As a deliberate afterthought, Sorrow finishes with, “Your Luminaries.”
“That tongue of yours is quite the coping mechanism,” the god with winged brows snarls.
“You can do what you like to me. I’m used to pain.”
“Immortality 101,” the goddess with the agate archery finally speaks up, rising from her chair. “There’s a difference between pain that’s fleeting and pain that lasts. And with us, it can last a very long time.”
“Why not ask your classmate?” the crystal-wielding goddess adds.
Wonder. The memory causes Sorrow’s moxie to suffer a quick death. In its place, a charred scent fills her nostrils. Yes, she’d looked up to these figures once, but that fateful day tainted the admiration. The downward slope has continued ever since.
“Would you care for a sample of what she endured?” the agate ruler invites.
“Like I said,” is all Sorrow replies.
But it’s the butterfly ruler who Sorrow has bigger trouble facing, especially when the female observes her intuitively, like a former Goddess of Wonder would. “The description of your botched escape was rather explicit. Our archers painted a vivid picture of the look Envy gave you before he blocked that arrow on the pier.”
The cramp in Sorrow’s gut intensifies.
The ruler continues. “Such a description brings to mind other looks. The one Love bestowed upon Andrew as we targeted him. The one Anger directed to Merry when we charged at them in a carnival. The one Malice gave Wonder in the Archives, before he took a shot to the chest for her.”
“About that,” Sorrow jumps in. “Are you sorry?”
Shadows of remorse cross their respective faces. “Ashamed is a better word,” the cloaked god with pitched brows acknowledges, since he’s the one who’d targeted Malice. “Ashamed to have struck down an unarmed archer in the back.”
“That is why we did not bear arms on your group shortly after Malice and Wonder’s destructive actions,” the hawkish god adds. “We called a ceasefire and sought to explain the situation to our subjects, only to lose a number of archers to your side, then discover that Malice lived through the injury and that you’d persisted in your plot against us, shortly after his scar healed.”
“The drawbacks of haste are plentiful,” the crystal goddess judges, her epicene features creasing.
The agate goddess steers them back to the subject of Sorrow and Envy—their attempt to save each other by the shore. “Since sentimentality has grown to be a disease with you archers, this susceptibility to love a contagion among your class, a theory presently festers in our minds.”
“You can theorize all you want, geniuses,” Sorrow says. “You’d be wrong about him and me. We’re not like our friends.”
The butterfly ruler drifts off for a second. “How many arrows do you have in your quiver?”
Wow. Talk about a change of subject.
Not to mention, Sorrow’s archery is no place in sight. She’d lost the chance to find her weapons. And since a deity can’t replace his or her weaponry, much less produce new ones, she’ll have to deal with the loss. It wouldn’t be the first time.
By the same token, the female says, “It seems you’ve been missing one since youth. In all this time, you’ve failed to recover it.”
The cloaked god twists in his seat and straightens, brandishing a lone ice arrow between his fingertips. “Would you care to have it back?”
Sorrow blinks. “Where…”
“In his home,” the butterfly ruler provides. “According to the archers who swarmed your band, one of them found it there while searching the interior.”
It’s a good thing Sorrow’s already prostrate on the ground, because her knees buckle. Do they mean Envy?
When Sorrow and Envy swam to his home, Nostalgia had been guarding the place, and after they’d dealt with him, they found Envy’s cache of alternative weapons gone. One of those archers—maybe Nostalgia himself—must have discovered Sorrow’s old arrow and snatched that, too.
All of these decades? Nearly two centuries? The whole time? That fucker had Sorrow’s arrow the whole time?
“This means nothing,” she insists. “It means less than nothing. The immortal prick must’ve taken it to use against me later, to bribe or blackmail me for sport.”
“If so, let us do it for him,” the cloaked god volunteers. “Since he never mustered the courage to follow through.”
“I’m not an easy target.”
