Chapter 30 Envy
Envy
Fool of a goddess!
Confounding, stunning, self-destructing fool of a goddess. Who the fuck gave her permission to steal his heroic thunder? More critically, who the fuck gave her liberty to play the savior? To risk her neck for the likes of him, as if he actually deserves her sacrifice?
Envy would add reckless to the list, but he needs to concentrate.
Otherwise, rage 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 antecedent of this turn of events and the reason he’s paddling like a lopsided tadpole.
Weighed down, the journey takes him longer than it should. He drives his arms through the sea, thrashing water out of the way. At least it gets his furious blood to pump for different reasons, keeps him from losing control.
By Fates, they had swarmed her like an army of ants.
He’d wanted to skin every immortal who came near her, touched her, harmed her.
With a bellow skewering up his throat, it was all Envy could do to stop himself from charging, from stabbing through the crowd and committing mass murder on his way to rip Sorrow from their clutches.
Alas, it’s only a fantasy. In reality, the enemy would have overtaken him. The God of Envy can handle a dozen fighters, but not hundreds. Such idiocy would have gotten them both captured, and he’d have been no use to Sorrow.
Fuck it all to hell. To rescue her, Envy had to leave her behind first.
While swimming to the coastline, stalking out of the water, and slamming through the foliage, he loathes every inch of distance the route puts between them.
Returning to the tunnel, he carves a path along the rocky passage, dismissing every cut and gash this produces until achieving a safe distance.
In a cavity behind a waterfall, he deposits the iron arrows, then whips around and retraces his steps.
Love’s archery will remain hidden until he gets back.
Until Envy and Sorrow get back.
Does she honestly expect him to leave her behind? Imprudent female!
Envy secures his weapons, conjures boots for his bare feet, and strides through the misted channels, ridges slicing through his untucked shirt and trousers.
Before locating Sorrow on the pier, he had operated on a hunch.
Seeing as his home had been depleted of arms, he’d checked Nostalgia’s house.
That god had been skulking outside Envy’s abode days ago, so it stood to reason Nostalgia might have hoarded the weapons in his own dwelling.
Luckily, the god hadn’t been in residence. As predicted, Envy found his archery there.
Sorrow had been right. The deities who attacked their crew in the sylvan valley must have pursued them into the rapids. Although the opposition hadn’t caught up, they salvaged every weapon that went overboard.
Perceptive goddess. But still, a troublesome vixen he’s never been able to shake from his system.
Reaching the tunnel’s boundary, Envy scans the vicinity, his gaze tearing across the landscape. All is calm now, 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, then slips through the vine curtain leading to a paved walkway. The path cleaves into the cliff, a route he and his crewmates are all too familiar with.
Torchlight dapples the artery, white flames lashing. He keeps to the crevices, ghosting in and out of corners. Although he hadn’t retreated too far into the tunnel, enough time had passed for The Fate Court to act.
To have a penetrating and gruesome effect on Sorrow.
He will not push the panic button. He will not charge like a rhino into danger.
He will not fucking lose her.
The route snakes into the bluffs. At the opposite end, the Palace of Starlight rises from an avenue of trees.
Metallic inlays twine through the columns, glass domes reflect the night sky, and walls threaded with obsidian glint like heartbeats, the shimmering veins pulsing with energy.
The edifice is mystical to the point of illusionary, captivating intruders and preventing them from noticing the camouflaged spikes, razor-edged pocket doors, and arrow slits hidden amid the layout.
Ethereal yet deadly if anyone means this fortress harm.
About twelve armed shitheads guard the threshold, each future corpse brandishing crossbows from various points of entry.
Envy veers into the hedges, then grinds to a halt.
Shit. Naturally, he should have foreseen this hindrance as easily as he should have anticipated the palace possessing windows.
That defenses stand vigil isn’t confidential information; it’s common fucking sense. So where the devil is his brain?
He knows the answer to that. It’s somewhere deep in Sorrow’s pocket.
Envy slits his gaze through the shrubbery. He doesn’t recognize the sentinels, but he can handle the number with minimal damage to his outfit. The problem is, he’ll need to dispose of them quietly.
