Snowstorms are the worst of outbreaks, prompting his muscles to lock, his knuckles to shake, his aim to falter. That particular breed of turbulence is his greatest fear.
He’d once told Love that, reluctantly.
He’d once told Merry that, willingly.
Incoming thunder isn’t reassuring, yet he doesn’t move. He can’t abandon this view yet. Not just yet.
Your greatest wish isn’t to have your power back—it’s to make memories.
Does she know all that?
Love had hints. But she hadn’t known all that.
Only one person knows that much about him.
Clenching his eyes shut, Anger channels the stars. He latches on to them and sends a message, hoping they’ll funnel his words to the only female he wants to speak to. The only female he wants hearing him, knowing him, seeing him.
“You were born from a winking star,” he begins. “You’re a goddess of devotion and neon light. You see beauty in passion and tragedy, but you romanticize them to a fault. You can’t get enough of blueberry lemonade and vanilla gelato—so much that you don’t care if either stains your dress or your tongue. You fall asleep to records, and your favorite constellation is Sagittarius. You’ve made a skateboard into a weapon.”
He grins to himself. “You’re afraid of the dark, but not afraid of your superiors. You play arcade hostess to mortals who can’t see you. You have beautiful, fidgety hands covered in fishnet. You talk too much, but when you’re silent, the world becomes a desolate place. Your greatest wish isn’t to be loved—it’s to give love.”
He bows his head, clasps his hands. “You’ve put up with a stubborn archer. You’ve put him in his place. You’ve given him solace. You’ve given him a home. You’ve given him back his heart. And all he wants is to deserve you.”
He waits, and he waits, and he waits. Droplets plonk at his feet, pelting the grass and seeping into his garments. But still, he waits for an answer, imploring fate to be on his side.
Silence. Anger knows that she’s heard him. But for once, she’s not chatty.
For once, she has nothing to say to him.
Three days of rain, hail, rain hail, rain. Three days of perching by the carnival, wandering the city, hoping to hear a message from her. Any message.
Until he can’t take it anymore.
Until he understands what he had and lost.
Until he’s utterly, terribly, violently in love.
Now he knows what surrender feels like.
He kneels on the roof’s edge and stares at the midnight skyline. This mortal world is a fickle combination of brilliance and obscurity. Some of the city’s edifices cower into shadows, while others bust through the clouds like fists.
From below, urban life makes an unruly racket, dishes smashing and a Ferris wheel bleating. Noise, noise, noise. He tastes the cacophony, smells the confusion, and feels the clench.
Yet it’s a vivid realm, a spectacle of glistening trees and starlight. Spastic whirligigs dash across the sky from the central park’s carnival, fluid strobes turning the whole thing into a kaleidoscope.
Such a vibrant place. Yet it’s the darkest and loneliest one he’s ever known.
Inside an observatory across the street, behind a set of translucent double doors, a solitary neon sign flickers as if it’s been drained of energy. It struggles to keep working, to stay alight.
Just like his heart.
His cursed, infernal, powerless heart.
And standing on the opposite side of that threshold is the reason why. Idling amidst that neon—like a cruel flash of inspiration, like a fully formed idea—is she.
Pausing by the entrance, she swallows, her throat bobbing. She hasn’t looked through the partition, hasn’t sought him out as she once did. But she knows he’s out here. Somehow, she knows.
Her luminous face won’t glance at him, even though he’s desperate for it, even though he misses her. He misses that outrageous personality, misses the way they used to clash, the way they used to blend.
He misses the way she tore him in half.
Dammit, he wants to drag his finger across the glass doors. He wants to fog the surface and write a message there—an apology, a plea for forgiveness.
And dammit, he wants to answer a question that has plagued him for as long as he’s known her. The question that he’s never been able to face.
Who sees you?
He would answer it now. By the Fates, he would.
But he can’t, because she won’t listen. She won’t hear him, much less believe him. So instead, he wills her to turn in his direction once. Just once more.
