Chapter 39
Envy
Time stops. The scene plays out in slow motion.
Pain tears Anger’s eyes wide open, the pupils fattening like blisters while crimson dribbles from the wound. Staring ahead in a daze, he sways in place, then his knees hit the foundation.
No. No!
Anger, nodding at Envy in encouragement during training.
Anger, keeping their crew calm after Wonder’s torture.
Anger, believing none of them except Love knows he’s afraid of storms. Anger, protecting Love’s secret when she defied her rulers for Andrew.
Anger, banished for valuing his peers more than his sovereigns.
Anger, looking at Merry as if she’s every star in the universe.
Anger, rallying thousands of deities. Anger, offering a rare laugh when Envy teases him.
Anger. His friend.
With a mercenary snarl, Envy nocks his weapon. The twang of another string looses a second shot toward Anger, which Envy blocks. Then a third shot, stymied this time by a wooden arrow.
Malice’s arrow. The demon god lands beside Envy, his bow poised and his breathing erratic. Behind the shredded sleeve of his leather jacket, his bicep tattoo contorts with every movement. Together, he and Envy arm themselves to obstruct additional strikes meant for Anger.
Nevertheless, all it has taken is one. Anger casts them a dazed, sideways glance. Then he topples over.
A roar tears from Envy’s lungs. The sound catches Merry’s attention, which alerts her to an incoming attack. Her arrow cuts through the archers’ shot and blows the male off his haunches.
She beams at Envy, assuming his shout had been a warning. But then her eyes slide toward her mate’s motionless form. The vibrant complexion leaches from her face, terror shredding from her lungs.
“Anger!” she wails.
Her irises catch the offending silver moonstone arrow before it vanishes from his stomach. Recognition dawns as Merry spots the ruling goddess, whose arms visibly shake, the monarch’s features ashen from what she’s done.
The kill had been intentional. Yet Anger was once The Court’s most loyal and trusted warrior.
Composing herself, the monarch flies off. Then something happens that Envy hadn’t thought possible. Fury suffuses Merry’s features. Clear, bright, murderous fury.
The goddess tears ahead faster than her motorcycle back in the human realm, her speed bulldozing every opposing figure who gets in her path. Launching into the air, Merry spins and fires with each revolution, impaling the deities who try to stop her.
She lands, then surges toward the ruler, her teeth gnashing as she executes a dexterous trick, using the stargazer as a ramp to vault back into the air.
Rotating mid-flight, she hammers into the ruler with a neon arrow, which punctures the female’s abdomen, the gash spurting blood, the impact blowing the monarch off the heron.
When she crashes into a wall, crimson trailing down the facade, several fighters gawk at the outcast who brought down a sovereign.
Merry pays them no heed. Landing on the parapet, she hurls herself across the divide and slams to the ground beside Anger.
Envy and Malice blitz toward the havoc, landing on all fours next to the pair, while Merry uses her tulle skirt to staunch the blood.
“Anger!” she cries, tears streaming down her face. “Anger, don’t! Please don’t! Please!”
“Merry,” he coughs, blood drizzling from his mouth as he bolsters her cheeks. “Merry, shh.”
“Here,” Envy grits out, stripping his armor, peeling off his shirt, and using the garment to stanch Anger’s wound. Remembering what Sorrow once told him about tending to injuries, he instructs Merry to keep it pressed in a certain way.
“But we n-need to move h-him,” she chokes out. “If s-someone—”
“Don’t worry,” Malice growls. “I’ve got your backs.”
“Malice,” Anger coughs. “Show them who they banished.”
All hell breaks loose across Malice’s delighted face. “Like I need your permission, mate.”
Anger chuckles weakly while Malice blasts off the ground like a carnivore and takes off.
When a trinity of immortals besiege him, the demon god barrels around them, ducking repeatedly out of range.
Each time he lunges upright, Malice changes expression—crossing his eyes, sticking out his tongue, baffling his adversaries to the point where they end up pounding into one another instead.
With a sneer, Malice jumps over them and makes a destructive beeline for any immortal bent on attacking Anger’s huddle. At which point, it stops being a game for him.
Dismembered limbs fly. Voices screech in agony. Red seeps into the earth.