“I think you are,” the butterfly goddess counters. “I think you’re the type who weeps when a human soldier dies in combat, because you couldn’t leach him of anguish, because you reached him too late, because your speed has its limits, because you can only be in one place at a time. I think you’re the type who strokes a classmate’s hair when she’s being persecuted. I think you’re the type who cuts herself after witnessing the pain that you’ve failed to alleviate in others.”
Sorrow’s jaw locks. How dare they!
The waterfalls escalate to a deafening plunge. The constellations stab holes into the sky.
The crystal goddess crosses her lacy limbs. “Love, Anger, Wonder. Haven’t prior installments in this series of reckless tales taught you anything? You didn’t think that we parceled off our archers to serve the mortal world without keeping tabs on them, did you? Did you think we missed your gesture of comfort toward Wonder during her punishment? Or the effect war zones have had on you?”
“It harms you greatly to see another suffer,” the braided god says, screwdriving each sentence into Sorrow’s chest. “Such is the nature of a trauma goddess, particularly one susceptible to infernal sentiment. I think you hold those memories so close, that if history were to repeat itself, it would be a devastating trigger. Just imagine how it would feel to see your friends befall the same fate, if they should lose this battle. Picture the slow, drawn-out consequences of execution. Visualize the pain they’d go through, while you watch from the sidelines, awaiting your turn.”
“Envy may mean nothing to you, but will that make it easier to witness us stripping the flesh from his body?” the crystal goddess inquires. “For your sake, I certainly hope so.”
Sorrow tosses her head from side to side. “You wouldn’t be that vicious.”
Wouldn’t they? They ordered Wonder’s torture. Yes, she’d endangered the life cycle of immortals. Nonetheless, the Court had opted for brutal retaliation rather than mercy.
In fact, Love is the only prize who’s too valuable to damage. She’s the only one who’s absurdly difficult to replace, after millennia of trying to create her. The rest of them are expendable.
The butterfly goddess’s brows knit as she listens to her peers flick threats across the amphitheater garden. “Or when you lose, we could show clemency,” she interjects. “We could make it less inflicting, less memorable, less permanent. But that is contingent upon you.”
Impatient, the agate goddess strides across the dais. “You may have recruited a legion, you may have infiltrated this land, but you were caught within moments of sneaking into the Astral Sea. Before that, according to the archers who accosted you in the valley—”
“—and who are oh, so willing to take credit for it, even though they kept you in the dark,” Sorrow baits.
“We shall deal with their misguided ambition,” the cloaked god assures her. “Be that as it may, you hadn’t been in the Peaks long before a gaggle of children and their companions swarmed you. If you can’t get that far, what do you expect? No matter what you think or believe, you are outarmed and outnumbered, and you do not have the degree of magic to change that.”
The butterfly goddess retrieves the ice arrow from her peer and then lowers herself to Sorrow’s level, presenting the shaft with upturned palms. “You, Goddess of Sorrow, know hopelessness and anguish like none of your classmates. So let’s start over, shall we? What are you afraid of?”
Meaning, what are they about to take from her?
Meaning, what do they want her
to do?
Sorrow flees into a recent memory. A moment branded on her skin like the cuts up her arms, in which a god had hugged her.
She’d said: I don’t know how to feel like this.
Yet he’d held her tighter: But you know how to feel this.
Bound against her tailbone, Sorrow’s hands ball into fists. She used to be scared of pleasure, until him. She used to think pain manageable, until him.
The things she once feared aren’t the same ones she fears now. The things she used to handle aren’t the same ones she can bear anymore.
His face, mocking her. His face, about to kiss her. His face, hating her. His face, wanting her. His face, pained by her.
His face, betrayed by her.
21
Envy
Fool of a goddess!
Reckless, confounded, self-destructing fool of a goddess!
Who gave her permission to steal his thunder like that? He was supposed to be the savior, not her.
Envy would add selfish to the list, but he needs to concentrate, otherwise dismay will get the better of him and he’ll fucking drown. It’s difficult enough to manage his own archery while swimming, but there’s also the matter of Love’s archery—the culprit for this turn of events and the reason he’s paddling like a lopsided tadpole, trying not to lose any of the arrows.
