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Plastered into yet another hug, she whispers over his shoulder, “Why did you kiss me?”

Envy tenses, every witty response in the universe vanishing before he can snare one. All that comes out is, “Because.”

Because I think I’m falling.

His heart gives a quick squeeze. But if that’s true, he’s going to muck this up, because he doesn’t know how to fall, nor how to break the landing. He’ll plummet, crash, and break his perfect jaw. And he’ll take her with him.

Isn’t that right? He hopes not.

For one thing, he’ll no longer be pretty. For another, he’ll lose her.

Fear knots around his vocal cords, but he gnashes his teeth and snaps the tether in half. He won’t let himself go there.

He mumbles against the crinkled space between her brows. “Why did you kiss me back?”

“Because,” she says.

Humor lifts her words, forcing a gravely chuckle from Envy. Fair enough, then. He senses words lingering between them. A truer answer.

For now, he wants the brunt of his thrusts to whisk her body across his bed. Based on those water-colored irises, she yearns for that just as much.

“I want you inside me, Envy,” she admits. “I want that so badly it hurts.”

“That sounds like pain,” he says, his voice a rough-spun baritone. “If so, come to my hollow, and do whatever you want. Fuck me sweetly with your sharp little hips.”

“That sounds like pleasure,” she summarizes.

“As I recall, we had an agreement.”

“We didn’t bargain for this.”

“Then we’re excused.”

This time, they’ll do it right. At least until eventide, when they have to depart and resume this quest.

Encircling her middle, Envy backs Sorrow across the water. She nibbles the bridge of his shoulders while his teeth snatch her earlobe and suck that bell of flesh into his mouth.

“You’re as slippery as ice,” he flirts.

“You’re smooth as glass,” she says.

They stumble out of the lagoon, pawing at one another on their way across the footpath. And perhaps it’s the mention of their lost archery, the elements of their bows, because out of nowhere, Sorrow stops her assault on his jaw. In fact, she goes rigid so swiftly that Envy loses his footing.

She stares into the distance, a realization blasting its way to the surface. “They have our weapons.”

Envy blinks, hazy. “What?”

Sorrow just nods to herself, creases of anger burrowing into her face. “They have our weapons.”

She stares at him until he gets it. The group of archers who’d chased them into the rapids. Everyone except Sorrow, Envy, and Love had managed to store their weapons in the boat’s lower compartment, seconds before the rapids devoured the vessel.

Sorrow and her archery had gone overboard, and Envy dove in after her, leaving his stash to the torrent’s mercy. Also, it’s possible that Love may have lost her longbow and quiver sometime after being separated from Envy and Sorrow.

The maelstrom of water should have swallowed their weapons. So how…?

Sorrow replays aloud their swim through the Astral Sea, the words she’d heard those two archers speak while stationed on the pier. The male had mentioned iron.

I’ve always wanted to know what iron is like.