They sit in a crescent of thrones, the fretwork hewn of platinum, the seats cushioned in velvet. Around them, a waterfall amphitheater reflects the cosmos. A mobile of silver and pearlescent dragonflies zoom overhead.
Their response stuns him, because it’s earnest. They wear mournful and tired expressions rather than haughty ones.
The ebony beauty folds her hands over her butterfly gown. “It’s our life cycle. If we do not wield humans, if we do not maintain destiny, we lose our purpose. And therefore, we lose our lives.”
“In turn, humans forfeit theirs,” the hawkish male with braids answers. “Free will is a fallacy, but the illusion has merit. While they’ll never have that actual liberty, it fuels hope, which bolsters humanity’s resilience, which ensures their existence. Whereas humanity gives us a reigning duty to steer their emotions, which steers their actions, which shapes their fates. Ultimately, it’s destiny in disguise.”
“Without that, humans would flounder. Left fully to their own devices, their world would collapse. More wars than there already are. More suffering and less unity—less hope. If they collapse, there would be no one to serve. With no one to serve, we would be obsolete. Thusly, we’d fade.”
While Anger understands, he ponders how they know all of this for certain. Is it because the stars have said so? Because the stars are the ultimate rulers?
Or because none have ever considered an alternative?
When he comes of age, he’s parceled to the mortal realm, taking these questions with him. But he never voices them, because he doesn’t know the answers, or where to find them, or if anyone out there can shed light on it.
Anyone he hasn’t already met.
For a century and a half, he does his job. Additionally, he watches over his peers, sequestered within their own realms. And he watches over her.
He watches her fall in love. He watches her become a mortal as a result.
And because he’d cared too much about Love to report her actions, he gets banished.
Unlike with her, at least they let him keep his bow.
***
He monitors Love for too long, making sure she fares well in her new life, even if she doesn’t remember him. Then it becomes too absolute, too abrasive to endure. So he leaves the hamlet where she lives with her subpar beau.
Anger wanders alone, from one oppressive environment to the next, from mountain towns to urban capitals. He’s invisible to mortals, inconsequential to them. His bow decays to a prop across his back, and he narrows into a shadow.
Over time, he broods. He’s free, yet not free.
He gets lonelier and lonelier, angrier and angrier. At everything, at everyone.
One day, he recalls tales of a city where exiled gods and goddesses have established a community. When Anger travels there and stands atop a building’s roof, he sees light.
It’s a pastel rainbow skirt. It’s a girl fleeing an assailant.
Anger hears a guitar drifting from the set of mauve headphones around her pink head. The music sounds vaguely familiar. It feels like a coincidence.
Or something akin to fate.
17
Anger
He remembers the taste of her. He remembers the sweet nectar of her tongue, the plush yield of her lips, the gauzy texture of her sigh. He remembers the infinite effect it had on him.
Tremors had racked his mouth. The friction in his prick had turned him into a damn scaffolding, a ruthless erection from which there’d been no recuperation.
The ordeal petrifies and confuses him. Anger has kissed others before, to release tension or experiment, to satiate his body or his partner’s. It’s always been a carnal exchange, something done and then over.
No lingering effects. No meaning beyond the immediate.
It’s never been this give and take. The kisses have never been shared. They’ve never been mind-consuming.
He’s never kissed someone without thinking of Love. Until now.
By the Fates, he wants to kiss Merry again.
He dreads that, because what else will she dislodge from him? What else will she subject him to? What more will unravel?
He’s wrung out by the past while standing at the precipice of a future. He clenches the rooftop’s edge, yanking himself out memories, visual relics of his birth, his training, his peers. His wasted affections for another goddess.
He resurfaces from history. His thoughts come right back to Merry.
His mind knows what should happen. His body has other ideas.
As does another unfamiliar part inside him. An irrational part. A chamber that lacks boundaries, an evasive extremity that can’t be seen, or tasted, or heard. Only felt.
Anger loathes to recall Merry’s expression when he tore himself away from her. The rift in her voice, as if he’d made a crack in her throat.
She’s a female the likes of whom he’s never met or conceived of. Someone who’s been conjured by the stars and then overlooked. Someone who’s blindsided him while casting a new light on the world, revealing layers that he hadn’t noticed before.
Colorful layers. Bright layers. Imperfect layers.
Laughter. Effortlessly, she pulls that out of him, along with a collision of self-doubt and self-worth.
Belonging. That’s what she offers him.
What he can offer her in return?
The most awestricken part is that, with Merry, he believes there is something to offer. That he’s still valuable. That no matter how much one loses—power or magic or purpose—one still has more left to give.
Anger doesn’t know what to feel, other than ashamed. But he does know what to do, what to give her. So he leaves the observatory and wanders the streets until he’s collected enough misplaced coins to make a difference.
Locating Merry’s favorite record emporium, the place where they’d listened to music together, Anger passes through the doors as a family exits. He’s careful not to bluster through the father.
He’s also careful not to touch objects unless customers aren’t watching, just as he and Merry were prudent the last time they came here. It wouldn’t be wise for patrons to see items of their world defying gravity. Deities may be invisible and intangible, but mortal objects are an exception. If Anger lifts something, people will question their sanity, perhaps record the event with those phones barnacled to their fingers. Either that, or they’ll scream.