Such a shame. He prefers spectacle over secrecy. To that medieval end, he was looking forward to making his enemies scream until their lungs bled, until every god and goddess in this realm heard the discord, bearing audible witness to Envy mincing their neighbors into shark bait.
It might still happen. He hasn’t yet seen what they’ve done to Sorrow, the morbid possibilities incinerating his retinas, turning his vision so red he’s about to develop nocturnal eyesight.
If they’ve touched her, he will maim them. Albeit quietly. For her sake, he’ll find a way to make them howl quietly.
With fatal calm, Envy slides a glass arrow from his quiver and nocks his bow. Blowing out a menacing breath, he tips the weapons through the ferns, aiming for the first throat. Penetration from this angle will hemorrhage his target slowly, all the while severing the guard’s vocal cords.
He pulls back on the bowstring. Then a small hand lurches from the dark and seizes his fucking bicep.
With a hiss, Envy dices his gaze toward the source.
His gaze slams into a pair of lilac eyes, the lashes adorned in pigment.
It’s the moppet who led a team of youths in the valley.
Earlier, Envy had witnessed from the rooftop as this runt stood on the pier, exchanging some form of silent communication with Sorrow right before shit got real.
The child releases Envy’s arm, indicates a 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 god-in-training flashes his teeth in umbrage. Unless he’s up to snuff on human fairytales, he won’t know what the nickname means. But he does grasp the implication it has on his height.
Up close, the moppet is the textbook definition of immortal perfection. Tanned skin, dark curls that spring around his head, and an exploratory gaze. Indeed, just The Fate Court’s type of exemplary.
“Who are you?” Envy asks. “What’s your name?”
The little mercenary slits his eyes, his features bunching into a wad of consternation. It’s common practice to inquire after an archer’s root emotion, yet this moppet glowers as though Envy has accused him of wearing polyester.
The juvenile is astute enough to register suspicion and proud enough to take it personally. He snarls, “Are you coming or not, dickface?”
Envy squints. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“You don’t.”
“How original.”
That adolescent’s mouth breaks into a sneering grin. “This is a limited-time offer.”
Envy tosses him a vapid look. The child’s Guide must have taught him all these mortal phrases. “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 lethal disposition. Don’t play games with me.”
“Too late.” With that, the moppet flounces into the underbrush.
Fuck’s sake. Casting another glance at the sentinels, Envy reconsiders the wordless exchange he’d observed between Sorrow and that tiny insurgent. They must have developed a camaraderie with each other.
Since Envy isn’t in the mood to show mercy, and since children are hardly unaccustomed to violence in The Dark Fates, Envy has no qualms about chopping the night watch to pieces in front of the interloper.
But unfortunately, logic wins out over bloodlust. Getting into the palace without leaving a trail of butchered bodies in his wake will benefit Sorrow more than carnage.
Sighing, Envy stalks after the mini god. The dense lane dissolves into the murk, winding around the fortress like a serpent, its direction and elevation erratic, dipping and twisting and ascending again. Envy mutters an oath while keeping the moppet in range.
At last, a break in the hedges reveals the throne dais. Set within an amphitheater, waterfalls pour from the summit and smash into a surrounding moat. Amid the setting, a lunar heron perches on the central platform housing five regal chairs, all of which stand vacant.
The Court is nowhere to be seen, but they’ve been here. Envy’s thunderous gaze stumbles upon evidence of that fact, the sight draining every ounce of oxygen from his lungs.
She’s unconscious and shackled to a tree.
Her head slumps forward, layers of gray sloping across her profile, gleaming chain links wrapping around an overhead branch and choking her wrists.
With her arms extending overhead, there’s barely enough slack, forcing her to dangle on both tiptoes like a broken puppet.
The position exposes Sorrow’s arms, where a grid of cuts trail up her flesh. Lines of blood ooze from the wounds, each one stacked atop the other.
Clean lines. Attentive lines made with a deliberate, prolonged purpose.
With an agenda.