Hence, the journey takes longer than it should. He drives his arms through the sea, slapping water out of the way. At least it gets his blood pumping, keeps him from losing control.
What will they do to Sorrow? How will she stand it?
As he swims to the coastline and slinks through the foliage, he hates every inch of distance this chore puts between them. Returning to the tunnel, he makes haste, picking through the rocky passage as fast as he can, enduring every cut and scrape until achieving a safe distance, where he deposits the iron arrows in a recess behind a waterfall.
Then he promptly turns around and retraces his steps.
Love’s weapons will remain hidden until he gets back…until they get back.
Does she really think he’s going to leave her behind? Imprudent chit!
Envy secures his weapons, conjures shoes for his bare feet, and hustles through the misted channels, the rubble and ridges slicing his untucked shirt and trousers. Before locating Sorrow on the pier, he’d operated on a hunch. Seeing as his home had been depleted of arms, he’d checked one other place: Nostalgia’s house.
That god had been skulking outside Envy’s abode days ago, so it stood to reason that Nostalgia might have hoarded the weapons in his own dwelling.
Luckily, the god hadn’t been in residence. Lo and behold, Envy had at least found his archery there.
In any case, Sorrow had been right. The archers who had attacked them in the sylvan valley must have pursued them into the rapids. They hadn’t caught up, but they’d salvaged the weapons that went overboard.
Perceptive goddess. But still, a thorn in his side.
Reaching the tunnel’s boundary, Envy scopes the vicinity, his eyes dashing across the landscape. All is calm now, the immortal residents having returned to their homes, likely murmuring about the news of Sorrow’s capture.
Having glimpsed the direction the crowd took her, Envy bleeds into the shadows and picks around the outcroppings, then slips through the vine curtain that leads to the walkway. The path carves into the cliff, a route that he and his classmates are all too familiar with.
Torchlight dapples the artery, white flames lashing. He keeps to the niches, ducking in and out of corners. Although he hadn’t gone too far into the tunnel, enough time has passed for the Fate Court to act. Enough time has lapsed for them to have an effect on Sorrow.
He will not push the panic button. He will not charge like a rhino into danger.
He will not lose her.
Ahead, the path leads into the bluffs’ heart. The Palace of Starlight emerges from the trees, forged of inlaid wood and woven with branches.
Two archers guard the threshold, each sentinel brandishing crossbows. Envy skids to a halt. All right, maybe he should panic. What was he thinking? That he wouldn’t run into such obstacles? Where is his brain?
He knows the answer to that. It’s somewhere deep in Sorrow’s pocket.
He doesn’t recognize the archers, but he can handle two at once. The problem is, can he handle them quietly?
Knocking them out is an option, if he can manage to scuttle behind them. But considering his size, there isn’t much wiggle room in this compact area to reach them unseen. He’ll have to achieve the impossible from here.
Deftly, Envy slides a glass arrow from his quiver and nocks his bow. Blowing out a breath, he aims through the fronds.
A small hand lurches from the dark and seizes his elbow. His head whips to the side, his gaze slamming into a pair of lilac eyes, their lashes adorned in a glossy sheen.
Envy knows that face. It’s the moppet who’d commanded a litter of youths in the valley. Earlier, he’d been on the pier, exchanging some kind of silent communication with Sorrow, right before shit hit the fan. Envy had witnessed the scene from the rooftop.
The child releases Envy’s arm, points to a camouflaged gap in the vegetation, and whispers, “This way.” The shorty flips around, about to hop into the crochet of bushes.
Envy snatches the child’s hooded velvet robe and yanks him back. “Ah, ah, ah,” he drawls. “Not so fast, Thumbelina.”
The miniature archer flashes his teeth in umbrage. Unless he’s up to snuff on human fairytales, he won’t know what that means, but he does grasp the implication it has on his height. Up close, he’s a beauty with tanned skin, dark curls that spring around his head, and an exploratory gaze.
