Then the world bursts into a cacophony of sound again, footsteps thundering toward her, a treble of high-pitched noise, and the gust of her name. She knows that gruff voice. Better yet, she knows that desperate touch, those palms calloused by his bow.
Those hands cup her face, encase her in fingerless gloves. He steers her head toward his. A sterling hoop sways from one lobe, an earring stud winks from the other, and petrified eyes gawk at her.
This is a pivotal scene, isn’t it? When true love conquers all?
She has made a formidable effort to defeat the villain. Has she succeeded? Are Love and Andrew safe? Is Malice burning in infamy? And why is her body screaming?
“Merry,” Anger says, his words tumbling into the stratosphere of her cranium. “Merry!”
Is he resentful, or miffed, or worried? It sounds like all of the above. This god is incapable of limiting himself to one ferocious reaction. Sigh, he overcomplicates things that way.
When she slurs his name, a whoosh of relief spills from his chest. She doesn’t know why he’s thrilled, when her muscles are battered, and his olive skin has gone pale. “You look a fright,” she says. “Is it storming outside?”
It takes him a while to speak, his irises trembling. “No…No, I see nothing but light.”
“I see stars, but not the festive kind.” She refocuses, while he runs his hands all over her, like she might burn out and disappear. “On second thought, there’s one thrashing star that’s nice to look at. Hi, my soul mate.”
He whispers back, “Hi, my hero.”
“So it’s true? Did I save the day?”
Anger smiles wanly. “A long time ago.”
Merry should loathe him for coercing her heart. Part of her does, a fractured part, a wounded part. But it doesn’t stop her from loving him, the good and bad of him.
And she’s not faultless. She had been planning the same thing as Anger, albeit without aiming to hurt him.
His face crumples. “Merry, I…”
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
A blonde beacon appears, its puffy-cheeked countenance crinkling like a piece of popcorn. “Dearest.” Wonder pushes Merry’s hair out of her face. “You’re alive.”
Anger helps Merry to sit up while Wonder crouches on the opposite side. Consciousness knits itself back together, the details regaining clarity. Their trio must have been talking in slow motion, but everything clicks and speeds up.
She sees the arrow meant for Love and Andrew lodged into her skateboard, which rests sideways on the ground. Merry must have blocked it and then crashed. The cumulative throb in her joints is from the landing.
Andrew yanks the restraints off his girlfriend while yelling, “What the fuck!” because neither of them knows what just happened. Their perception had been limited to Love’s levitating bow—manipulated by Malice—and the firing squad of her arrows.
Andrew wraps Love in a fierce hug, both of them shaking.
Snowy hair and raven hair. White dress and black coat.
They’re a resilient couple, recovering swiftly. Having anticipated it, Andrew holds Love back just before she leaps, her arms flailing, her fingernails scratching at nothing, trying to attack the room. She hadn’t seen anything, but she’d seen enough to comprehend that they’re not alone.
“Let me at ’em!” she barks.
Her boyfriend is quick to believe as well, scanning the area in flummoxed curiosity. Yet that doesn’t deter him from snatching Love with one hand and her fallen weaponry with the other, then hauling her out of the vault to safety.
As her mutinous yips echo from the stairwell, Anger grunts. “Some things never change.” He transfers his gaze back to Merry, his features softening.
But some things do.
Merry slides her digits across his jaw. “I told you.”
Wonder casts a yearning glance toward where Love had slipped from sight. They’d been kindreds, and Wonder hadn’t had the chance to check on Love, to see if she was all right. Wonder hadn’t been able to process the erstwhile goddess’s presence, to rejoice in the moment. She’d lost that.
Well, she’d almost lost her former kindred entirely.
Malice lay impaired in the corner, sprawled and nursing a bloody temple. Evidently, he’d relinquished Love’s archery during the tumult, enabling Andrew to retrieve the weapons.
Merry had spotted Wonder charging Malice earlier, so she must have been the victor there. She’d forsaken the opportunity to strike him down, electing to use her fists instead.
