A direct block, from a glass arrow.
He’s got to be shitting her!
Sorrow whips around, her gaze darting toward the source. Atop one of the houses, a silver moon inflates around a masculine frame poised on the roof. Long black hair tethered at the nape. Trousers, a V-neck shirt with the sleeves jammed up dark forearms, and a pinstriped vest.
Envy lowers his bow and meets her eyes, looking royally pissed.
How long has he been here? How did he get his archery back? Where did he find it? When did he find it?
What had made Sorrow think that he wouldn’t come after her?
Alarm reflects in his eyes, the shade of which bounces off hers. Awareness jolts through Sorrow. In unison, they vault toward a stream of incoming arrows and begin to fire.
It’s a chain reaction, a swarm of gods and goddesses flooding the walkways, and the cliffside slopes, and the shoreline. Thunderstruck, the masses identify Sorrow and Envy on sight.
From every direction, projectiles flash. One by one, Sorrow looses arrows, each ramming into another or knocking an immortal off his or her feet. Bodies sprint along the planks, or leap over the gaps, or tumble into the water.
Sorrow ducks, evading a punch and retaliating with a jab of her elbow. Envy takes down an archer who springs atop the roof.
While flying from one walkway to the next, Sorrow kicks unidentified stomachs and spins around random fists. In between each move, she nocks iron, pelting archers into the sea.
While barreling from one roof to the next, Envy’s legs scissor the air, dodging arrows. With each landing, he targets and strikes an adversary.
Sorrow vaults to a dwelling parallel to him. They jump onto houses, shooting and racing toward the bluffs, where the secret channel leads to the waterfall enclave. But it’s a million leagues away. They can’t make it, can’t outrun everybody.
Not both of them.
Sorrow pauses. The sudden lapse in movement catches Envy’s attention. Wielding his longbow, he peers at her, panting in confusion.
They haven’t said a word to each other since this morning. She’s sorry about that. Already, she misses the sound of his voice, and she misses their talks.
There are so many things she’d like to say—silly things, and soft things, and sarcastic things. There are so many things she should have done with him before leaving their sanctuary—sweet and sexy things. There are so many kisses that she’s missing out on. But because of this half-assed, harebrained idea to get their weapons back, she has fucked up those opportunities.
So she won’t fuck up now.
Catching his baffled expression, Sorrow gives Envy a weak smile, because they’re good together, but not that good.
Understanding dawns on him. His horrified eyes widen, his pupils shrieking, Sorrow, don’t you fucking dare!
Except one of them has to.
Sorrow gives him no choice. Envy, don’t you fucking follow!
Anyway, why would he do that? This is his chance to scram like the gorgeous pest he is.
She tosses him the iron archery. Once he catches it, she blows his gobsmacked face a kiss and turns. Unarmed, she jumps into the crowd.
20
Sorrow
The fall is quick. Dozens of outstretched arms cushion her landing with fingers as alabaster as moon rays, and fingers as bronze as the mortal sun, and fingers as dark as the sea. When they catch her, it’s not the snake pit one would imagine. The swarm isn’t hostile, nor ferocious.
Her people—are they still her people?—crowd with dignity, ordering the throng to make way. The stellar voices chime like bells, ring like brass, as melodic as spiraling stars. Although the noise has mellowed, it blots Envy’s shout.
Her name, fractured on his lips.
Across the divide, beyond the teeming figures, Sorrow glimpses his dazed, helpless face. His pupils cleave through the distance, a mob’s worth of emotions rioting there as he watches the congregation hoist her overhead, as if she’s just stage-dived into her own execution.
Guess that answers how many times anyone has chosen Envy over themselves. It’s actually pretty brilliant, how shock screws up his face and yanks it out of proportion. If she weren’t being carried to her doom like a sacrificial lamb, she’d snigger.
Envy takes a dreadful step forward, but she shakes her head and jerks her gaze toward the water. Get going!
