He’s defter at aquatics than Sorrow, despite his monstrous size. Launching ahead, they swim parallel to one another, firing in and out of the water, in a rapid sequence of catapults and dives. When they bolt upward, arrows slice the atmosphere beneath their stomachs, and when they plummet, the attacks skim above their spines.
Geysers of water spew from the surface and drench the foliage. When Sorrow hits the pond’s edge, she twirls and rockets back the way she came. That’s when—crap!—the targets change course, assaulting them from unpredictable angles.
Submerged, she keeps her eyes open, noting the blot of Envy receding to an area shrouded by glowing pentagrams, tiny starfish who’d been minding their business.
The separation brings her friends to mind. Their band trespassed into enemy territory only yesterday. What archer has managed to spot them this quickly? Did he or she already do damage to Sorrow’s friends? Are they safe or hurt?
Vaguely, Sorrow realizes that it would have been a good idea to advance her target practice with underwater training. Learning to wield her longbow while in this predicament would have come in handy.
Then again, her bow is out of reach, abandoned on the grass. If their attacker has seen it, has identified the ice element of her weapon, she’s done for.
Another strike. She pivots around the tip, the movement causing a subterranean tidal wave. At the end of a full rotation, her gaze lands on Envy, who’s stumped as he gawks at her, having managed to close the distance between them. Time slows, pauses, holds its breath. She registers how quiet it is down here, nothing but a comforting sterilization of senses. It’s nice not having to feel anything, especially when faced with this god.
Yet even at this depth, nothing is impenetrable. This ambush proves it.
Envy’s collar flutters in place, in tune with the pulse at his throat. His long hair caresses the water, the black tail floating around his galled expression, as if he’d just caught Sorrow picking her nose.
Whatever. She jabs her thumb. He blinks and takes the hint, darting out of range from another arrow. They’ve got few options, seeing as her weapons are unreachable from here, and who knows where Envy left his archery.
Once in a while, immortal magic needs an old-fashioned solution and commonsense help. Flipping headfirst, Sorrow pushes herself down, down, down and snatches a rock from the soil. Gliding upward, she breaks the surface, and aims, and cranks her arm. Hurling the rock, she watches it smash through the underbrush and hears it crack against a trunk.
There’s a small gasp, on the verge of laughter. And okay, that makes no sense.
What predator would chuckle like that? Like this is a game?
Nevertheless, the rock surprises their attacker. At the clatter of a bow dropping, Sorrow dives sideways and catches Envy’s shirt collar. Hoisting the god upward, she shoves him toward the bank, but he wrenches from her grasp.
“Watch the tailoring,” he warns, offended.
“Watch the trees,” she snaps, exasperated.
His eyes slit, telling her exactly what she can do with her orders. His drenched chest heaves beneath the sheer material lining to his torso, emphasizing those insufferable abs and nipples, darker than his skin.
Aww, he got his precious garments wet. Sorrow can’t believe she wants to gloat, while that archer can recover at any moment.
She and Envy glower at one another. After a beat, they surge out of the pond. Racing across the grass, Sorrow swipes her discarded archery off the ground. Belatedly, she remembers her clothes, which she’d draped over a branch.
Oh, well. She can’t go back for them, and she couldn’t care less about conjuring new ones right now. Being naked won’t affect her aim.
On the bright side, she’s running a hell of a lot faster. Sprinting through the woodland, they pound past offshoots and shrubs, then spill into the beech glade where their band of rebels should be—but aren’t.
Sorrow hears a frantic, “Psst.” Following the sound, she catches sight of pink hair tucked behind a tree trunk. And a white dress behind another. And a clenched jaw behind another.
She darts behind her own respective trunk. With her spine braced against the bark, she takes inventory of her friends, each of whom have claimed various points of the sylvan forest.
Beyond the mist, she spots Merry’s frothy dress and high-top sneakers, her shoulder-length hair as rosy as her cheeks. The misfit goddess should have been born gift-wrapped and tied with an enormous ribbon. She gnaws on her lip, an arrow nocked to her neon bow.