Discreetly, he rifles through the albums until finding the second-hand title that he and Merry had sampled. Its humble price is beneficial to Anger, who covertly drops his foraged coins—enough to compensate for the record—on the counter as he leaves.
Returning to the observatory, Anger checks the roof’s fern paths. He pauses in the alcove, staggered by the consideration she’d put into outfitting it.
No one has ever gifted him with a room before.
What if she doesn’t want to see him? What if this is a ridiculous idea?
Anger heads for the doors leading to the garret. He peeks through the partition, into a dim space flushed with neon and…and her.
Merry reclines on her back. She stares at the ceiling, creases cutting through her forehead, those pink eyes unfocused. She has changed out of the overalls, taking solace in a satin nightgown. The cloud slippers rest on the floor, the sight lifting the corners of his mouth.
He realizes what this sensation is, gushing through him. It’s tenderness, a prelude to sentimentality.
Strangely, it doesn’t make him feel weak. Rather, it’s the opposite.
Tentatively, he knocks. Merry’s head swings toward him, and while he expects a theatrical rebuff, her chin merely stiffens.
She whips her gaze back to the ceiling.
Anger twists the knob and steps inside. He approaches the bed while her attention glues itself to nothing in particular. Her skin prickles as she rubs a toe against the opposite ankle.
“Will you look at me now?” he murmurs.
“What for?” she inquires briskly, as if there’s no
thing wrong.
Anger raises the album sleeve. “I have something for you.”
I have a lot for you. If you’ll only look at me.
She doesn’t, only hikes her chin higher. Anger’s an idiot, like she’d said. But his tongue snags, too tangled to speak further, so he sets the vinyl onto her player and lets the music do the rest.
Instruments, both natural and synthetic, swell into the room. Merry’s eyes shimmer, because she remembers this record.
Anger ventures closer. He squats at the side of the bed, watching her until she huffs and glances at him like an affronted goddess.
And he mouths, I’m sorry.
And her face crumbles.
When she scoots backward in silent invitation, his soul rejoices. Her forgiveness is extraordinary, exceeding any measure of praise that he’s received in the Peaks. The magnitude of Merry welcoming him into her sanctuary, into her bed, startles Anger. He’s riveted, honored.
Side by side, they rest on the blankets and pillows. In the next track, a piano sweeps around an acoustic hum, and then a voice croons, a tendril of longing threading through the lyrics.
Merry sighs like a breeze, stirring him. “Do you hear that? That’s humanity. It’s rage and yearning, the emotions elevated in a way that we can all understand, if we’re stout enough. Do you hear it, Anger?”
Her voice waters like a tear, drowning him. “Can you hear the capacity? What we feel and do isn’t perfect, what they feel and do isn’t perfect, but that’s what makes it powerful. We’re listening to free will.”
She breaks like glass, cutting him. “Can you hear it? Because if you can, it means we all feel the same things. Can you hear how alike we are?”
Her, holding back tears. That’s what he hears.
Anger can’t take it anymore. He rotates, his fingers seizing her hips, his mouth arching for hers.
For a scant second, Merry hesitates. Then on a helpless cry, she twists in his arms, her lips meeting him halfway.
In surrender, they kiss.
Anger’s hands rush into her hair, clasping the sides of her face while he pecks her lips, teasing them once, twice, three times. Merry whimpers for more, and he groans for more. The noises converge, opening the floodgates, his tongue parting the seam of her mouth.
When they make contact, slick and soft, they shudder. He licks through her, his tongue thrusting and plying, coaxing a moan from them both. They lay on their sides, their heads sliding at opposite angles, allowing their mouths to lock and undulate at a languid, devouring pace.
Anger nips her upper lip. And she flicks her tongue across his teeth.
And then more.
He discovers every fold and yield of her mouth. She rides every swipe and stroke of his.
It’s intoxicating. And it’s right. It feels so right.
Fates, he feels the kiss with his entire body, every bone and joint straining to break free, to burst from his flesh. His clothes rub against hers. The cursed garments are suddenly too tight, too restrictive, clinging to the point of annoyance. He wants to shred the cotton, the arch of Merry’s torso intensifying the impulse.
He escalates the kiss, burrowing into her mouth, tipping her head back. Merry opens wider for him, fissures of pleasure skittering from the back of her throat.
As if it’s the most instinctive thing, she rolls back. And he rolls forward, flopping across the bed.
The blankets rumple over the mattress. The room spins, and Anger’s sense vanishes, and there’s only her. There’s only Merry beneath him, sprawled under him, spreading under him.
He lands on top, her limbs hitching over his waist, catching his hips between her thighs. The nightgown sighs up her legs, baring the ovals of her backside, the lace of her panties. That slit of material brushes against his groin, hardening him anew.
Delicate cloth scrapes against rough cloth. Their pelvises rock, their bodies entangling.
Almighty Fates. What’s happening?
He’s panting, and she’s panting with him. That’s what’s happening.