She’s not an extreme sports junkie; she didn’t take this flying leap for kicks. Her actions stump the masses to the point where he’s got a window before they remember he’s here. Maybe in the confusion, most of them assume he’s already been apprehended, or that he’s already fled the premises.
The motivation to do…whatever he’s tempted to do…is short-lived, because he’s not an idiot, despite how often she has called him one. Storming this scene will only get them both trapped.
Understanding burns like a torch across Envy’s face. He grimaces, then dives into the water, the surface swallowing him whole. Moments later, and from farther away, his head lurches from the surface. Sadly, she can’t see his expression.
He’s there, still watching. Then he isn’t.
When he’s gone, Sorrow clenches her eyes shut, barricading the tears. She’s a pro at not crying. Turning into a leaky faucet is the last thing that will save her, a weakness that’ll fail to impress her kin.
A hyperawareness of concern envelopes Sorrow. Her eyes flip open to where a beanstalk figure hovers on the fringes, a gray braid hanging limp over his shoulder, his features burdened with anguish. Her Guide, Echo. She hasn’t seen him since this revolt began, and the drizzle of loss that she feels is eternal. Birthed from stars and growing up without parents or siblings, Guides are the closest thing to a family that a deity has.
He won’t side with her, not as Wonder’s Guide had months ago. Matter of fact, Harmony is the only mentor who has shifted allegiances, a fact that has wounded Sorrow’s peers, despite how they each hide it.
Nonetheless, Echo hustles forward, eager to reach her.
A feminine hand clamps onto his shoulder, foiling the attempt. Envy’s Guide materializes, all vivacious curves and burnished copper hair. Siren radiates empathy but also caution. Sensibly, the female subdues Echo from making a further spectacle.
Sorrow gives a silent cry. She wants Echo near, but that might inspire him to speak impulsively, thus advertising his vulnerability and endangering him.
Her trajectory shifts and spots the child idling beside the mentors, his onyx tresses mussed from when she’d shoved him inside Love’s house. A pair of lilac eyes flit toward the water where Envy had been, then to Sorrow. He’d seen Envy disappear, maybe seen the direction in which Envy had swam.
She sends him a pleading look, then sets her finger against her lips. She can’t see his response, nor Echo or Siren’s, because the mob smuggles her into a cleft within the bluffs, a braided curtain of foliage consuming her view of the only individuals who don’t wish her ill.
Because it’s on the primitive side to keep balancing her like a speared boar about to go to the spit, the world rotates. The company settles Sorrow on her feet, then hustles her into bonds of star-dusted rope. The god securing her hands behind her back wears a teal mantle and carries archery crafted of seashell; he’s part of the class who’d ambushed Sorrow and her friends in the valley. He’s also the one whom she and Envy had overheard from beneath the pier three days ago, boasting how he wanted to try Love’s weapon.
The archer fixes her with a righteous look rather than the smug one she’d anticipated. Beside him lingers the female who’d spoken with him that night. Limited vision had obscured her face that morning, but the jumpsuit and rhodolite weapons tip Sorrow off.
With Sorrow sufficiently restrained, the group migrates down a torchlit lane. The route winds into cliffs embossed in platinum, bloom stalks sprouting from the summits. Wonder had once identified them as hyacinths.
Ahead, the lane leads to a building of inlaid wood. Bubbles of anxiety pop i
n Sorrow’s stomach. The sight dredges up hundreds of memories, so lucid that they might have occurred yesterday: assemblies, and feasts, and festivals, and public persecutions.
The Palace of Starlight.
Colonnades enwrap the three-story edifice, branches weaving around the columns. The overhanging roofs pitch into the trees, curving upward at each corner.
Most of the crowd recedes, leaving behind only several guards and the major players. An intermission follows in which the rhodolite-wielding archeress and seashell-wielding archer step inside the Fate Court’s royal seat. Presumably, they’re about to give the rulers a thorough report.
Finally, the pair returns to lead Sorrow inside. Decorative creeks skip over pebbles, and lanterns dangle, and the flutter of a windpipe rides the air. The building’s womb opens to a fountain courtyard. From there, the group travels to a waterfall amphitheater at the back, with gardens, cascades, and a moat spanning the northern cliffside crescent.