Anger stands a few feet away. His nostrils flare as he fluctuates between checking on Merry, his soul mate, and choking his archery. At this rate, he’s going to snap his iron arrow in half.
Across from him, Malice shifts. He’s the approximation of a golden devil, all gilded, wavy hair and bare chest as he bounces in place, his boots peeking beneath low-slung, dark jeans. His fletching-and-quill tattoo constricts across his forearm, and he’s grinning from ear to ear, hankering to jump in plain sight. As psychotic as he is calculating, either Malice has a devious reason for the element of surprise, or he’s in the mood to draw blood.
Meanwhile, Wonder—Malice’s soul mate—dangles upside down, her plump legs hooked over a branch fifteen feet above everyone. Jeez. Only she can balance a longbow and quartz arrow while in that position.
A corsage of wildflowers encircles Wonder’s wrist, her harem pants and off-the-shoulder blouse buffet some invisible current, and marigold-blonde tresses spill around her cherub face.
Directly across from Wonder is Love. The goddess perches atop a bough, a white dress and oversized denim jacket hanging off her petite frame as she kneels, aiming her longbow at an unseen target. The fact that they’re presumably surrounded doesn’t stop Love’s mouth from peeling into a mischievous smile. Casually, she knocks a pebble from the beech tree with her elbow.
It’s a risky jibe, but Love has the most impeccable aim of them all. The pebble lands without a sound, striking exactly where she’d meant it to: the black coat framing her soul mate’s shoulders.
Standing at ground level, Andrew twitches from the impact. In contrast to the layers of black hair springing from Love’s loose bun, tufts of snowy white stick out around Andrew’s head. Glancing above him, he regards Love with a look that promises she’ll pay for that later. Because if they weren’t about to defend themselves, Andrew definitely would have already lobbed his own pebble at her.
A moment ago, his shoulders had been wracked with tension. It’s not every day that a has-been human finds himself in a magical realm of mist and starlight, on a mission to rebel against celestial rulers, and about to engage in combat with immortals.
Apparently, Love’s playful action is an attempt to get him to relax. To her credit, it works. For a former mortal still learning how to aim and shoot, Andrew’s body unlocks. He wields his crossbow and frosted arrow—his preference over bolts—with steady, even breaths.
Since Envy had been barefoot at the pond, he retrieves his lace-up shoes from the camp and scales his own beech tree. Despite his bulk and spiffy clothes, he makes quick work of the climb. The wet shirt and trousers shift in tandem to his movements, stacks of muscle contorting under the filmy material.
At some point during their arrival, he’d also found time to snatch his glass archery from their encampment. Ascending the offshoots, he positions himself and, for the love of freakin’ Fates, combs through his dripping hair before nocking his bow. He puckers his lips, blowing Wonder and Love a kiss.
The females stare at him, unimpressed.
What does make an impression is Sorrow as she waits behind her tree, wearing nothing but her archery. Every head swerves in her direction. The thing is, nudity isn’t sacred to deities, but some in this bunch have prudish sensibilities.
Merry turns away, her cheeks suffused with color, while Anger glares in frustration.
Wonder merely raises her eyebrows but quickly gets distracted by the environment as she assesses the canopy, the
woods illuminated in phosphorescent jewel tones, and the amethyst flowers interspersed across the underbrush.
Malice’s eyes trace Sorrow’s body in platonic amusement, his expression the equivalent of a fist bump that congratulates her on being the most creative combatant here. As though everyone else is lame for being dressed at all.
Andrew is on par with Merry, glancing away sans the blush. He might laugh if he weren’t holding a large weapon.
Love just shakes her head at Sorrow, asking a silent question: Where the Fates have you been? What have you been doing?
In response, Sorrow jerks her chin toward Envy’s tree: What do you think?
Arguing, and bickering, and fighting with her ex-lover has become their new mating ritual, minus the actual mating.
Everyone aims in a different direction, covering all vantage points since there’s no telling where the enemy is, much less how many of them are here. Up until now, Sorrow and her friends had breached this land without detection or incident, leaving no evidence of their presence. Being connoisseurs of research, Wonder and Malice had uncovered an ancient mixture called Asterra Flora, derived from a seed and flower. Until just months ago, only a rare few including the Court had known about it, so it had enabled Sorrow’s band to crossover without incident.