And she isn’t done.
Wonder surges to her feet and launches toward Malice. The goddess flings herself atop the rage god and begins to pummel him, half-smacks, half-punches walloping through the room.
“How dare you!” She bares her teeth. “Swine! Imposter! How dare you! How could you!”
Anger reaches her, Merry staggering in his wake. Together, they grip Wonder’s shoulders and drag her off Malice, who hadn’t put up a skirmish, who’d merely taken it. He scrutinizes Wonder with venomous intrigue, as if he’d prefer to study her and then strangle her.
He hacks out a wad of blood, red splattering the library. “How could I what?”
Wonder tenses, then goes limp. The question stretches between them as her fingers trace her scars, and his sharp thumbnail traces his newly fractured wrist, which hangs at a hazardous angle. This exile had ensnared Anger, kidnapped Love, and tried to kill her and Merry.
Yet that’s not what Wonder had meant.
How could you!
It doesn’t correspond to his deeds. It’s a string of words with an alternate meaning, as if he’s betrayed her.
Merry cants her head between the pair. She’s dealt with Malice long enough to know that he loathes ambiguity. He’s struggling to weed out Wonder’s hysteria and cryptic words. And he’s failing.
“Normally, being hated is such fun,” Malice remarks, his canines stained crimson. “In this case, I find it insulting. Your repulsion smacks of the personal, Wildflower. Do I owe you something?”
Wonder’s lashes flicker. More betrayal, this time tinged with guilt. She wrenches herself from Anger and Merry, rips a few lengths of her gown, and kneels before Malice. They stare at one another as she binds his ankles. But when it comes to securing his biceps to his sides, avoiding the broken wrist, Wonder’s hands shake.
Malice’s pupils dilate with fear.
Not from her. But from the restraints.
Wonder makes quick work of it, then whirls and marches to her archery, wordlessly collecting her weapons. While she focuses on the task, Malice’s eyes follow her movements, her scarred hands.
Merry catches Anger’s gaze, but her bewilderment dissolves at the expression on his face. He closes the distance between them, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It eases some of the throbbing from her fall.
Andrew’s messenger bag lay abandoned, an electronic device slumping out of the pocket. He’d exercised quick thinking, since the leather and metal must have blunted the arrow.
“How did Love’s boyfriend know to come here?” Merry asks.
Wonder rises to her feet while arming herself. “It wasn’t me, dearest.”
“He figured it out for himself,” Anger answers dryly. “Clever boy.”
“Yes. At least one person has acted wisely of late. Care to elaborate?”
Coming from an archer, this would sound like a request. Coming from the Fate Court, it’s an order. It’s the shape of an order, with sharp corners filed to points, from a patrician tone of voice as infinite as the stars. The words are delivered cordially, which means dangerously.
Regal shadows stretch across the floor, azurite and pearl archery mounted on their backs. Their eyes are spun from starlight. These ancients have given themselves timeless names, but Merry’s mind is too full to recall what they are, or if they’ve ever been imparted.
The Fate Court.
Two of the five members appear, completing the diorama of immortals within the r
oom. The goddess has dark skin, her gossamer gown like butterfly wings. Her accomplice is a god with a hawkish nose and a flood of hair to his waist, a pair of braids swinging like ropes within the mane.
It’s the same pair that had pursued Merry and Anger in the carnival. The ones who had vacated their thrones in the Peaks, on a mission to attack them.
The female is the one who had spoken. The gossamer goddess.
It’s odd to feel both dazzled and resentful, to feel longing and resistance. Merry senses residual obedience radiating from Anger, two centuries of routine drilled into him, climbing up his legs. He’s fighting the urge to kneel, to prostrate himself.
Likewise, Merry feels it, and maybe Wonder does as well. But none of them yield.
Anger shifts protectively toward Merry, an action that causes an ache in her chest. He won’t let them harm her. She won’t allow it either, so she sidesteps his proximity and stands on her own.
Something, everything, has transformed in her. She likes what it does to the set of her shoulders.
