Is it true that you had first dibs on the title of Love?”
In so many words—really, so many words—Merry narrates her existence as a failed goddess. In turn, they answer her questions about the Peaks, about serving the mortal realm, which Merry bluntly dubs controlling rather than serving.
None of Anger’s classmates balk at the offense, like they once would have.
After that, the archers recount what’s happened since life, as they’d known it, went straight to plebeian hell. Ever since the Court demoted their class from elite to second rate, and ever since Anger’s banishment, word of Love’s rebellion—her attachment to a mortal and demise as a deity—had spread. Most had condemned this weakness, once they’d actually accepted the tale as gospel.
A mortal having the power to see deities?
An immortal falling in love with that very human?
For a deity to fall in love at all? Implausible.
Deities expel passions the same way they exert power. Selfishly and with detachment, with hierarchy and standards. The heart has no place in mating.
However, as the first successfully born deity of that intricate emotion, Love had been an exception to the rules.
It had taken a while for residents of the Peaks to process what had happened to her. The remainder of her class—Anger, Envy, Sorrow, and Wonder—became a laughingstock. The consensus: As Love’s peers, they’d become just as mottled with sentiment, since they hadn’t been able to leash her.
Not even Anger, the class leader, had contained Love. Instead, he’d let his own prominent feelings get the better of him. The reputable side of him.
Contempt had been the immediate order of the day. And ever since.
But some of the deities have grown interested in Love’s tale. True to form, the novelty is attractive. So there’s been whispers, which have multiplied covertly and reached the ears of Anger’s class, who’ve wisely remained quiet, redeeming themselves in the Court’s eyes. They’ve been keeping to themselves while debating silently, consulting their inner turmoil, their points of view broadening.
A seed of doubt has been planted. It has leaked from their home to the Celestial City, influencing Merry and her exiled neighbors. So even now, even as a newfangled human, Love remains an influencer.
An equilibrium between fate and free will.
That’s what she had argued for prior to losing her memory. That’s what she’d asked her class to consider. That’s what she’d hoped for the future.
Those pipe dreams hadn’t convinced Anger. Love had been unreliable, impressionable, and impaired by sentimentality. He hadn’t bought one asinine word, no matter the incandescence of her face when she’d spouted those foolish notions.
The Fates reign over humanity. That’s how it’s always been, how it always will be. Erratic, frail humans can’t be trusted with their own emotions, much less their choices.
Love hadn’t understood that. She’d been blinded by adoration for a lesser being who possessed white hair and a limp. Her wayward convictions hadn’t been Anger’s priority.
It still isn’t. He’s done enough for Love, not nearly the same amount for himself.
Sorrow plops her empty glass on the tray. “Forget the pleasantries.” With a razor-cut arm, she indicates Anger and Merry. “You two look like trash. Is this what becomes of strays? Because if it is, it’s a dismal sight.”
Anger opens his mouth just as Merry blurts, “The Fate Court attacked us.”
Wonder’s eyes pop open, meditation forfeit. Envy spits out the lemonade, spritzing his tweed trousers. Sorrow groans in distress.
The announcement causes a riot, questions overlapping so that it’s impossible to get a word in. A muscle ticks in Anger’s jaw. He drums his fingers on his hip, quelling his impatience while Merry rehashes the events, omitting their game of getting to know one another.
No, Merry doesn’t know why the rulers showed up.
No, Anger doesn’t know, either.
Yes, he’s lying. And yes, they buy it. And yes, he wishes they knew him better, knew him enough to detect the falsehood.
And yes, he’s relieved that they don’t.
Wonder and Merry swap a glance that Anger files in his mind. Something untold skips between them. He has a mind to find out what it is.
Sorrow chews on her lower lip until it bleeds. Without looking her away, Envy withdraws a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to her. “It isn’t every day that the Court abandons their perch in order to nock bows, when their minions can do that for them. Someone in our sphere may have heard why. It sounds like you need a strapping god to investigate, with the bonus of two goddess.”
Sorrow dabs her mouth. “Excellent. Mole work.”
Wonder glances at the midmorning sky. “We’re not due back in the Peaks for an intermission yet, but we’ll see what we can find out.”
This is pointless, seeing as Anger knows
why the Fates went on the prowl. But he can’t exactly discourage the group. Besides, spying and keeping him updated on the Court’s intentions doesn’t hurt. They hadn’t obliterated Merry, which means they’re coming up with Plan B.
If anyone can mosey around that without being spotted, it’s charming Envy, vapid Sorrow, and pensive Wonder.
“We’ll do the same here,” Merry volunteers, still on her stomach with those slippers floating in the air. “I have kindreds who’ll keep their ears perked. They’re doing so anyway, tracking of any budding protests about the Court’s bias, any morsels about redefining perfection and worthiness, and what should be done about it.” She twists toward Anger, her earlier crispness dissolving. “Maybe we should return to the carnival, retrace our steps and everything we said. Maybe it’ll yield a clue that we’ve forgotten to consider. And we can ride the carousel again.”
Three immortals swerve his way, their brows climbing into their foreheads.
“You rode a carousel?” Envy beams. “Like a human date?”
“Give him more acidity to consume,” Anger begs Merry. “It’ll keep his mouth busy.”
“I can think of better ways to keep my mouth busy.” Envy waggles his brows, then grunts when Sorrow thwacks him upside the head with his handkerchief. “What? Nymph, I was referring to you, not our hostess.”
“I could care less,” she denies. “Lust partners, remember?”
Merry watches them dreamily. “I think you’re missing out by picking a mere dalliance over romance.”
Envy and Sorrow goggle at her, their noses wrinkling at the heresy. Then they glance at each other until both blink away.
Merry grins like their awkwardness is the cutest reaction in the universe. She shifts, her bodice riding across her breasts, causing the mounds to rise like dough. Anger feels despicable for noticing. But then she fidgets, and all hell breaks loose as he studies her fingers, calculating the distance between his hands and hers.
Envy and Sorrow thank Merry for the lemonade, then harness their weapons. The rake of a god balances Merry’s creamy hand in his almond one, which is a shade darker than Anger’s olive complexion and blends into the bark of certain trees. Envy pecks her knuckles with a gallant farewell kiss, an exchange that Merry devours like butterscotch. He bows, she curtsies to him, and they chuckle.
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