So how in the everlasting—
A twig cracks from ten paces away. Sorrow’s ears perk.
She pictures Merry’s sparkler eyes and the lavender hem of her dress skipping against the breeze. The grind of Anger’s teeth, and his windswept hair affixed tautly against the back of his scalp, and the sharp rays in his graphite irises.
The menacing gleam of Malice’s grin, fatally sly and with a touch of kamikaze flair—only a touch though, since he’s got someone to live for. And Wonder, inverted above, with covetous curves and a face as open as the wildflowers she’s been picking nonstop during this quest.
Love, aiming two iron arrows at once. Andrew, balancing one frost arrow and withholding a gulp that’s equal parts brave and terrified.
Sorrow envisions Envy…not at all. She refuses to envision him at all.
Rather, her eyes take a literal approach. They flit toward the branch bearing his weight. Just as she finds him, his gaze snaps away from her.
Another twig cracks. Bracing her longbow, Sorrow hunts for the source, inspecting the glistening jade leaves tipped in amethyst, the phallic cluster of indigo toadstools infesting the grass, the mist lacing through the forest, and, most notably, the network of brooks carving through the ground, some as narrow as strings, some as wide as Envy’s ego.
As the group leader, Anger disarms for an instant and raises his flat palm, indicating for them to hold their fire. With a frown deeper than a canyon, he resumes his stance, nocking his bow in slow motion while scanning the arcade of trees stretching from the glade’s entrance.
After listening for a minute, he catches Merry’s gaze, who nods and mouths an instruction to Andrew, who gestures with an index finger to Love, who juts her knobby chin at Wonder, who signals to Envy with a jerk of her longbow.
She indicates the direction of a bush.
A bush that’s directly behind Sorrow.
In spite of the distance and shadows, the contraction of Envy face is evident. He twists, seeking out Sorrow as if she’s a moron who needs to be told.
Mutely, she hisses, I know.
Evening grows quieter than a tomb. Sorrow’s finger tightens around the bowstring. She licks her lips, her pulse tapping against her chest.
Another crack. Then a buzz.
Sorrow swerves and looses her ice arrow, which misses an adolescent dragonfly. The creature corkscrews around her, then sweeps past the other archers, who follow its trajectory in confusion.
Young dragonflies like this one grow the length of Sorrow’s boot, while their parents grow massive enough to saddle. Not that such a privilege extends to just anyone. Dragonflies may answer to nobody, but they permit only the Fate Court and Guides to mount them.
The winged creature soars away, vacating the atmosphere in favor of a joy flight. Sorrow inhales the sharp tang of realization. Dragonflies usually travel in groups. That one had been alone, probably zipping on its way to reunite with its kin, because it had gotten separated, because something must have lured its attention, because that something might have wanted it to fly in a certain direction.
Because it’s a decoy.
A bowstring twangs at Sorrow’s rear. She and her classmates whip around as a projectile slices through the air, heading for the spot between her eyes.
A glass arrow intercepts the attack, a collision that sunders both weapons.
Grateful but with a grudge, Sorrow tosses Envy a cursory look of acknowledgement before loosing her own arrow, which peels through the night and blocks the shaft heading for Envy’s sternum. The impact causes him to reel backward, his back slamming into the trunk.
More arrows arch from the arcade. Sorrow spins out of a shaft’s path, its tip stabbing into a bough and flashing on impact, disappearing before she can get a close look at its element. However, from what she can tell, none of these weapons are crafted of azurite, crystal, lava rock, pearl, or purple agate. Therefore, these aren’t the weapons of the Fate Court.
Sorrow and her friends aren’t battling against their rulers. They’re battling archers like themselves. As such, the invasive arrows can’t pierce flesh. But they can cripple.