The rulers scan the archers, the messy remnants of their conflict. Malice, bloodied on the floor, the volatile picture of indulgent madness, on the verge of cackling grimly at the scene. He’d lied to the Fate Court, uncovering a legend and then conspiring with Anger, fixing to reclaim their places in the Peaks and then backing their sovereigns into a corner by undermining them.
Malice had attempted to end Love, an offense despite her humanity. Merry hasn’t grown up with these leaders, but she knows enough from others in the city, from what Wonder and Anger have told her, from tales and visions within the stars, and purely from the Court’s demeanor.
Humanity aside, Love is theirs to contend with. Not Malice’s.
That he’d instigated this turn of events, planting the rotten seeds to begin with, tickles him pink. That the Court members can spear him in half for the indiscretion doesn’t seem to faze him. Or if it does, he can’t care less.
The Court regards Wonder, who’d deserted her post in the human realm in order to assist inferior outcasts. Wonder and her scars—the evidence of some past defiance and ensuing punishment, which she hasn’t learned from. Here she is again, not learning from her past, dabbling with the forbidden.
There’s Merry, bowless and untrained. According to them, she’s a failed star, a loss of potential. According to herself, she’s an outcast who’d nevertheless outmaneuvered them through an amusement park.
And there’s Anger. In their view, he’s a renowned disappointment, second only to infamous Love.
Silence permeates the lair. A dozen unspoken motives litter the area like pins. Some are easily interpreted, others cloaked in darkness, locked within the shell of each occupant’s mind.
These sovereigns can eviscerate them without blinking, but they won’t. Merry knows what this is. It’s a parley, a preliminary, the prelude to becoming enemies. They had invaded that poetic night on Stargazer Hill, but that had been a tactical attempt devised in advance. The carnival had been intended as a swift resolution to a single problem, whereas the Court won’t lower themselves to an expanded, long-term conflict devoid of terms.
All the same, Merry doubts they take her kindreds seriously. These rulers have ordained power, along with an entire realm of loyal deities at their behest.
Her stomach curdles. She doesn’t want to fight them, but she will choose to.
“This outcropping of defiance looks familiar,” the gossamer goddess observes. “Except half of the players are different, the other half sadly recognizable.”
The god with braids says to Anger, “Based on your surveillance of the former Love over the past years, we know you to be a nostalgic archer. However, this is taking the obsession a bit too far. What?” he asks, noting Anger’s stumped reaction. “You didn’t think we would keep an eye on your fetish? We may have lost Love to mortality, but it’s only been four years. Hardly any time to be sure she wouldn’t regain her memory, or her sight, by some trick of the stars or existential misstep. We weren’t about to leave that to chance.
“The stars keep infinite legends hidden. Of course we would periodically monitor her until we deemed it safe, until certain she would remain human. So yes, we’ve known about your activities—,” the ruler glances at Merry, “—until recently.”
Merry lifts her head. As if to prove them right, Anger threads his fingers with hers, unashamed and without repentance.
The Court members notice but hardly act nonplussed. “Notwithstanding your latest conquest, we’ve trailed Love right back to you,” the gossamer goddess supplies. “How else do you think we knew to come here?”
“I didn’t lure her to this city,” Anger defends.
“In a manner of speaking, you did. Malice has always been a nuisance, but it was you who shoved us toward this point of contention. Yet another face-off in which you’ve gone behind our regal backs. You haven’t learned from the last time we disciplined you, is that it? I wonder where rebellion will oblige us in the future. Who knows what other fossilized lore your little gang might excavate? Other provisions within the stars, perhaps?”
Malice and Wonder speak at the same time.
“Such as?” he drawls.
“Like what?” she blurts.
The archers swap irritated glances, but the Court members intervene. The braided god addresses Wonder. “You and Malice share a common interest for the Archives. Malice was exiled because he’d overstayed his welcome. He dug too deeply for fossils, meddling where he didn’t belong, searching for secrets he had no right to.”