Fronds and flowers sway in the breeze. A dais rises from the arena’s center, bearing five thrones hewn of platinum—and five luminous figures.
An androgynous female made of frost and carrying crystal archery.
An archeress with purple hair that matches her agate arrows.
A beauty whom everyone likens to a butterfly because of her gossamer gown. She’s lightness and darkness, with her pearl weaponry and ebony skin.
A male with braids as long as ropes, a hooked nose that has always made Sorrow and her friends think of a hawk, and a set of azurite archery.
An archer with lava rock weapons strapped to his back and brows so angular that someone must have stapled a pair of boomerangs to his forehead.
The Fate Court.
The goddess in butterfly gossamer approaches, folding her hands and regarding Sorrow with a peculiar expression that the other sovereigns can’t catch from this angle.
Indecisiveness? Inquisitiveness? Compassion?
These rulers weren’t born into their roles. They were once archers like Sorrow, after which they ascended, becoming Guides to their successors. And then they were selected by the stars, ordained to become monarchs of the Peaks for a term of five centuries.
This butterfly female used to be the Guide of Wonder. That had been long before Harmony. And prior to that, the ruler had been the Goddess of Wonder, eons before Sorrow’s classmate was born.
She used to admire and trust these figures. Even now, admiration wars with disobedience.
The guards urge Sorrow to prostrate herself, blades of grass crumpling beneath her kneecaps. On reflex, she inclines her head to the Fate Court, then shoots them a defiant look.
This juxtaposition causes the butterfly beauty’s mouth to quirk. “Welcome home, Goddess of Sorrow.”
“For how long?” Sorrow dares.
Another quirk. “Tell us how you got here.”
“Magic.”
“I’m afraid your legendary sarcasm will do you no favors.”
“Where are your accomplices?” the porcelain goddess inquires from her armchair perch. “Who is included in the party?”
Ugh. “I have a cap on how many questions I can answer before it depresses me,” Sorrow replies. “Which one do you want me to answer?”
The butterfly goddess sighs. She nods, and the pair of thieving archers who’d taken Love’s weapons disperse with a series of genuflections.
“Our subjects have provided us with enlightening information. It seems that not only has your radical band trespassed into the Peaks, but some of you lost your archery during a chase into the rapids. We’re also told that one of the weapons, which our subjects recovered from the water, is forged of iron.” The butterfly goddess hitches a brow. “Yet it is not the iron of Anger.”
It’s a long story, but when Love and Andrew bonded, Love had originally lost her powers, and the rulers had confiscated her weapons. Sure enough, they hadn’t known that Love rejoined their band of rebels, much less that Andrew lost his mortality and became part of this crusade, too.
A lot has happened since then. A lot has been rectified.
Presumably, these rulers are beginning to realize this. Because of everything that’s happened after Love’s story, and Anger’s story, and Wonder’s story, it has amounted to a number of their subjects abandoning the Peaks, in order to ally with Sorrow and her friends.
Naturally, the Court is aware of that part. They just hadn’t been aware of a few plot holes.
Nevertheless, the one question they don’t need to ask is why Sorrow and her clan are here. The reason is obvious. One can’t have a battle without a battleground.
“So be it,” the hawkish god grumbles. “If you refuse to confirm Love’s presence among your clique, then we shall come full circle to the first question. How did you get here?”
A gleam of recognition alights the butterfly ruler’s face. “Wonder and Malice.”
Bull’s eye. As Sorrow’s group had predicted, the Fate Court had believed the conflict would take place somewhere on mortal ground, since it’s impossible for outcast deities to cross boundaries.
That is, unless they have the means to chip through barriers. To be specific, unless they have Asterra Flora.
As to their plans once entering this land, well, the Court will have to crack open Sorrow’s skull like a piñata before they get anything out of her. Either that, or torture her with electro pop.
