Touch (Dark Gods: Selfish Myths #1)

35

Her eyelids crack open. The cottage takes shape, from the plush furnishings to the brimming hearth. Beyond the glass walls, a pink glow lathers the sky, its hue indicating dawn.

The thirteenth day.

Her body feels strange—some parts fatigued and weighed down, other areas weightless. Rolling onto her side makes Love wince. Her feet feel especially odd, as if there’s no blood flowing there until she wiggles them, which boosts the circulation.

Love rises on her elbows. She gapes at the bandage encircling her hand and wrist. The distress intensifies when she bends her knuckles and encounters resistance.

More than that, the weight on her back has vanished. Worse, she does not feel the plumes encased under her flesh. In a panic, Love wraps her arms around herself, frantically searching for feathers and discovering two scar lines encrusting her shoulder blades, as though someone has extracted her wings.

Loss grips her chest, the sense of amputation unbearable. A whimper slips from her mouth, but then a bulky weight stirs beside her, emitting the scents of cedarwood and eucalyptus.

“Andrew,” she breathes, whirling around.

She remembers him carrying her through the woods. He must have brought them here and tucked her in, but now he’s passed out and as naked as she is. His body trembles, and sweat beads from his neck. Yet he’s alive. Uttering a broken noise, Love brushes the hair from his forehead, then yanks her fingers back in shock. His skin feels demanding, the surface reminding her of singed coals.

He should be with his mate. Or he should be dead.

Voices drift from outside. Love grabs a blanket and wraps the material around her bare skin, then rushes out of the cottage. She stops short, arrested by the biting presence of the cold. The blizzard is over, but a few feet from her door, a high wall of snow dominates the forest.

It makes little impression on her guests. Blood, gashes, and contusions cover their flesh and stain their torn clothing. Idling beneath an umbrella of evergreens, the four archers round on her, scarred from combat and irritable.

All except for Envy. “Look who’s awake and doing the eternal walk of shame,” he croons, ignoring Anger’s burning glare and admiring Love’s exposed thighs.

“What happened?” she gasps. “Where’s The Court?”

“Hush, my former conquest. Pace yourself.”

“You need more rest.” Wonder, who almost let Andrew die, who waited until the last instant to help, has the decency to drop her gaze from Love. “How do you feel?”

Love glowers. “How do I feel? How dare you! I did my job and—”

Sorrow scoffs. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“Do not tell me what the fuck to do!”

“Listen before you judge,” Anger cautions while leaning against the cottage wall.

“Please, let me explain.” Wonder’s plaintive voice reaches out to Love. “When Anger sent the message to everyone that your arrows didn’t work on the lovers—”

Didn’t work on them?

“—The Court raised the sky. It was a frenzy. They believed you were fading swifter than expected and had grown too brittle for your weapon to have an effect. But I knew. I knew why the arrows didn’t work. You’ve changed.”

Love shakes her head. “Am I…”

Wonder forges ahead and clasps her hands. “Your hearts have bonded. You’re mortal.”

Shock stalls Love’s tongue, and she almost drops the blanket covering her nudity. Although she had begun to fall for Andrew after their first quarrel in the cottage, had sensed herself tumbling headfirst into love, that pivotal emotion hadn’t reached its peak yet.

Instantly, she knows when it happened. It was several days ago, when Andrew and she had prowled after one another through the woods, challenging each other to an archery battle. They’d been equals, neither human nor deity but simply two lovers at play, in their most primal element. Then and there, she had fallen wholly, utterly, eternally in love, while they’d been sportively aiming deadly weapons at one another.

In those moments, Love was happier than she’d ever been in her misbegotten life, finally connected to someone in an elemental way. Body, mind, and spirit. The sensation had been fierce and unconditional.

Either Andrew had fallen at some point before that, or at the same time as Love. In any case, that’s why they’d been able to touch afterward on the pond, the transformation stoking their passionate kiss.

Back then, Love had misunderstood the reason. She had assumed they’d been able to touch because she was weakening further.

And her frailty on their way to the bookstore, after more than twenty-four hours of relentless fucking, it had been a trial to carry her iron arrows. Yet that hadn’t been because she was dying. It was because she’d become human. Because someone equally mortal loves her.

If she’d been bred in a different world—this world—Love might have recognized his feelings long ago. Ironic, given which emotion she reigns over.