Arrows fly, vanishing after every hit and reappearing in quivers. It’s a free-for-all, with the rapid fire of Anger and Love’s iron, and the lash of Malice’s hickory wood bow while he flings himself into the fray. Wonder loops in and out of the bracken while taking shots. Love vaults over branches and under branches like a gymnast, all the while shooting and dodging strikes. Andrew plasters himself to a pillar of bark while firing and cursing, “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!”
But fury eclipses fear when he notices Love in trouble, his crossbow stymieing a shaft barreling for her heart. Distracting by that, he fails to notice an arrow slitting his way until the last moment. At Love and Sorrow’s combined shout, Andrew flings himself sideways and rolls across the ground. Sitting upright, his pewter eyes balloon as another projectile rips through the leaves, hell bent on his cranium.
Love drops from her vigil. Her booted feet smack the ground as she lands in front of a numb Andrew and swings her forearm, slapping the arrow out of the way. Hobbling on his impaired leg, Andrew gets to his feet just as she turns and gives him a wink.
Merry’s neon bow brightens the murk, aiding in visibility. Anger wrenches arrow after arrow from his quiver, the motions harsh enough to dislocate a shoulder and faster than it takes for each loosed weapon to hit.
Sorrow swings her body to the right, then leaps as an arrow whizzes beneath her. Mid-jump, she fires into the beeches. A second later, the ice shaft emerges back in her quiver.
There’s no telling if her nemesis is down.
There’s still no telling who the nemesis is.
Out of nowhere, a figure hops from the bushes. Sorrow’s reaction is immediate. Her fingers stall, and her jaw plummets, and she’s pretty sure her peers have similar responses.
The stranger is small and male.
The stranger is a child. And the child is leering.
Another youth pops out from behind the first. And another one emerges, prancing from the underbrush like a faerie. And another, and another.
Five archers who can’t be more than eight years old. Two males, three females.
Of the latter, one female has periwinkle hair, and one exhibits shimmering tinsel irises, and one bears a cluster of freckles.
Of the former, one male has chocolate skin and a gazelle-like mien that will someday rival Envy’s.
The other boasts a velvet robe and lilac eyes with a decorative serum threading along his lashes, akin to mascara. Come to think of it, the embellishment’s midnight sheen reminds Sorrow of tears that lack actual grief. Celebratory tears, which is much better t
han the razor scars tracking up her inner arms.
The mascara-painted youth is the one who’d revealed himself initially, his gaggle having trailed after him. The buoyant little squirts brandish arrows of clovers, sugar, sand, and other things she’s too stunned to recognize.
Clearly, Sorrow, Envy, Merry, Anger, Malice, Wonder, Andrew, and Love hadn’t registered the diminutive size of the arrows. It’s a rookie mistake that will humble them all later.
There’s a collective pause. This is precisely the reaction the children had been hoping for, as they giggle up a storm. Crap, is this why Sorrow heard laughter by the pond? Are these children…playing?
A very big maybe. Has she forgotten the distinctions between mortal youths and immortal ones? To say the least, her kind are sturdier even during their upbringing, and their definition of fun has a sharper edge than that of humans.
Well, this explains how Sorrow and her friends had been spotted trespassing. At least, so quickly. This part of the forest is tedious to traverse through, not to mention accessible from few sources. That’s why it’s unfrequented. And that’s why their band had chosen it.
It seems the children had been exploring. Sorrow doesn’t recognize the tittering group and can’t tell what root emotions they represent. Not that everyone knows everyone personally in the Peaks.
In any case, it’s possible the tykes haven’t got an inkling that they’re facing eight outlawed archers. It’s also possible that if they do know, they consider it a thrill rather than a dilemma.
Or it’s possible they don’t care either way, because the little boogers twirl like discs and caper back into the brush, their laughter trickling behind them. Echoes of mirth flit through the boughs, the silvery reverberation akin to wind chimes.
One. Two. Three.
Everyone disarms with a collective sigh.
Okay, not all of them disarm. And not all of them sigh.
Anger growls. Malice seethes. Andrew bleats.
Envy does whatever Envy does.
In short, the males fail to pull themselves together, while the females deliberate and inspect the environment, their weapons braced.
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