She spits as much, embellishing with Grade A obscenities and an abridged version of the facts. One, Malice and Wonder are as smart as fuck. How many times will it take before they prove that? They uncovered all the legends that resurrected Love and Anger’s powers, not to mention united them with Andrew and Merry.
That’s what it boils down to, because love is a strength these rulers don’t comprehend. Even if Sorrow doesn’t understand it herself, she deduces this much.
Two, even if she knew where her friends were, she wouldn’t tell.
Three, they can place bets on who’s included in the party. These sovereigns are ignorant, but not that ignorant.
Four, screw them.
Screw them for disposing of Sorrow and her classmates like trash when their beliefs turned out to be different. Screw them for threatening Andrew. Screw them casting off Merry when she was born, just because she didn’t fit the immortal notion of perfection. Screw them for nearly killing Malice.
Screw them for inspiring Sorrow and then disillusioning her. Screw them for dismissing her. Screw them for breaking her heart.
The butterfly ruler winces, as if she’s a mind reader. Maybe the hurt is mutual, because none of these supreme beings appear haughty or indifferent.
At the moment, they seem worn. In their eyes, they’ve been just as betrayed.
“All of this effort,” the god with winged brows says. “Lives compromised, history and destiny disregarded. All of this for mortals.”
Ah. That’s where the ignorance begins.
“All of this for all of us,” Sorrow maintains. “Fate doesn’t have to mean the control of mortal will. We can find a balance between chance and destiny, a new life cycle, and we might be better for it.”
They twitch, struggling to perceive her meaning. Pity scrapes at her throat. Their puzzlement reminds her that it’s always been this way. It’s all they know.
It’s all she’d once known, too.
“What qualifies you to speak on humanity’s behalf?” the cloaked god demands.
That’s rich. Mortals can’t speak for themselves because they don’t know deities exist!
Sorrow really, really, really wants to stand, but she stays put. “Our jolly little band of mischief makers include immortals, humans who became immortals, immortals who became humans, misfit immortals who grew up near humans, and humans resurrected into devils. And the rest of us have either loved humans or befriended them. That’s what makes us the most elite class of archers. Not just because it includes Love, but because we’re diverse. It has to start with us.”
“Has to?”
the cloaked god repeats. “And you say fate has no place in the universe.”
“I never said that,” Sorrow parries. “I said there’s room for every possibility, for everyone. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a big fucking sky up there. You’re just afraid of what you don’t know.”
The butterfly goddess steps nearer. “And what are you afraid of?”
“Tweed blazers. Alien invasions. Romantic comedies.”
“Oh, I can imagine such triggers would distress anyone.” She cants her head, bringing those high cheekbones into stark relief beneath the constellations. “Or does the answer have to do with the archer you left behind?”
When Sorrow narrows her eyes, the goddess clarifies. “Envy.”
The name produces a cramp in Sorrow’s gut. They don’t know about the legend meant to empower this campaign. The one that sticks her and him together like a pair of barnacles. Yet this female expects the shape of his name to affect Sorrow.
An aurora of color surrounds the female, the spectrum coming from the waterfalls crashing into the garden. “You say you have no idea where your friends are, yet you weren’t alone. Or do you not consider the God of Envy a friend? That would be odd, since according to our informants, you flung yourself into the fray so that he could escape. One would think you were petrified of his capture.”
Sorrow scoffs. “I was petrified that if he got shackled, we’d have one less fighter on our roster.”
“So your mutual history is intact. You were being practical. He’s merely an ally, a classmate who routinely antagonizes you but has excellent aim. Certainly not a friend but nevertheless a comrade in your campaign—a valuable one, if you’ve chose him over yourself. Thus, you must know where he’s headed.”
Who died and made this female cleverer than she deserves? And what’s with the benign tone? It doesn’t match the insulted, uppity expressions her companions wear, having done away with weariness the moment Sorrow got used to talking back.
There’s only one response she’s in the mood to give. Because her hands are bound, she bobs her head each ruler, going down the line. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—” to the butterfly ruler, “and fuck you.”
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