It’s not pretty. But then, it never is when Malice is involved.
As Envy helps Merry prop Anger against a wall, the god’s blood-coated fingers grasp Envy’s shoulder. “Bring her back to us,” he heaves out, grimacing through the pain.
Merry nods, her skin streaked with dirt and tears. “Win her back.”
What the fuck? Why in the flaming ashes of hell should Envy do that? What do these two—and the rest of this crew—understand that he doesn’t?
Almighty Fates. But it’s no use lying to himself. No matter how much he tries extinguishing Sorrow from his mind, she remains at the forefront with every nock of his arrows, with every target, with every corner that he turns.
Yes, he’s been searching for her this whole time. No, he doesn’t know if she’s safe. And yes, it’s killing him.
“Curse you,” Envy sighs to Anger. “Curse you for looking this pretty while covered in blood. And curse you for taking advantage of this shit.”
Anger offers him a slanted grin. “Call me a selfish myth.”
That makes eight of them.
Grunting, Envy shoots to his feet. He jumps to the nearest crenellation and spots a heron free of its rider. The sight resurrects a memory of something he’d told Sorrow.
As a youth, I tried talking with them. Not that they understood me.
He shouldn’t. He might insult the creatures.
Envy throws himself onto the avian’s back.
Teetering sideways, he grasps its thick hide and scrambles upright.
On a whim, he speaks in low tones because perhaps this winged being had been part of that memory, living in the cove when a younger version of Envy attempted to communicate. Perhaps it remembers him.
Or he’s being asinine. Either way, the raptor accepts his weight and flies where he asks it to take him. It speeds up, cutting around each tier of the fortification and slicing over the crest. The air whips through Envy’s hair, his blood pumping as he scans the carnage.
One face is missing. Amid the red-soaked vista, he hunts for a glimpse of an ice arrow.
Pity and Kindness wrestle with Cruelty. Courage pits himself against Fear. Surprise crosses arrows with Shock.
A flash of sapphire archery confirms Nostalgia’s presence. He must have recovered his weapons from the sea. Presently, he squares off with an archer whom Envy can’t identify among the pandemonium.
Echo contends with Harmony, neither of them able to get the upper hand.
Siren’s tresses glint as she coasts atop a heron, heading toward Envy. Her eyes dash across his face and waver. With a sad smile, she steers the avian from him, her departure a fracture to the chest, momentarily immobilizing him.
Either that, or the paralysis has to do with the projectile spiraling toward his sternum. Cursing, Envy tightens his thighs around the heron and nocks his bow.
An ice arrow intercepts the strike. It illuminates the cliffs, rendering every zenith inconsequential.
Envy’s head snaps toward the source. Scanning the expanse of water, it occurs to him how the lake reflects this war, turning everything and everyone upside down. Including the slender figure in a shredded skirt.
His heart thrashes. Positioned on the opposite side of the water, Sorrow brandishes her weapon, anxiety distorting her lacerated face as she disables Grief.
Grief, who’s not a rebel. Grief, who’d been about to annihilate Hope and Joy.
Sorrow has been fighting for a while now. But on which side?
While Grief rolls across the grass in an unconscious heap, Sorrow jogs backward with the same harrowed expression she’d worn while telling Envy about her memories of war. She could have massacred that deity, but she hadn’t.
She doesn’t want to extinguish anyone. However, she might make an exception. Envy realizes this as her eyes stumble across his.
Despite the leagues separating them, their gazes collide. The jolt produces a chemical reaction. Something toxic, flammable, spellbinding.
Now he knows what pain feels like.
And maybe one other emotion, a persistent feeling that’s been shadowing him like a pest, creeping up on him since the day he first lost his mind and touched her.
That infamous moment in time when he’d traced the goddess’s sarcastic mouth, those lips painted a brooding charcoal gray to match her hair.
In the past, her chronic scowls, dreary clothes, and perpetual middle finger used to nauseate him.
But hidden beneath the tough exterior? The watery texture of hurt. The sweet-and-sour taste of rapture.
Those are the parts he wasn’t supposed to discover. Those are the parts that came later.
Yet his transcendence hadn’t begun until asking her a question. What’s your pleasure?
In return, she had thrown one back at him. What’s your pain?
