Page 105

“I thought deities considered sentimentality a weakness.”

She grins blandly. “Not all of us.”

Based on the romantic tales about her friends, maybe Sorrow and her classmates have been proving more and more of their kin wrong. Maybe others are coming around, even if they’re not publicizing it.

They part ways when Sorrow glimpses another mentor watching her. Rushing toward him, Sorrow meets Echo at the pier by her house and flings her arms around his beanstalk form. Chuckling, he squeezes her back. Thank Fates, he’s unscathed after conspiring with Siren. Whatever happened, it appears their sovereigns hadn’t found out about that.

Nonetheless, Sorrow hasn’t seen the mentor since her return. She reels back and shoves him. “Where have you been?”

“What are you thinking?” Echo counters under his breath, his cleft chin set with disapproval.

“I’m protecting my friends.”

“By betraying them.”

“And I’m siding with you.”

“By going against what you believe in.”

Guilt, and guilt, and guilt. She thrusts her fingers through her hair, then gives up. Kicking off her boots, she plonks onto the deck and plunges her feet into the sea.

In her periphery, she catches movement from a parallel dock. She jerks, glimpsing the little archer with painted eyelashes. He perches several feet across from Sorrow, his short legs lost in the depths while he surveys her.

Sighing, Echo lowers himself beside Sorrow. “I didn’t teach you to take sides. I taught you to unite them.”

She speaks to their reflections in the water, illuminated by starlight and floating lanterns. “Is that what you want?”

“It’s what I’ll support,” he replies. “I side with fate, and I’ll guard it with my bow. But should we lose, I’ll accept a compromise, and I shall be willing to learn of a new way.”

“Why are you here?” the child interjects, his face bunched like a prune. Clearly, he’s miffed that his efforts to help Envy rescue Sorrow have backfired.

She can’t blame the tyke for being pissed, since she’s just as pissed at herself.

Sorrow inhales. “Because I know what pain feels like.”

“Just as you know what healing feels like,” Echo insists with a somber grin. “Just as you know how to resist the former and strive for the latter.”

“I’ve seen enough mortal wars—”

“To remember that anything can happen, at any time. To know they may die on the battlefield rather than by execution. To know they may perish now or later. To know you can only do so much.”

Fair enough. However, death in combat will be swifter than by the Court’s hands.

Echo pats her thigh. “You hurt your friends more by turning your back on them than by shielding them from the arbitrary point of a blade.”

Siren is right. News travels fast.

“Even if it means a drawn-out punishment instead of a merciful one?” Sorrow asks.

To which Echo cups her cheek. “I don’t have to answer that for you.”

No, he doesn’t. If Sorrow knows her misfit band as well as she thinks, the answer’s clear.

We’re all family.

Echo gets to his feet, his gray braid swishing behind him as he promises to return after convening with a neighboring group. Left alone with the youth, Sorrow casts him a tentative glance. This tyke has a rapport with Echo and Siren, considering that she’d seen the trio standing together during her capture. Maybe that’s also why the little archer had assisted in her rescue.

With that in mind, Sorrow ventures, “For what it’s worth? Thanks.”