If only she would stay right there, right in his view. If only she would keep the neon glowing between them. If only she wouldn’t leave him alone.
Please don’t leave him alone. Not again.
But then, she should. Really, she should.
He’s dangerous to her. She’s threatening to him.
So indeed, she should turn away, save herself. She should leave him, forget about him. And actually, that’s when he realizes: She’s already done that.
In fact, she did that a long time ago.
23
Merry
They’d been torn asunder long ago, before they’d ever met. Back when she was birthed from a star, back when she was discarded, cast off from her origins. Even though his own star had shone so near to hers, he came into being later, never knowing she existed.
It’s not that much different from now.
No, that’s not true. He knows she exists now. A few days ago, he’d called out to her, his voice filtering through brick and mortar, crossing the distance and gusting through her head.
The wreckage of his speech clutters her mind.
Your greatest wish isn’t to be loved–it’s to give love.
And all he wants is to deserve you.
Maybe that means her words in Midnight Park had stayed with him, too. Maybe she’d actually had a lasting effect.
Maybe it’s too late.
What’s the point in fighting for this? What’s the point, after what she saw in that bookish corner, ensconced among mythical anthologies?
She’ll rise above this travesty and find another way back to the Peaks. Even if she never loves again, she’ll find a way.
Merry’s treacherous thoughts sneak back to his message, the sad declaration and how she’d almost believed him. He had communicated all the sentiments that she’d ever wanted to hear, a monologue that had scattered her heart all over the floor. There was a time when she’d made it her goal to know more about him than anyone. It seems, he’d pursued the same with her.
Standing before the full-length mirror, Merry inspects her features, angling her profile in the reflection, embossed in blushing neon. So this is what a woman scorned looks like. This is the vision of a thwarted heroine.
A frumpy T-shirt dress hangs off her like a willow tree, the hem swinging to her knees. Knit socks cover her feet, chunky and scrunched at the ankles, her toes wedged into the cloud slippers. Comfort clothes, because no drenched soul is ever comforted by tulle, no matter how pretty. She’ll choose a dignified ensemble in the morning—a power outfit. But for now, she just wants fluffy cotton.
The walls of her sanctuary flash. Scythes of lightning slice through the double doors, turning the garret into a short-circuiting bulb. Sheets of rain lash at the panes, obscuring the deck, the downpour smashing into the world.
It’s been like this for days. Merry resents the claustrophobia, and she’s concerned, because Anger is afraid storms.
Where is that god? Is he taking shelter with Malice?
Or is he chasing the unattainable? Is he shadowing Love?
Merry grinds her teeth and hikes up her chin. She levels a finger at her reflection and lectures, “No, Merry. Not anymore.”
He can take care himself. And so can she.
Perhaps she needs to disinfect herself, now that her kindreds have departed. Envy, Sorrow, and Wonder had e
nveloped Merry in her time of need and then left the observatory, questing from the Celestial City to parts unknown. So yes, a ritualistic cleansing is in order.
Such a benefit that she cannot feel the cold, yet such a shame. Kicking off her slippers and socks, she opens one of the sanctuary doors and pads across the deck.
The gales batter her hair, and the ferns, and the votives, and the globe mobile. Standing at the center, she lets the shower drench her, her dress reduced to cellophane around her body, her hair matted to her scalp. Miniature tributaries race down her skin as she spreads her arms, craning her head backward. She lets the squall drain away the past and replenish her.
Two things occur to Merry. One, she and that rage god have grown up under different skies, those canopies separated by the stars yet connected by them.
Two, they’re under the same sky now. Literally now.
Merry’s arms fall to her sides. Swallowing rain, she turns.
He’s standing beneath the trellis shrouded in ferns, the entrance to his makeshift room. Because the glass doors are closed, he’s sodden from head to toe, just like her. His shirt suctions to his torso, a toned bulk of muscles that swell with every inhalation. The deluge plasters his long dark hair to his face, his expression twisted with apologetic ferocity.