“No right to,” Malice repeats dubiously.
Merry’s head slants. What secrets? Before his banishment, before he would have found value in the legend, what alternative tales had he been looking for? What information had he sought, badly enough to risk exile?
“The difference between you and Wonder?” the braided ruler continues. “You were stupid enough to get caught.”
“But smart enough to remember what I found out,” Malice replies.
This earns the rage god a look of contempt. “Thus, tempting Anger into action while you sat back and loafed. Though, you were nimble enough to convince us that Merry was the only anarchist, plotting to communicate with mortals about free will.”
“You what?” Merry snaps.
So she’d been wrong. This is why the Court had chased them—chased her—in the carnival. Malice had slandered her in order to make himself and Anger seem innocent.
Had Anger known during their escape? No, he hadn’t. Merry sees the truth etched into his face, and she trusts it, so he must have perceived this twist later.
“When in reality, all of you have had the same end in mind,” the god summarizes.
“Malice is a tyrant, but he never forced me to do anything. I make my own choices,” Anger says.
“Breaking a heart in order to break banishment, forcing your way back to the Peaks. How presumptuously ambitious of you. How entitled.”
“You taught me well.”
The Court members slit their eyes at him, but they make no reply to that.
The braided god continues to rattle Wonder, who’s struggling to maintain eye contact. “As for you, we should’ve known better. You’d claimed that Love ascertained how to become human on her own, that she trespassed into the Hollow Chamber’s forbidden aisles and made the discovery herself. Yet here you are, a frequent patron of the Chamber. Let us guess: If Malice is the one who approached Anger, you’re the one who approached Merry.”
“I made her tell me,” Merry fibs. “I would not rest until she did.”
The rulers appraise her, from the dress to the sneakers, from the fishnet gloves to her digits plaited with Anger’s.
“How we remember you,” the gossamer goddess says. “A spectacular failure, birthed from a defective star. To deprive the human world of a love goddess, whom we’d had such hopes for? To dispose of her? That aggrieved us more than it did you. Mortals need us in every capacity. You were not suff
icient; reclaiming your place would have solved nothing. To assume it’s that elementary, that you can master the skills, weather the training when both require inherent proficiency?” Her gaze rakes over Merry, not with scorn but pity. “Being born as a goddess doesn’t make you a goddess. You were smeared in sentimentality from the moment we first beheld you, a fault which hasn’t altered. At least our former success, with all her penchants for touch, showed resilience to affection.”
“So you thought,” Merry rebukes. “She was just better at hiding it.”
There’s a squint of disapproval. “You will never be good enough.”
“I don’t want to be good enough for you. I want to be good enough for humanity.”
“The conceit. An exiled goddess speaking for a people she doesn’t belong to.”
“I suppose that makes me a true deity.”
That provokes another squint, perhaps a little impressed by her moxie. “This is precisely what makes you sentimental.”
“I’ve lived among them.”
“You’ve lived in proximity to them.”
“Gracious, do you hear yourself? That’s true for all of us, and yes, especially exiles, which is why Malice wasn’t entirely wrong about me. Free will is—”
The male ruler delivers an elegant groan. “This again.”
“Free will is an illusion,” the gossamer goddess insists, her butterfly gown swishing. “Granted, that illusion of control sustains a mortal’s hope, which bolsters their world, which preserves us. But without destiny, without that underlying reality, humans would languish in their battle for control. What’s more, there is bliss and strength—there is autonomy in relinquishing control. There is courage in that.”
“That’s a poor excuse,” Merry argues. “Humans don’t know they’re relinquishing anything. Even if they did, there’s courage in having a choice, and there’s courage in giving someone a choice. So maybe you should take your own advice.”
“Given free reign, misguided emotions lead to misguided acts. Mortals would extinguish themselves. They do not choose or act perfectly.”
“Neither do immortals,” Malice remarks.
The braided god sighs. With a decisive swipe of his arm, his knuckles slam into the side of Malice’s face, the blow causing the rage god’s head to rocket sideways.
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