She blinks down at herself, prepared to find an unrecognizable soul. Then she turns sideways to the glass wall and presses the pads of her fingertips to her cheeks, testing the consistency of her skin, searching for the real Love somewhere in the alternate reality of her reflection. The wings are gone, their absence once more flooding Love with bereavement.

Her maroon eyes remain, albeit duller and lacking the starlit pupils. To the untrained eye, the irises would appear brown with a deep red undertone, unusual but not unearthly from a human’s perspective.

It’s all too surreal. To distract herself, Love studies her bandage with fascination.

“When we awakened, you and your mortal were gone. Based on the footprints in the snow, he carried you here and then fell unconscious by your side,” Wonder says. “That’s how we found you, though at some point your wings must have faded.” She offers Love an emphatic look. “The mortal dressed your wounds, but Sorrow stitched up your palm.”

“Don’t look surprised,” Sorrow chides Love. “I’ve been near plenty of black-and-blue humans to know my way around this.” She removes the needle pinned to her collar and holds it up. “Don’t worry. The flames sterilized it… I think.”

Love strives to put her thoughts in order. Words that Anger’s Guide once spoke return to her.

Your weapon is a part of you. Your power, your breath. As you have magic, it has magic.

If Love no longer has magic, neither do her weapons. When she became mortal, her arrows had lost their matchmaking power. Now that she thinks on it, she hadn’t seen the arrows crack open Andrew and Holly’s hearts. Instead, the weapons had remained benevolent, sparing Andrew and Holly from death when Love had struck, the momentum only knocking them off balance.

“I didn’t realize,” she says. “But I was in the bookshop when I loosed the arrow. I was invisible to everyone but my target. The arrow penetrated Andrew and Holly without killing them, and—”

Sorrow groans. “You’re welcome for the stitches.”

“Remember what I said? Your humanity manifests in stages,” Wonder explains. “I’ve been doing more research, and tangibility comes first, which is why Andrew and you were able to touch. Visibility is next, which hasn’t happened yet. Then strength, speed, and any powers and divine physical traits will fade slowly. So whatever…” Despite her mythical origins, she flushes. “Whatever intimate activities may have occurred between the two of you… well, they won’t result in procreation. As for the rest, soon enough every facet will wane entirely.”

Everything did transpire fast. Love had released her arrow and ran. Even if Ulrik had left the store without noticing her, and Georgie had been assisting a customer in another room, Holly hadn’t seen Love. Only Andrew had.

As for her weapons, Wonder expands. Since Love hasn’t fully changed yet, the arrows may have lost their magic to infuse emotion, but they haven’t become visible or lost their immortality. That’s why they impacted the humans physically yet spared Andrew and Holly from being impaled.

And the cut on Love’s palm had been merely that. A simple cut. One that had only happened because the arrow is fused to Love’s soul, immortal or not. Naturally, it would break her flesh before anyone else’s.

Lastly, her wings. They had appeared even when she’d become human, because she hadn’t reached that stage yet, the moment when they would vanish.

Envy swaggers to a tree trunk and leans against it while twirling a glass arrow. “Apologies for the scare with your lover. The Fate Court thought he was still toxic to us. They had to act.”

“I-I couldn’t let them find out I trespassed in The Archives, found the scroll, and encouraged you. I didn’t know how they would react,” Wonder confesses. “I’d hoped you would realize what was happening and announce the change. I trusted The Court wouldn’t really shoot. Not with you blocking Andrew. I didn’t expect things to turn out as they did, but I couldn’t move until the last moment.”

Love’s resentment ebbs. She cannot—will not—blame Wonder for fearing more torture. Indeed despite that ever-present threat, Wonder had been an ally from the beginning, helping Love when no other deity would, supplying her with sacred information, and rooting for Love to succeed.

As for Envy, Sorrow, and Anger, they did help in the end. Selflessly, they had put their lives at risk, giving little thought to their own personal gains.

Wonder explains how she’d rushed to tell Envy and Sorrow everything before their appearance in the storm: the scroll and its contents, as well as Wonder’s newfound suspicion that Love had become human, thus rendering Andrew harmless. So when Wonder had wordlessly begged their crew to stop The Court, bloodshed had ensued, archers and rulers turning on one another for the first time in millennia.

Anger had been out of the loop about Love’s transformation. Wonder hadn’t had the chance to inform him because he’d been in the woods, monitoring Love’s actions.

“I revealed the truth to him minutes ago,” Wonder supplies.