He surges up and tugs off his shirt, and she reaches for his skin. And she touches him, running her fingers over his abdomen.
Alarms wail in the distance, somewhere in the city, somewhere down below. But piano keys and guitar strings push through the cacophony, and Anger doesn’t have the foggiest clue what heat feels like, yet the air is thick and loud. And he wonders if this is what it means to swelter.
He chases the sensation. Dipping his head to her neck, he sucks the sweetened flesh until Merry jolts off the bed, her fingernails raking his bare spine. He keeps following these ministrations, the enthusiastic movements beneath him, losing himself in both.
He treks open-mouthed kisses to the basin of her clavicles, enjoying the chain reaction across her skin. Then he descends from the heavens to earth, such a real place to be. His lips glide from Merry’s collarbones to the scoop between her breasts, a set of pert nipples pebbling under the nightgown, ripening for his tongue.
Yet he bypasses the temptation, sinking to her navel. Down, down, down to where her thighs rise around his head. He glances up for permission as she balances on her elbows.
Rosy pools surface on her cheeks. And she nods.
His fingers disappear into the nightgown. The panties slip over her quavering knees and ankles, puddling on the floor.
The sight of her drives the oxygen from his lungs. His eyes trace every swollen part, every beautiful crease and clench. The air is even thicker in the cove of her body, which encapsulates him as his hand sifts through the dark curls, unveiling that tiny, sprouting peak.
And then he bends his head.
His hair must tickle her skin, because she chuckles—until she stops chuckling. The moment Anger’s tongue flicks against Merry, she crumbles on the bed, a stunned noise springing out of her. Her hands grab his scalp, her waist rising in heedless offering.
All reason drains from his mind, replaced by a flux of blood in his shaft. Anger cups her hips, securing her in place. His mouth grazes the opening inside her, swabbing at her flesh, lapping her up. She tastes like starlight and syrup.
Like sex. Like love.
It’s never been like this before. He’s never made a home with someone.
So he makes sure she knows that, sweeping his tongue over her, teasing and then plunging. Merry squirms above him, finally speechless.
But not soundless.
At last, he straps his lips around her, drawing on the little kernel and giving a gentle tug. And with every single feminine chant, a guttural noise rips from Anger, and he works her even more. His mouth cinches, increasing the pressure with each of those candied cries, which knot and coil into the air.
This female, this woman, this goddess. She’s everything, all wetness and wanting, spreading around him. She holds his tongue inside her, her body reeling over the blankets, and he doesn’t know where they are anymore, and it doesn’t matter anymore, because nothing matters anymore. Nothing but this.
He wants her to shout, just like his heart is shouting.
Anger hardly cares what’s become of him. All he cares about is what’s happening to Merry.
The neon fixtures flash, the record spins in a vortex, the instruments writhe. All the while, her body flutters, trembling and lurching toward the suction of his mouth.
And she’s his. All his.
Merry, he thinks.
“Anger,” she cries.
That’s it. That’s desire. That’s being desired.
And now he knows what that feels like.
18
Merry
A chorus crescendos in her head. To be precise, it’s the third stanza, instruments accelerating and colliding, the music blowing to the rafters and then scattering into fragments. The climax of sound whirls at the center of her, then floods her arms and limbs.
Merry’s vertebrae are about to snap. She arches from the mattress, and her knees shake, and some other noise spasms from her mouth. She’s a bursting s
tar, unraveling against the flexing, rhythmic plank of Anger’s tongue.
A million light years later, or maybe milliseconds later, the instruments fade. An overflow of sensations ebbs, the record player sliding to a halt. The rapture mellows, her mewls trailing behind, aftershocks twitching down her calves.
She reenters her body. Floating down to the blankets, her skin turns into gauze, weightless and worn.
Dumbstruck, she mumbles something that makes Anger chuckle, a deep rumble against her center.
Clarity resumes. She’s on her back, in her bed, with her nightgown pooled about her waist. Her legs have fallen askew around Anger’s head, slung over his shoulders while he’s on his knees, at the foot of the mattress, his forehead twisted and resting against her thigh. His dark hair is windswept because her manic fingers have torn through the layers, untethering the upper half of his locks.
She’s utterly exposed as Anger palms her hipbones. He kisses the side of her knee and lifts his face, those eyes tranquil and content, provoking a rare sight.
“I’m going to do that to you again,” he swears.
Merry’s stomach hitches. “Only if I get to do things to you. Pretty please?”
“You already have, Merry. So many things.”
He crawls up her body, falling into the recess she makes for him. His knuckles brush the bangs from her temples, then he rests his forehead against hers. Absently, her hands skim his sides and slant over the naked dip in his back.
The God of Anger is on top of her.
She loves this feeling, his weight on her, his inhalations against her exhalations. She can’t believe this is happening.
He pecks her nose. “Tell me how that felt.”
“Like you turned me into star.” She nips his nose back. “It felt like you and me.”
“Us,” he echoes, mouthing the word, unfamiliar with its shape. “I like being an us.”
She does, too.
They play another record, hunker onto the bed, and wrap themselves around each other. Merry nestles into Anger’s side as they idly trace one another. It’s effortless and artless, old and new.
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