Fear knots around his vocal cords, but he gnashes his teeth and snaps the tether in half. He won’t let himself go there.
He mumbles against the crinkled space between her brows. “Why did you kiss me back?”
“Because,” she says.
Humor lifts her words, forcing a gravely chuckle from Envy. Fair enough, then. He senses words lingering between them. A truer answer.
For now, he wants the brunt of his thrusts to whisk her body across his bed. Based on those water-colored irises, she yearns for that just as much.
“I want you inside me, Envy,” she admits. “I want that so badly it hurts.”
“That sounds like pain,” he says, his voice a rough-spun baritone. “If so, come to my hollow, and do whatever you want. Fuck me sweetly with your sharp little hips.”
“That sounds like pleasure,” she summarizes.
“As I recall, we had an agreement.”
“We didn’t bargain for this.”
“Then we’re excused.”
This time, they’ll do it right. At least until eventide, when they have to depart and resume this quest.
Encircling her middle, Envy backs Sorrow across the water. She nibbles the bridge of his shoulders while his teeth snatch her earlobe and suck that bell of flesh into his mouth.
“You’re as slippery as ice,” he flirts.
“You’re smooth as glass,” she says.
They stumble out of the lagoon, pawing at one another on their way across the footpath. And perhaps it’s the mention of their lost archery, the elements of their bows, because out of nowhere, Sorrow stops her assault on his jaw. In fact, she goes rigid so swiftly that Envy loses his footing.
She stares into the distance, a realization blasting its way to the surface. “They have our weapons.”
Envy blinks, hazy. “What?”
Sorrow just nods to herself, creases of anger burrowing into her face. “They have our weapons.”
She stares at him until he gets it. The group of archers who’d chased them into the rapids. Everyone except Sorrow, Envy, and Love had managed to store their weapons in the boat’s lower compartment, seconds before the rapids devoured the vessel.
Sorrow and her archery had gone overboard, and Envy dove in after her, leaving his stash to the torrent’s mercy. Also, it’s possible that Love may have lost her longbow and quiver sometime after being separated from Envy and Sorrow.
The maelstrom of water should have swallowed their weapons. So how…?
Sorrow replays aloud their swim through the Astral Sea, the words she’d heard those two archers speak while stationed on the pier. The male had mentioned iron.
I’ve always wanted to know what iron is like.
As in, iron weaponry. Why hadn’t Envy and Sorrow realized this at once? Are they daft? Or had they been too waterlogged from the rapids to draw this conclusion?
There’s no point in dwelling. If the weapons are forged of iron, they might belong to Anger instead of Love, but it’s less likely since Anger had secured his bow and quiver within the boat. So no, it has to be Love’s archery.
Can it be? Did the enemy pursue those arms while swimming after them? Or is it feasible that Love’s weapons had washed up ashore, only to be hijacked? Had the detritus simply floated into the wrong hands? If so, there’s a chance that Envy and Sorrow’s archery might be in that group’s possession as well.
Resolution eclipses relief. It also kills the sex high.
Envy massages the bridge of his nose. “We were going to make the trek weaponless anyway. We’ll figure out the rest later.”
“We’ll figure out the rest now,” Sorrow insists.
“Will we? Good luck with that, hun.”
“Are you not hearing me, Envy?” she trills, pushing away and flinging her arms to the sides so that her breasts bounce. “They. Have. Our. Weapons.”
He glowers, reading her mind. “Sorrow…”
“I can handle three archers at a time,” she tallies, raising her eyebrows at him and waiting.
He shakes his head, because he fucking knew it. “Without my longbow, I can’t take more than five.”
“Fine. So we can—”
“No, we can’t.”
“Goddammit, Envy!”
Her eyes lance through him. Really? They’re going to stand here in their birthday suits, cock-blocked by destiny, fighting about certain doom and even more certain death?
“It’s two versus two-thousand,” he argues.
“Yep,” she says, propping her fists on her hips.
“And we’re unarmed.”
“Yep.”