He doesn’t look afraid of the weather. Not tonight.
From across the deck, they stare at each other. Merry doesn’t know what her face reveals, but it’s nothing that encourages him to stride forward. Even while her pulse pounds, a riotous beat that rivals the tempest, a resilient goddess would require groveling. After which, she’d march off, saunter off, brush him off. Her irrationally poetic ways have only flawed and weakened her.
She will be stoic, because that’s what makes a tough deity.
That’s the best course of action. That’s what she’ll do.
Her eyes may be pooling, because she can feel them pooling, but that has to be the rivulets. The last time they were saturated like this, they’d been groping one another inside her shower. He must be thinking the same thing, because his eyes simmer, then skim the dress stuck to her form, each curve accentuated.
Merry makes the same mistake, her gaze tripping over his rippling body. Her fingers curl into fists. She takes a single, retreating step before he’s in front of her, cupping her jaw in his palms.
“Leave, Anger,” she hisses, rolling her face away. “I want you gone.”
“Merry,” he rasps. “Please. You don’t mean that—”
Her hands slap his chest, pushing him. “You shithead! I’ve meant everything I’ve said! You’re the one who hasn’t!”
“That’s not true,” he hollers back.
“Name one thing—,” her voice cracks, “—one single thing that you’ve actually meant!”
“Everything you heard at the library. All of that was real!” he belts out, his words shoving through the maelstrom. “I once loved her, but I never befriended her. I watched her, but I never missed her. I never slept beside her. I never shared myself with her. She never perplexed me, never gave me peace, never gave me strength. Love was never a safe place, not even a happy place. But you are.” He grasps her face again, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “I mean this: You don’t need to be someone else. You don’t need to be a love goddess, or any goddess—not in order to know that gift, not in order to have it. You’re loved. You’re loved!”
It takes every drop of willpower to stand upright, to lower her voice, to keep it steady. “Well, you’re not loved,” she says calmly. “Not anymore.”
His fingers flinch as if scalded, as if it’s possible for him to blister. Droplets collect on his lashes, and his features contort. Merry gulps the residue of those words, letting them curdle in her womb.
Lightning shrieks through the sky, splitting it in half. It’s a selfish moment in which she savors the anguish staring back at her. And then it’s a broken moment, because she’s lying. She’s lying to him, and to herself, and that’s not her.
This is her. This is them.
Anger’s nostrils flare. He knows her far too well, like she knows him.
Merry leaps at the same time he does.
She hurls herself at him, just as he snatches her waist and hauls her forward. Her breasts slam against his wet chest, and his lips descend, and hers launch.
Their mouths catch. Slanting, they crush themselves into a kiss.
On a groan, Anger grates his lips against hers, his fingers raking through her hair. Merry clings to his nape, holding on, holding on, lest she get swept away by the yammering wind.
His tongue pumps inside her, punching out a rhythm that makes her head whirl like a tornado, rending her lips wide for him. And wider still as he licks through her, flicking until the ground tilts beneath her bare feet.
While the sky floods them, beads drip from their bodies, their doused clothes sliding together. Her nipples peak, taut across his torso. The friction causes tremors down her tailbone and a rush between her thighs. Up in that deep place, she begins to throb, a hard pulse beating its wings.
She’s wet, not merely from the rain. The dress is an agitation, and she wants it shredded from her flesh, but she wants him naked even more.
Anger’s hands quake downward and grope her ass, mashing her softness to his firmness. She feels both, his solid form and her supple form coiling around one another, molding and fitting.
As he pulls away, his abs hammer for oxygen. His gaze collides with her mouth, then writhes across her body. It’s that look of zephyrs and passions, as urgent and hectic as a pounding drum. The sensations ooze from her flesh, akin to the liquid texture of a melted candle.