“Once The Court left,” Anger finishes.

Apparently, Love’s aim had intercepted their ruler’s arrow, hurling the god’s archery off course a hair’s width from Love’s chest. A death shot that had been meant for Andrew. The explosion of light from the god’s arrow had blasted everyone to the ground, knocking them unconscious. But once the deities had regained their senses, Wonder exhibited Love’s wounded hand and the bloody arrow. Although it could have been a mere injury, Wonder feigned ignorance and encouraged the rulers to consider all they’d learned from The Archives. She inquired about any unique circumstances by which Love’s weapon can lose its power. The Court had speculated and appealed to The Stars, who affirmed Love’s mortality.

Wonder flinches in remorse. “They think you discovered the scroll on your own.”

Well, let them believe it. Let the archers safeguard the truth, lift it from Wonder’s shoulders, and splatter it across Love’s legacy. It’s not farfetched considering her mischievous ways and fetish for affection.

“Elite crew of The Dark Fates no longer,” Envy says with petulance.

Worry floods Love’s voice. “Elaborate, please.”

Sorrow clutches her chest and does a remarkable impersonation of the Goddess of Excitement. “Oh, my Stars! Haven’t you heard?”

What Love hasn’t heard is that every soul in The Dark Fates knows what happened. Yet amid the uproar about the scroll, how an unsung mortal nearly vanquished them, and that Love prevented it along with this crew—and not in the way anyone would have guessed—her people’s beliefs remain unchanged. To feel love isn’t in their nature. They consider Love the exception, as well as a deserter. She has bonded with a mortal and abandoned her people for a so-called lowly existence.

Their crew has become the laughingstock of The Dark Fates, which has turned out to be punishment enough, in lieu of torture for their mutiny. Few things are worse for a deity than ridicule and rejection.

The Guides are shamed. Envy and Sorrow are publicly pitied for being saddled with degenerate peers. Wonder’s own past with a human has been resurrected. And their crew has been reduced by not one, but two.

Anger has been banished from The Dark Fates.

Love hisses. Her head whips toward the god, who looks as if her distress affronts him. “I hit a nerve, so to speak.” He cracks a rare but derisive grin. “It appears, I’m hardly rebel material.”

The rage god could not be more wrong. He’d confessed to The Court about voluntarily withholding intel regarding Love. He’d taken matters into his own hands and concealed news of her bond with Andrew, suspecting The Court would venture here to see it for themselves, only to discover her playing with fire and delaying the match.

Shielding Love has cost Anger. As the leader, he will pay the greatest price among the remaining archers. He will be living in solitude, wandering the human realm without purpose, neither of this world, nor of The Dark Fates.

Love fights to keep her knees from buckling. None of them deserve this.

“It’s my fault,” she whispers.

“You are certainly human, already growing a conscience,” Envy drawls, his pompous grin restored. “There’s no need to fret, pretty one. However blemished you’ve made us look, we have plenty of time to get over it.”

“And it was my pleasure,” Wonder announces, folding her scarred hands in front of her. “However, I shall come back to haunt you, if you let our efforts go to waste.”

Love promises she won’t, then glimpses the rage god. “Where will you go?”

Anger tosses her a patronizing sneer. “I shall live. Longer than you.”

If The Court hadn’t ordered Anger to report on Love in the first place, he might not have been there to summon the rulers, and they wouldn’t have tried to decimate Andrew. Not that Andrew had proven an easy target, for he’d faced off against the enemies with his own brand of strength.

Nonetheless, if Anger hadn’t been there, Love and Andrew might have perished in the storm.

Wonder’s enthusiasm dwindles as she reminds Love of something they discussed early on, back at Love’s tree. “Your memories will fade over time. You can see, touch, and recognize us now only because you were once a goddess. We’re still linked for a little while yet, until you lose those memories and forget we exist. It’s the final stage.”

What’s left of Love’s confidence dissolves. She will forget her past. Her home in The Dark Fates. Lush cliffs and caves, purple flowers and silver light. Her Guides, who had inspired Love and made her feel as though she belonged, even when her peers hadn’t. The Fate Court, whom she has followed and served for two millennia.

She will forget matchmaking and all she has learned in exchange for this realm, with its illnesses and the annual bone-chilling arrival of winter. Unpredictable daily life. Countless pairs of mortal eyes fixed on her.

