17
The fire snaps at Love from the hearth. She stares at the door, the threshold littered with shattered fragments of the tea mug.
You were protecting yourself.
Andrew’s words turn her into ash. He’s right. Indirectly, she had been protecting herself, because the survival of The Dark Fates rests on her shoulders.
He’s also wrong. Love had been safeguarding Andrew, for any impediments to his match will lead to his death.
Everything is connected. Everything is linked.
Andrew is intelligent and shrewd. She is no longer surprised by his ability to see through her deception, to cobble the facts together. However, the truth is more complex.
He deserves to know what will befall him, to learn of his role in the greater scheme. Yet he never will. Small details are safe, but the larger plot is not for his ears if she wants him to live.
Love feels as small as a crumb. Anger has forever changed Ulrik and Griffin because she’d made an assumption, had acted in panic and haste, robbing the men of an opportunity to change on their own, to willfully forge a resolution with Andrew. Without mercy, she has stolen their autonomy.
At midnight, Love retrieves Andrew’s coat from the bed. Wrapped in his scent, she collects her bow and quiver, then sets off into the village. The weather is tame, a shawl of fog licking along the sidewalks and mist laminating the structures.
She passes a middle-aged couple whom she’d matched two months ago. They trudge to their car, their boots raking through the snow, and stop beside the vehicle. The woman knots her scarf while the man grieves over a scratch on the hubcap. They suit each other without challenging each other. They’re the same pragmatic individuals they were before the first kiss. Their bond is flawless.
Love has saved them from wild quarrels and tearful regrets. The same disturbing things Andrew has made her feel tonight, she has spared them. Yet if she had the choice, she would repeat this evening, despite how much it had hurt to see him furious with her, to watch him leave afterward.
On the winding driveway fronting Andrew’s house, Love pauses to gaze up at his window. He came close to figuring out her plans. Once he and Holly are together, how will his life change? How will Griffin feel?
In a different world, Love could leave them alone, leave everyone in this world to their own devices. But where would that leave her? And the rest of her people?
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asks.
“That depends on if you want the mortal or immortal answer.”
Love turns. Wonder stands beside her, the goddess’s pensive green eyes shimmering, her mouth caught somewhere between a smile and a frown.
“I want your answer,” Love pleads. “Do you believe we’re doing the right thing?”
“Dearest, you shouldn’t punish yourself. You’re trying to save our world and spare your human.”
“Stop diverting. I’m talking about instinct, not duty or loyalty.”
“Oh, really?” Reproachful, Wonder holds up her scarred hands. “Is this what loyalty looks like?”
Love clams up. It’s not.
“I’ve disobeyed and paid for it,” Wonder reminds her. “You don’t wish to know what that’s like. It’s about time you regretted what you made Anger do. Of all the shameful things to request of him. If you draw attention to yourself, Anger will grow suspicious. He might slip and reveal damning facts to The Court.”
“He told you about Ulrik and Griffin.” When Wonder makes no reply, Love reasons, “I could not match Andrew with an adversary and a nuisance in his midst. And I didn’t make Anger do anything.”
“Oh, Love. He’s incapable of refusing you—,” Wonder stops, biting back her words.
Regardless, Love would beg to differ. For the greater good, Anger obliged her this once. Otherwise he doesn’t favor her, doesn’t trust her not to stray, and doesn’t have misgivings about spying.
“If the mortal matters to you, I already said there’s another option,” Wonder reminds Love. “If Andrew falls for you—”
“He won’t.”
“—and if you fall for him—”
“I won’t.”
“—this will end differently. You don’t have to kneel, serenade the sky, or make a ceremony out of it. Your hearts will do the work. If you pay attention, you’ll know the moment it happens.”
Love shakes her head. “Why are you helping me? Why are you telling me this?”
Shadows creep across Wonder’s face. “You’re not the only one who ever cared for a mortal.”
Oh. Of course.
The memory of Wonder’s punishment surfaces with glittering clarity. Back in The Dark Fates, on the day Wonder was tortured, everyone knew she’d defied celestial law. Having abandoned her post and fled into the mortal world, she had attempted to communicate with a human man. However, Wonder had kept all other details to herself, including why she’d taken such a rash action and who the mortal had been. Beyond the fundamentals, the full story has never come out.
“When we were still in training, my Guide took me to observe the humans,” Wonder confides, her eyes dimming. “I was picking wildflowers in a meadow when I saw him riding a dark horse. Three hounds were bounding after him like familiars, and he was laughing in a raspy tenor, which told me he could sing. And those eyes—they were the color of ashes.” Her lips tremble. “I don’t know what came over me. I was filled with desire, yet there was also this invasive feeling—something provocative and all-consuming.”
Love’s mouth falls open. That invasive feeling—that something provocative and all-consuming—couldn’t have been love. No deity feels that.
“I used to sneak away to be near him,” Wonder reminisces. “He had no idea I existed, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be assigned somewhere far from the human, so I searched The Archives for a way to change that. I was so desperate that I hastened to The Hollow Chamber and found that scroll about undoing immortality. I thought, although he can’t see me, he can still read messages from me. For months, I wrote letters and stashed them in his home.” Bemusement etches through Wonder’s countenance. “I remember pomegranate trees in the front garden.”
Thunderstruck, Love gapes. “You attempted to change destiny.”
