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Where is Envy? Where are her friends?

What about Echo and Siren?

Sorrow crawls across the carpet of blooming flowers, trying to squint through the flashes of light. But it’s too bright to permeate the distance. Visibility of her peers’ side of the battle wanes, so that she can’t tell if the fortification still stands or if it’s been blown to smithereens.

Yelling everywhere. So much yelling.

Sorrow pats her chest, realizing that she’d lost her grip on her weapons. The longbow, quiver, and arrows lay scattered over the grass like detritus. She crawls, reaches for her bow, then launches backward from the crash of a nearby star.

Ramming onto her back, her bones rattle. She skids across the dirt, pain tearing the flesh of her arm, spots bursting behind her eyelids.

A distant voice bellows…her name? Is it calling…her name?

Dazed, Sorrow flops over. She shakes the dust from her mind, the electric buzz of anxiety peeling through her belly.

Someone is hollering for her. Someone is terrified for her.

That someone is a male.

The bluff vibrates, rippling as Sorrow drags herself to a sitting position. Again, she scours the vista. This time, she skewers through the divide, her gaze plowing into a pair of panicked eyes.

There he is, alone in a patch of grass. The stars have thrust him to the ground, where he teeters upright on his knees, his hair a black banner whipping in the wind, his chest bare and littered with contusions.

He’s alive. He’s alive and in one piece.

Envy’s stricken features lock on to hers, relief wiping clear any remnant signs of fright. Sorrow understands that relief, because it floods her as well.

That, and another emotion. One of numerous dimensions, forged by a million sights, and sounds, and tastes, and scents, and textures. It’s the same emotion reflected in his pupils, blessedly accessible from her vantage point. Moreover, it’s tangible enough to blot out the chaos.

Balanced on their haunches, they stare at each other.

And just like that, she knows what this is. And he must know, because his visage blanches.

This is what the legend spoke of. This is the myth’s truth. This is imperfect, and sentimental, and vulnerable, and empowering.

This is love.

The ruler’s earlier words return to Sorrow:Then, convince us.

Fine, because she’s not about to sit here and let the celestials pummel her. Not when there’s so much to live for.

Lights spark around Sorrow and Envy, the shower of constellations whisking their hair. They swap gazes, and when he gives her a repentant grin, she mirrors it with a lopsided one of her own.

And they run.

Barreling toward each other, they pump their arms. Sorrow’s lungs saw through her chest, and her body shrieks with pain, and she doesn’t care. Her boots pound across the summit, leaping to the left, then jetting to the right as she skirts around falling debris. Although the summit throbs, she keeps steady on her feet, desperate to grab him, desperate to be held.

The lake is the final boundary, its surface reflecting a millennia of raining stars. Sorrow and Envy dive. They plunge, and they come up for air, and they crank their limbs.

They swim, and swim, and swim. Over the last few leagues, the water gets shallower rather than deeper. Submerged only to their waists now, they’re able to stand upright. Drenched, they wobble across the final stretch like besotted, suicidal ducks.

“Envy!” she screams.

“Sorrow!” he shouts back.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

“I know. I kn—”