Love is petrified. Yet it cannot be close to what Anger must feel, losing everything and everyone because of her. She will miss the chance to beseech The Court on his behalf. She will forget having caused this. She’ll forget him. And Envy, and Sorrow, and Wonder.

“Your love ties you to each other, so Andrew’s memory will fade as well,” Wonder provides. “The otherworldly parts of your time together will vanish, but you’ll remember the love, and our kin will live on.”

They’ll keep ruling over mortal hearts. Love won’t get the opportunity to fix that, to crusade for a change, the realization distressing her. She wants Andrew. For him, she would have willingly sacrificed her immortality and memories anyway. Nevertheless, she loathes her inability to incite a revolution, to find an alternative whereby she bonds with Andrew while also making a difference in The Dark Fates. Ultimately, Love would have appreciated the choice, to have made that decision for herself.

Now she understands what it’s like to have that taken from her.

Fate versus free will. There should be a balance. Love must accomplish what she can before her past becomes a blank slate. Even one small act or word can evolve into something greater. Perhaps it already has, now that everyone has learned of her bond with a mortal. Love won’t disregard that possibility either.

She looks at Wonder. “What we talked about that night in front of Andrew’s house. About us doing the right thing. Remember it. We must relearn what fate and free will truly are.”

Then Love sweeps her gaze across the crew. “We must find a deeper bond with each other in The Dark Fates. We must embrace our vulnerabilities, stop calling affection undignified, and cease denying our fears and flaws. And perhaps we should deal more with ourselves, less with humans.”

An uncertain silence follows. Love had spoken as though she’s still part of the we .

Envy, Sorrow, and Anger do not acknowledge her speech. But they also don’t dispute it.

Only Wonder smiles. “I shall remember. You may count on that. I’m a research diva.”

“They’ll have a hell of time replacing you,” Envy laments to Love. “I will too. I had debauched plans for us.” He nudges his chin toward the cottage. “Good thing you’re not attached to this place. It will disappear once you and Andrew vacate, though it’s going to be a while until the snow melts. We doubt the rest of your village is faring any better, so if there’s no search party looking for Andrew soon, rest assured it’s because they’re either trapped indoors or they can’t make it through the forest. We’d love to use our mighty muscles and plow the area, but you know how it is.”

Understood. Disrupting the elements is forbidden. Aside from The Stars, nature allies with no one.

The elevation is low, the snow is powdery rather than hard and wet, and the cottage is set in an open part of the forest. The ice will thaw in two days, provided the sun decides to shine.

“In what condition you both leave the cottage is another story,” Sorrow cautions. “You got lucky in the storm, but the mortal has a fever. Minor things like stitches, we can do. Illness is out of our hands.”

Love thinks of the way Andrew’s skin had felt when she woke up. Fear clenches her chest. Humans are sacred, but sickness is a destiny her kind does not control.

Wonder pats Love’s cheeks. “I wish we could do more.”

Deities can cross distances instantaneously, but none of the archers have the power to transport Love or Andrew with them. For the ability to travel is an individual gift. And even though any of them can simply carry a wounded figure and walk out of here, The Fate Court has forbidden the crew from offering such assistance. Following the carnage in these woods, further insubordination will result in Wonder, Sorrow, and Envy’s banishment alongside Anger. To that end, if they care to make a difference in this conflict, it’s best to keep the enemy close.

Love clears her throat. “Thank you for the last two thousand years. And for helping me.”

Envy blows Love a kiss. She humors him and catches it.

After he’s gone, Sorrow shakes her head as though Love is the most absurd person she’s ever met. “Rip those damn stitches, and there’ll be hell to pay,” she warns, then disappears.

Wonder steps closer to Love. “What a dazzling journey, being able to start over. Yours is a tale for a blank scroll. I’ll volunteer to write it.”

“Make me clever,” Love requests.

Wonder tucks her chin into her shoulder, a saucy gesture for this goddess. “That and more. You defied The Fate Court for a mortal. Our people can deny it all they want, but your story has struck them, and it won’t be forgotten.”

“You have beautiful hands.”

Like morning dew clinging to grass, her verdant eyes shimmer. A mixture of comfort, wistfulness, and private memories consume her expression before she glances between Love and Anger, then whispers, “Be gentle.”

Then she dissolves into mist, her wildflower corsage the last image to evaporate. When she’s gone, a thick coat of silence envelops the woods.

Anger studies the frozen pond, its hard surface reflecting the clouds. “I watched you kiss him out there.”