Page 28

The answer should be obvious, but this is Envy.

If she makes a suggestion between the two options, he’ll ignore it. If she demands his cooperation, he’ll whine. If she gives a shit, he’ll hold it against her later.

This.Thisis why they have zero in common.

Love and Andrew. Anger and Merry. Wonder and Malice.

They’re partners who respect each other. Yet they think some legend—about two deities choosing lust over love—will bring Sorrow and Envy together. They think it will change this battle.

But that can’t be right. It has to be another pairing.

Envy nearly topples her over. Sorrow drags him on to the mossy floor, then crouches beside him and braces her palms on her thighs. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Mister.”

“Best to get you out of those wet clothes first,” he mumbles.

A traitorous chuckle skips off her tongue. She compresses her lips to stop it, but it’s too late. Her mirth slips through the cracks, foreign and humiliating.

Sadly, this asshole notices. His tired mouth quirks as he listens to the sound, his eyes drifting closed. “I’ve waited hundreds of years for that.”

He’s delirious. He didn’t mean it.

Meanwhile, the tingle swirling in Sorrow’s gut is an illusion. A farce meant for sentimentals like Merry, bless her sweet soul.

The only truth Sorrow knows for certain is they’re not going anywhere.

For three days, they’re stuck with each other.

8

Envy

Mmm, sateen blankets. Luscious. Glorious.

They glide over his skin, slipping into the crevices between his abs, of which he possesses in abundance. Envy purrs. Twisting over, he feels cocooned in this heavenly swathe of material. Vaguely, he has the presence of mind to deduce that he’s garbed in nothing but sleeping pants woven of a similar delicious textile, as malleable as water.

Envy knows the flux of that fabric: silk pants. From the way this material licks his thighs, he’d say it’s sewn from a deep, glossy gulf. The garment’s richness indicates an enchanted quality, achievable only in this realm.

What gives him pause is the mossy bed beneath him. Stretching his arms like a feline, Envy notes other perplexities. A single, plump pillow cradles his head, though he never sleeps with only one pillow. No, he prefers the lavishness of several.

His bare chest contracts with each breath, and his toes poke from under the blanket. Familiar spices perfume the atmosphere, along with the purest white. The sounds of droplets trickle from nearby.

Envy’s eyes whip open to a smooth, unblemished cavern dappled in shadows. What the Fates? He lurches upright, grinding his knuckles into his sockets until his periphery clears.

In the Astral Sea, his house contains industrious but luxurious ornamentations. Linen bedding. Plush sofas and mirrors. A drafting table and fashion renderings. Bolts of jacquard, damask, toile, houndstooth, and leather. Pelts of fur and spools of yarn.

This isn’t his house. His head swings from left to right, absorbing the taper candles set into recesses, the wicks twitching with flames that sprinkle the walls.

The cavern. His refuge, the other end of which resides…

Hope dashes through him. When? How?

Envy consults his fractured memory. But it’s the actual fractures that rouse him fully, his ribcage grinding, the pain seizing his mind. He seethes, resting his palm against the ladder of bones covered in a gauze dressing.

Wicked clarity returns.

Needing a moment to regroup, he claws through his mane, the infernal layers snarled from the journey here. It’s going to take him a while to clean up, particularly by his standards. To say the least, he’d have an easier time shaving a warthog.

He clings to the details around him. The inner stream. The candles. The hearth. The pillows, cushions, and upholstered chairs. The cloths looping from the ceiling.