Merry leans in and nips his lower lip. “Here,” she says. “Now.”
Cursing, he takes her mouth again. His tongue thrusts, striking between her lips, its velocity wracking her to the core…to the very core. She feels his tempo at the slick center of her body, causing her pelvis to buck, a teasing motion that makes them shudder.
He palms the backs of her thighs and hoists her off the floor. Merry dissolves into this archer, hitching her legs around his waist, still kissing him, still kissing, still this. He strides into the gravel path, into a tight passage flanked by ferns, until he finds a gap and deposits her atop the ledge. It’s low enough for them to face each other as Anger hooks onto her knees and jerks her forward, her thighs pitching around him.
His fingers rush up her limbs, slipping beneath the T-shirt dress, which has bunched around her hips. Searing his gaze with hers, he finds what he’s looking for and pulls. With a decisive rip, the flimsy material yields down her body, what’s left of the lace shivering across her skin and making it pebble. The tattered undergarment lands someplace on the gravel. And then she’s spreading herself, parting her knees for him, cradling his waist there. He shifts closer, his length pressing against the small, hollow swell, and it’s enough to suffocate them.
And it’s more than enough to get Anger stripping himself bare. Cranking his arms behind his head, he tears off the shirt, peeling himself free. Vulnerable to the elements, waterlogged and wild, the sinuous bluff of his olive flesh glistens. Her fingers long to climb those joints and muscles, to watch them flex against her touch.
So that’s what she does, with her body steepled around him. Her palms travel, bumping over pecs and ribs. Their foreheads press together, observing the effect.
She reaches for his jeans, and suddenly, it’s ravenous. Her fumbling with the zipper, him burrowing his head into the crook of her neck and sucking, so that she throws her head backward into the abyss. She arches over the building’s edge, suspended high above the streets while his arms encase her, securing her there.
At first, she’s too shaky to manage the closure, but she wants to do this. She wants to undress him, to dismantle him until there’s no place left to hide.
He lets her. He lets her take control while he tastes. His tongue swabs her clavicles, then draws on the cove under her jaw, his nails biting into her botto
m.
At last, the waistband loosens, and then she’s shoving the jeans down. And then her heels finish the job, wrenching the material to his knees. And then he’s stomping them into the path, punting them to the side.
And there he is.
There he is, standing before her with nothing left, with so much to give. Sheets of water pour over his tapered form, from those cliffside shoulders, to the ladder of rib bones, to the slender V…to that rigid, restless spot.
The length of him strains for her. Just for her.
How long has she fantasized about seeing him like this?
His stance isn’t as impervious as it once was, nor as confident. There’s no self-control, nor as much power as there once was. His pride has been tainted, and his heart has been severed, and he doesn’t know everything.
He’s been rebuffed. He’s been wrong.
That’s why he’s glorious. That’s why this is gloriously imperfect.
It’s even better than when she’d thought him flawless, even better than her illusions have been. Disenchanted, now she sees him fully for who he is. And she wouldn’t have him any other way.
Communicating through her touch, through her stare, she traces his features, all the splendors and faults. And he sees it, because those lambent eyes cling to hers, and they soften.
Then his irises thrash, just like a star. He swoops in, and she welcomes the onslaught of his mouth, the cadence of his tongue. On the brink and battered by rain, they tear each other inside out.
He tugs on her lips, drawing her into a turbulent kiss. Not once have they been naked at the same time, and tonight is no exception, because she’s covered, and he’s not.
It doesn’t matter. There’s no vulnerability, no imbalance, only desire as their bodies align. Ushering her toward him, at the ledge’s inner rim, Anger locks her hips in place, while she tucks him into her. Her hands span his backside, ready to guide him, to urge him.
He’ll do this strongly. She’ll do this dearly.
The tip of him finds her entrance, the slot where they’ll join. At the contact, the hard grazes the soft, needy sighs bursting from their mouths.
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