“And it’s the opposite direction from where we need to go.”
“Yep again.”
“And they’ll be looking out for us.”
She grabs his face, pleading, “Yes. They will.”
That’s all. And she’s right. Their allies can afford them with replacement arms, but it’s not the same without their most kindred weapons. This battle won’t be the same for any of them. They might lose before they’ve begun.
Not to mention, they’d snooped in the Astral Sea recently, when Envy checked his house for extras. So what’s the difference now?
Uneven odds aren’t what scares him. Not by a longbow.
Envy shakes his head again. Sorrow throws a fit, thrashing against him while he struggles to hold her. Eventually, she loses steam and slumps in resignation.
Kissing her forehead, he promises it will be all right. They’ll find another way.
He can’t blame her for the dagger eyes. Since lovemaking is no longer on the agenda, Envy makes a sly comment. Honestly, he’s not sure what the comment is once it’s out, but it gets her to snort with a grudge.
They watch each other dry off with the towels he’d brought. All right, Envy might embellish by moving with a tad more swagger, noting how her gaze jumps to his nether regions. It’s about as often as he checks out her perky tits.
Earlier, he’d collected their clothes and brought them outside with the towels, so they dress each other. Sorrow pulls a V-neck shirt over Envy’s head, tucking it into his slacks and finishing it off with a pinstriped vest.
He inches that long, layered skirt up her limbs, then drapes her in that customary vest, fastening the clasps as if he’s got all day. There’s something concentrated and tender about this. He would call it sweet and utterly out of his league. Is he doing this right?
It’s one thing to disrobe a female with aplomb. It’s another to cover her up.
In any event, it calms them down. In spite of the argument, the dust settles as quickly as it had escalated, and she sighs when he purrs appreciatively into her neck.
Barefooted, Envy folds her discarded robe and drapes it atop an outcropping, then he takes her hand. They gravitate to the cavern’s threshold, where they sit at the edge of the world. He settles behind Sorrow, flanking her with his limbs and encircling her midriff.
She’s sulking again, her silence posing a question: Since when has he ever aborted a dangerous plan?
Resting his chin on her shoulder, he says, “So how many smiles do you have?”
Sorrow holds back, then sputters with mirth. “You piss me off.”
“You do much more to me,” he admits.
He spends the next hour finding the ticklish spots that make her guffaw, telling her jokes, coaxing her into arousal with his tongue, and pulling pleasure from her in pieces. This being the final secluded hours, he’s not going to waste the time by getting them killed.
At some point, it’s clear they haven’t rested enough, having woken up too early and then overextending themselves with that first kiss.
Their first kiss.
Envy tucks Sorrow into him and dozes off with a grin of his own.
Too bad that grin drops like a stone when he wakes up—and she’s gone.
In a millisecond, Envy surges to his feet with a fluent “Fuck!” He storms into the cavern while cinching his mane into a low ponytail. H
e considers not only which passage to take, but how tightly he’ll strangle that goddess when he finds her.
Hadn’t she given in too rapidly? Hadn’t that seemed uncharacteristic of her?
Isn’t he the naivest, most gullible prig in history?
Of course, she snuck off to be the hero. Because she’s careless and brave and stubborn. Because he told her, no.
And because he’d shown her the way.
19
Sorrow
Talk about shitty ideas and shittier routes. Sorrow picks through the jagged tunnel, the new boots she’d conjured slashing through a creek. Slender waterfalls echo down the cavities, every sound bottomless and vibrating to unseen channels.
Deep into the vault, she passes through the cliff’s belly, following the directions that Envy had mentioned when imparting a vital piece of new information. After the intimacy in the boat, they’d sailed through the waterfall enclave, where he’d pointed out a passage that leads to the Astral Sea.
Needless to say, it’s been a crooked and twisted journey. Between the enclave and her destination, this course is supposed to cut travel time in half. It should take an hour compared with the two hours it required while swimming to the lagoon.