“Who are you?” Envy asks. “What is your name?”
To that, the archer slits his eyes, his pointy features bunching into a wad of consternation. It’s common practice to ask an archer’s root emotion, yet this moppet glowers as though Envy just accused him of wearing polyester.
The child is astute enough to register suspicion and proud enough to take it personally. He hisses, “Are you coming or not?”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
The archer’s mouth breaks into an impish grin. “You don’t.”
“How original.”
“This is a limited-time offer.”
His Guide must have taught him that mortal phrase. Either way, Envy’s lips quirk. “What you see before you are six-foot-four inches, plus two-hundred and twenty-five pounds of male radiance, all amounting to a rather fatal mood. Don’t play games with me.”
“Too late.” With that, the child flounces into the underbrush.
Fates help him. Casting another glance at the sentinels, Envy reconsiders the silent exchange that he’d observed between Sorrow and this youth.
Sighing, Envy stalks after him. The rough-hewn path dissolves into the murk, the foliage growing denser and flooding out the stars. It worms around the palace, its direction and elevation erratic, dipping and twisting and ascending again. Envy mutters an oath while squinting, in order to keep the moppet in range.
At last, a break in the hedges reveals the throne garden set within a waterfall amphitheater, where cascades pour from the summit like a dam and smash into a moat that surrounds the area. A single infant dragonfly perches on the central dais and its five seats, all of which are vacant.
Envy’s gaze charges across the wild blooms and trimmed hedges, the starlit lanterns that sway from the boughs, and the winding paths that lead to other plots. The Court is nowhere to be seen, but they’ve been here. His gaze stumbles upon the evidence of that, the sight depriving him of oxygen.
She’s unconscious. Tethered to a tree branch, her head slumps forward, layers of purple sloping across her profile. A link of glistening chains wraps around an overhead branch and chokes her wrists, forcing her arms overhead. There’s barely enough slack, so that she hangs like a ragdoll.
The position exposes her arms, the ladder of
cuts she has made over the years—and the new ones that weren’t there before. Lines of blood ooze from the wounds, each one stacked atop the other.
Clean lines. Attentive lines.
Lines that were made with deliberate, prolonged purpose—with an agenda.
Envy’s pulse accelerates like a full-throttle berserker. Four more archers patrol the perimeter. He’s going to massacre them, he’s going to rip them to shreds, he’s going to…to make this child pay for restraining him.
The youth wrestles with him, putting his whole pint-sized frame into it because, at some point, Envy had taken a vicious leap into the courtyard.
“Hey.” He jerks away from the little imp. “Hands off.”
“They’re expecting you,” the imp warns, frantic. “They must’ve known you’d come.”
Indeed. The guards anticipate a rescue, either from Envy or their band. If he tasks in there like a hot mess, it will end in ruin. Sorrow will pay even worse than she already has.
Envy stares at her, the vision smothering him. His heart needs to calm the fuck down, his fury needs a timeout, and his terror needs a sedative. He needs to be quick, concentrated, focused. Although it’s clear those sentinels weren’t the ones who’d laid a hand on her, they’ll have to be incapacitated, and it’s not going to tickle.
Fixating on the archers as they skulk through the vicinity, Envy snarls under his breath. “You might want to turn away.”
“You might want to treat me like a deity, not a human,” the moppet huffs.
Accurate point. Carrying a small set of clover archery, he’s already been taught the reality of combat. Nevertheless, Envy urges him farther into the hedges, then prowls along the border and emerges behind the first archer.
Each step hardens his jaw. Each step propels him faster, until all he sees is red. Two fluids jab to the back of the skull brings the first male and female down.
Envy twirls one of his glass arrows like a baton. Brandished by hand, the projectiles can pierce. The third guard calls out, then shuts up as the venomous lash of Envy’s weapon splits his mouth, widening the gap and leaking blood. Finally, a kick across the face wipes him out.
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