Page 73

Envy

They’re just over two centuries old now.

In that time, a million things have happened.

Namely, Love has fallen in love with a mortal named Andrew. The forbidden union has caused a chain reaction of events, setting their world into disarray and pitting the Fate Court against the goddess.

In the face of that, it brings their class closer together. Questions and doubts about fate versus free will rise to the surface, in addition to their own individual experiences among the humans, which has knocked them all off kilter.

And so, they band together, defying the laws of their world.

In the end, Love and Andrew find their happy end, but it makes her an enemy of the Fates. Moreover, Anger is banished by the Court for protecting her secret, for failing to report her forbidden tryst in the first place.

Later, Wonder, and Sorrow, and Envy attempt to locate their exiled class leader. Frustrated when they cannot find him, Envy thrashes into Sorrow’s sector of the mortal realm, to see if she’s learned anything new.

He finds her in a marshland bayou, in some type of sanctuary for human dragonflies. And butterflies. And fireflies.

A raft deck floats in the middle of the bayou, with a hard foundation where people can rest in the sun. But it’s night, and the mortals are sleeping, so it’s solitary but for the strum of crickets, their drone slicing through the air, and the croaks of toads roosting on lily pads.

Tiny dragonflies flit across the water. Equally tiny butterflies perch on twigs and pump their wings. And even tinier fireflies hover, pulsing like chartreuse torches.

Sorrow reclines on the deck, barely flinching when Envy appears beside her. Picking her teeth with a length of straw, she drawls, “Not a thing.”

“How hard have you been looking?” he snaps.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we still have jobs to do.” She rises on her elbows, which shoves her vest-clad breasts in his periphery and produces a slit in her skirt. “We can’t just abandon our posts unless we’d like to piss off the Court even more…What are you staring at?”

It’s not the breasts or the column of flesh that catches his attention most of all. No, it’s the bandage spread across the bridge of her nose. “What the Fates is that?”

Her fingers drift to the strip. “An embellishment.”

He balks. “You consider that an accessory? That’s your idea of pretty?”

“Envy, it’s been a long, stressful, debasing few months. Our class is demoted and estranged, Anger is banished, and the rest of us might get shunned, too. We’ll lose our magic if we make one false move, so excuse me if I’m not in the mood to deal with your shallow shit. Go away. Come find me when you’ve made yourself useful and gotten wind of clues about our missing rage god. Oh, and when I say clues, I mean the ones Wonder and I haven’t already dug up.”

“I will once you take off that ridiculous adhesive and let me see the rest of your face. Where’s your sense of taste? Beauty? Pleasure?”

“They’re jammed up your asshole.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Throwing the straw into the water, Sorrow vaults to her feet and gets in his face. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me is you! It’s always been you!”

Envy feels the quality of his own leer, akin to an acrylic sweater—cheap and unnatural. “My, my. Now we’re getting somewhere. I like seeing that snarky little mouth parted,” he hisses. “I bet every crinkle would rake against my tongue.”

She fires one final cannonball. One very familiar cannonball.

Tapping her nose against his, Sorrow warns, “Don’t mess with me, pretty god.”

Fury thrashes up Envy’s throat and seizes the tips of his fingers. Maybe it’s everything that’s happened since Love’s rebellious romance, since Anger’s exile, since their class’s demotion. Maybe it’s all this fate and free will confusion.

Or maybe it’s just her. Sorrow, with those cuts up her arms, that fake bandage, and all this moodiness, which she stashes behind a mask of cynicism. Maybe it’s Envy’s inability to break through that wall, because she reveals nothing to anyone, shares nothing with no one, cares what no one thinks about her—cares even less what he thinks about her.

But he wants her to care. He wants her to think about him. Because maybe they’re both wearing masks, and dammit, he wants to rip off hers, among other things. He wants to rip her apart.

So maybe it’s also her proximity. Maybe he’s losing his mind. Or maybe he lost it ages ago, back when she fisted his shirt and said the same exact thing.

Also:An ugly god is easy to spot.