Envy had classified this route as precarious. Well, he’s right. This path isn’t a friendly one, chiseled as it is with razor rocks and slimy indentations.
That’s why he’s never tried it. And that’s why he hadn’t chosen this trek when they fled the Astral Sea. Not to mention, his injury wouldn’t have managed it; swimming had been the lesser of two evils.
Time is of the essence. Sorrow can extricate their weapons and make a return trip before nightfall, at which point, she and Envy will set out to meet their band.
The conduit veers, clouded in a blushing miasma. It sprays her clothes, glazing the skirt and vest in a sheen of water, as fine as pixie dust.
Sorrow trips on a slab of rock and roars an obscenity. The artery narrows, passable but even more treacherous. A bracket of stone nips at her elbows and draws a trickle of blood—the sixth piercing thus far, including a few on her forearms, and another at the column of her neck, and another down her thigh, where a point had cut through her skirt.
She counts herself lucky, since it could be worse.
At last, the passage expands. The falls dry up as she reaches a border walled in a crust of foliage. Over the ridge, a panorama greets her from below—the dominion of water homes on stilts, with its network of boardwalks and piers.
Nighttime incites a slow crawl of activity, most of her kin scarcely active. Lanterns from the morning still float in the glossy pool, and water trees sprout from the depths.
Earlier, Sorrow had been faced with three options.
One, pull Envy from sleep and ride him into the ground.
Two, shake Envy from sleep and bribe him to accompany her.
Three, leave him sleeping and deal with his wrath when she gets back.
By now, Mister Narcissus has probably stirred and realized she’s gone. She pictures his face contorted with fury, those full lips swollen from their kiss.
Their first kiss.
Not her first lip-lock in history, but definitely the first toe curling, full-bodied one. The second his tongue snatched hers, her pelvis had turned on its axis.
And her heart…
Sorrow can’t say what her heart had done.
From this vantage point, she scans the vicinity. The water reflects billions of asterisks and a cluster of moons. Fronds brush as she creeps down the slope, to where the shoreline swabs dainty pebbles laced in starlight, the environment wafting with the astral aromas: sharp silver and pure white.
Lowering onto all fours, Sorrow crawls like a crab and submerges herself, paddling with her head just above water. She pumps her arms like a frog, the pool quivering as she travels beneath the walkways, weary of agitating the lanterns.
With shoes laced up her calves, this trip is additionally laborious. All the same, the distance isn’t detrimental, so she manages.
Her pulse rams into her wrists. Her lungs seize up.
But she keeps going. Avoiding the radiant beams, she navigates beneath the planks, passing several footfalls and murmured conversations. Someone plays a flute. Another polishes his or her longbow.
Each sound is the loudest she has ever heard. The tension increases tenfold as she reaches a designated pier. She knows its location well, waxed in moonlight and lonely on its perch. The round edifice has a single story, except rather than candles or draperies, a dusty lamp stands in each window.
Sorrow grasps one of the stilts balancing her house. If her theory is correct, and that group of archers have salvaged Love’s iron archery, they might also have Sorrow’s or Envy’s weapons.
In fact, they might have stashed those weapons as bait. Maybe they’re expecting her friends to come sniffing for estranged archery.
On second thought, when Sorrow and Envy checked his house, they hadn’t found a single set of arms, because that group confiscated everything. So maybe searching for Envy’s glass weapons will amount to zero.
Or maybe that group simply hadn’t thought to hide anything yet, instead of just taking what isn’t theirs. Or maybe Envy hadn’t looked hard enough. Or maybe lots of logistical things.
No matter what, searching is paramount. Sorrow stalls, pressing her ear to the planks and listening. There’s no sound of a guard, or a lookout, or an intruder.
Hooking her fingers over the pier, she hauls herself upward, careful not to slosh about. Casting the community another glance, she scuttles to the door and creeps inside. There, she rises to her feet and pauses in the shadows. She soaks up the details, as if she hasn’t been here in a millennium, as if everything has changed that much.
