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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!”