“In The Dark Fates, I used to listen to you speculate about human affection,” Wonder confesses. “I wanted to ask you more, but I didn’t dare. I thought perhaps what I was feeling could be close to love. The letters were my attempt to find out, to court this human and bring us together.
“Yet all it did was scare and torment him. He believed he was losing his mind, and in my shame, I feared for his wellbeing. I tried to run away from The Dark Fates, to hide somewhere and watch over him, to make certain he recovered, but he was committed to an asylum. That’s when The Court found me. I managed to keep my Archive reconnaissance to myself, but I’d done plenty already to deserve my punishment.”
Wonder doesn’t lose her grin, but her eyes water. “When my hands were cut open, I pictured that man confined because of me. I failed to protect him, and I didn’t have the chance to free him or myself like you do.”
Well played. So the solution to Love’s predicament is also a remedy to soothe Wonder’s own regrets.
“I’m sorry,” Love whispers. “I’m sorry for what happened to you both. But what you’re saying isn’t going to work on me. This isn’t merely about what I asked Anger to do. I want to know if all our actions are just. Please.”
“I wish I knew,” Wonder replies, rubbing her arms, shielding herself. “People rely on destiny as a comfort—a means to keep their hopes alive. It’s ironic, is it not? I make people wide-eyed and starry-eyed, but by forcing them to admire things in a way they hadn’t cared about before.”
“Stealing people’s free will,” Love quotes Andrew.
She’s never had a problem with this, never thought about emotions being fabricated or about stealing mortals’ choices from them, never considered it to be wrong, because her powers are a Stars-granted right. According to one human, Love knows very little and shall never know enough.
Humans may court sloppily, but they do it profoundly. It leaves their souls bruised, yet they’re willing to experience it again and again, in new ways—searching, suffering, savoring. There must be something to that gritty, unruly pursuit that makes it worth it. Perhaps it has to do with all that profound touching.
Love readjusts her quiver. When she’s done, Wonder is gone.
If I don’t accomplish what I’m supposed to, Andrew will die.
Because he’s killing us. I’ll be dead first. I’m dying right now. I keep forgetting. Silly me, I keep forgetting.
Sneaking to the back of the house, she finds the deck entrance locked. However, the kitchen window is unbolted, likely an oversight. She hoists up the sash and hunkers inside. Upstairs, Ulrik sleeps fitfully, muttering a woman’s name from within the cave of his room, the heels of his bare feet punishing the sheets. Love tastes his grief and rushes out the door.
She skulks into Andrew’s suite. It’s mystical at night, as blue and silver as winter, with ceiling beams cutting shadows across the rug. As cedarwood and eucalyptus waft from the sheets, Love drinks in the heady scent.
His bed. And him.
Like the mortal, Psyche, he’s sprawled across the mattress, with his chest bare, a slab of muscles rising and falling. Beautiful and desirable to all, he’s a human who sees past the veil and perceives Eros for whom the deity truly is. Perhaps in some ways, mortals can predict the future. For while this tale was never the reality, now it feels as if those stories are slowly becoming the new truth.
While watching Andrew’s torso contract, a multitude of sensations wash through Love. Ardor, longing, remorse. And when he rolls to the side, her throat tightens, and her hand extends to caress him, passing through his body like water. Tilting her head, Love gently skims one finger down the ledge of his profile, slides along his cheekbone, and ventures toward his mouth.
If things were different, and if Love could truly make contact, she would become attuned to Andrew’s body. Putting her mind to it, she’d familiarize herself with every smooth ridge.
Indeed, Andrew would match her fervor. He would touch her the same way he’d fuck her, and he would fuck her the same way he’d love her, without reservations or limitations. He would make her come deeply, thoroughly. This human would penetrate Love in every way, in every place, in every tempo. And she would savor it all. Ultimately, she would know him from top to bottom, from beginning to end.
Touching this man would be the death—and life—of her.
This isn’t why she came here. Yet Eros hadn’t planned to fall under Psyche’s spell either, when he snuck into her room after dark.
Psyche. Meaning “Soul” in Greek.
A soulmate.
When Andrew exhales, the masculine sound low and gritty, Love halts. Her digit pauses at the margin of his lips. Swallowing, she abandons his mouth and hovers her fingers above his heart. It would be easy to sweep her hand through, to see if it changed the beat of his pulse.
Instead, Love balls her digits into a fist, allowing herself no more than this greedy, scandalous intrusion. Anything else requires waking him up.
To console herself, Love watches him for hours. She wants to be the sheets that cover his body. She wants to be the ceiling separating him from the sky—hovering above him, the first thing he sees before and after dreams. She wants to be the open window letting in the light and dark for him.
Finally, she remembers her original reason for trespassing. From her coat pocket, Love retrieves his note.
Who is this Selfish Little Myth?
Who is she? A myth that’s not a myth, who resides among a thousand evergreens and within a transparent cage. An archer who can strike this man down, but who cannot kiss him, fuck him, have him. A covetous goddess who creeps upon her target without his permission, because it’s in her nature to be selfish.
A trickster. A traitor.
She removes her coat—his coat—drapes it over a reading chair, and sets the note on top of it. She drifts out the door, making sure not to look at him again.
It takes longer than it should to return to the glass cottage. She cannot sleep, so she has a silent conversation with the translucent walls. By sunrise, she knows.
She is falling in love.