The lamps. The fleece blankets. The table where she routinely shared currant nectar with her Guide. The bed where Sorrow cried herself to sleep. The floor where she cut herself after torturing Wonder. And out the window, the pier’s edge where she sat beside Envy, their legs bobbing in the water as he asked whether she’d miss him, once they set off for the human realm.
Back when she couldn’t wait to be away from him. Back when she knew her purpose. Back when she believed in it.
A lump forms in Sorrow’s throat. She hustles through the house, checking the cupboards and closet and chests, rummaging for the welcome sight of archery.
Nothing. Not a thing.
The subsequent trip to Love’s home drains her of composure. Crafted of a dozen mullioned windows, the house stands vacant. Sorrow repeats the process of swimming, and crawling, and sneaking inside. Under her friend’s bed, someone has strapped a familiar set of iron arms to the bottom of the mattress.
Sorrow puffs out a breath. Yes!
After collecting the archery, she harnesses it to her back, noting the foreign weight. That infamous goddess seems to carry a heavier burden.
Aligning herself with the wall beside the door, Sorrow peeks between the crevice and inspects the perimeter. Exhaling, she rounds from the wall and slinks through the door.
And she halts.
Standing beyond the threshold, an archer stares at her. Garbed in a velvet robe and brandishing arrows forged of clovers, he watches Sorrow with a quirk of his head. The difference between life and death comes in a stack of bullet points.
This particular archer observes her with curiosity.
This particular archer boasts painted eyelashes.
This particular archer is one whom she’s seen before.
And that’s why this particular archer was easy to miss when she crept into the house. Because this particular archer stands no taller than her breasts.
This archer is a child.
Craning his head at her, the tyke studies Sorrow. His pupils sweep from her wet clothing, to her bare feet, to the archery. He’s a beautiful, tanned creature, with lively sprigs of onyx hair. His pupils quaver like an abyss, the kind one can dive into.
Upon closer inspection, Sorrow
can’t decipher his root emotion, but she can guess, and she can guess well. This youth isn’t a pride god, nor a mirth god, nor a rage god.
Neither is he like Sorrow, or Melancholy, or Despair, or Loss. He’s not a trauma god.
She sets a finger to her mouth, which causes his lilac eyes to brighten with intrigue. Encouraged, she whispers, “Are you a wish god?”
Is he Trust or Hope in the making? That can’t be, unless those archers have already ascended to mentor status. So is he Desire? Anticipation?
The tyke gives a start. He steps forward and opens his mouth.
Someone else shouts. A projectile flies toward Sorrow from the opposite pier, cutting a path across the distance. It’s a clean target, which should hit her square in the chest. The problem with targets is, one can’t predict what bystanders will do.
The child is runty, engulfed by the shadows, so that his presence goes unnoticed by the assailant. Hearing the whistle, the runt turns, inadvertently placing himself in the arrow’s path.
Son of a bitch! Sorrow shoves the youth aside, hurling him into the safety of Love’s house. He yelps and goes flying. She dives sideways, tumbling across the planks as the arrow slams into the house’s facade and vanishes in an illuminated blast.
So it begins. More voices holler, silhouettes hastening into the fray. Somebody blows a necklace horn, alerting the residents. Doors whip open, and boots slam across the peers, and arrows twang.
Dozens of mouths bellow her name. Well, if those conniving archers from the rapids had wanted to catch members of her band covertly, that jig is up.
Sorrow rolls across the walkway, each rotation avoiding a series of strikes. She surges to her feet as another shaft plows in her direction.
Nocking Love’s bow brings Sorrow up short, the iron so unfamiliar that it delays her speed. Crap, she has to be cautious. Because this archery has retained the magic of its root emotion, Sorrow has to render the arrows infirm. And since this isn’t her own weapon, that makes it challenging.
She’ll have to be vigilant. Otherwise, whomever she strikes will turn into a lovesick maniac looking for a mate.
Her fingers spasm. She pauses, arrested by the sight of another arrow slicing past her from behind, intercepting the attack.
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