On this bloodthirsty night, the answers chip away at his soul. Standing opposite from each other, they face off across a chasm.
Rivals to lovers.
Lovers to enemies.
At some point, the two of them chose different sides. He can’t remember how it came to this, how they’ve ended up fighting for different endings.
With the battle raging across the summit, his fingers tighten around the bow. On reflex, she nocks her own weapon. As they aim at one another, he smirks mournfully. This was only ever going to go one way, with only one outcome.
That’s fate.
So now he knows what pain feels like, every shift of its curves, every sigh of its breath, and every glint of its irises. It’s a permanent emotion, like a stain he can’t rub off.
What’s a god to do when his match is the last person he can stand? He resists.
And what does that goddess do? Naturally, she makes him regret it.
Yet does Envy honestly regret everything that’s happened? No.
By Fates, he wouldn’t take back a single fucking moment with her. Even if it hurts like hell.
Their arms shake, and their bows waver, but neither of them fires.
I’ve had enough of war to last a thousand lives.
You don’t want to know that side of pain, Envy.
Sorrow, weeping over the death of a soldier. Sorrow, caressing Wonder’s hair during the goddess’s torture. Sorrow, wearing a stitching needle like an emblem of suffering and healing.
Just like that, Envy knows. He knows why she abandoned him, what The Court said to coerce her, what they’d threatened to do.
A goddess rams into Sorrow from the sideline. They go down, arms and limbs flailing.
Envy’s retinas blaze. Speeding atop the heron, he twirls his arrow and lets it fly.
Blood sprays into the air. In a nebula of light, the goddess jolts in place, then rolls off Sorrow in a puddle of crimson. Sprawled on the grass, his spitfire glances at him with tentative hope, then gains her feet to combat another deity, and another, and another.
She’s fast, her skirt fanning around her as she spins. And now he sees.
Sorrow isn’t attacking either side. She’s on the offensive, defending herself against anyone who targets her. Mid-flip, she looses an ice projectile that flings the last deity backward.
Closer to the ground, Envy dives to the grass, dread pumping him with adrenaline. His weight slams into the earth, but a dozen leagues and the water separate them.
So many harsh truths. So much change.
That earlier conversation around the fire rekindles. The one about a myth.
The stars will shine their brightest when a deity asks for the truth. But a deity will only receive the truth when they’re ready to hear the answer. And that immortal will only be ready to hear the answer if they’re ready to change.
What truth? What answer? What fucking change?
As questions crowd his mind, he comprehends. Catching sight of one another, they both do. Since this fight began, they’ve known.
Myths, truths, changes. Legends, lust, love.
Envy meets Sorrow’s gaze and calls out to her. Through The Stars, he summons all of their friends.
Are you ready for the truth?
Because he is. He’s so damn ready. But he needs them to be as well.
Envy senses the collective pause. Twisting, he locates the crew, positioned at various intervals. As they find his gaze, realization dawns.
But how do they tell The Stars they’re ready? And how will The Stars answer?
There’s only one way to find out. When the crew inclines their heads, Envy veers back to Sorrow, who nods. Together, they make a choice.
They stop shooting. Eight sets of weapons lower. As the battle rages, their crew waits.
Moments later, the herons slow, their wings agitating in place. As fauna of this land, naturally they sense it first.
Dumping their riders to the ground, the raptors scatter. As the hemisphere rattles like pebbles, every god and goddess stalls.
Trepidation crawls up Envy’s spine. Perhaps they’ve misjudged or enacted this myth in the wrong way.
From a distance, Malice’s voice cuts through. “The fuck…?” the demon god draws out while tugging Wonder close and slowly retreating backward with her.
Andrew is less subtle. And much more deafening.
“Oh shiiiiit!” the man shouts, hauling his exquisitely sculpted ass toward the stargazer fortress.
Snatching Love’s hand on the way, he yanks the baffled goddess with him while bellowing at everyone, “Run, you motherfuckers! Run-like-fuck-get-out-of-range-the-stars-are-answering!”
Very well. This isn’t the response Envy expected. Staying their weapons, all combatants register the constellations dropping like bombs from above.
Just like that, the world changes shape.
Just like that, The Stars fall.