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Earlier, he’d collected their clothes and brought them outside with the towels, so they dress each other. Sorrow pulls a V-neck shirt over Envy’s head, tucking it into his slacks and finishing it off with a pinstriped vest.

He inches that long, layered skirt up her limbs, then drapes her in that customary vest, fastening the clasps as if he’s got all day. There’s something concentrated and tender about this. He would call it sweet and utterly out of his league. Is he doing this right?

It’s one thing to disrobe a female with aplomb. It’s another to cover her up.

In any event, it calms them down. In spite of the argument, the dust settles as quickly as it had escalated, and she sighs when he purrs appreciatively into her neck.

Barefooted, Envy folds her discarded robe and drapes it atop an outcropping, then he takes her hand. They gravitate to the cavern’s threshold, where they sit at the edge of the world. He settles behind Sorrow, flanking her with his limbs and encircling her midriff.

She’s sulking again, her silence posing a question: Since when has he ever aborted a dangerous plan?

Resting his chin on her shoulder, he says, “So how many smiles do you have?”

Sorrow holds back, then sputters with mirth. “You piss me off.”

“You do much more to me,” he admits.

He spends the next hour finding the ticklish spots that make her guffaw, telling her jokes, coaxing her into arousal with his tongue, and pulling pleasure from her in pieces. This being the final secluded hours, he’s not going to waste the time by getting them killed.

At some point, it’s clear they haven’t rested enough, having woken up too early and then overextending themselves with that first kiss.

Their first kiss.

Envy tucks Sorrow into him and dozes off with a grin of his own.

Too bad that grin drops like a stone when he wakes up—and she’s gone.

In a millisecond, Envy surges to his feet with a fluent “Fuck!” He storms into the cavern while cinching his mane into a low ponytail. He considers not only which passage to take, but how tightly he’ll strangle that goddess when he finds her.

Hadn’t she given in too rapidly? Hadn’t that seemed uncharacteristic of her?

Isn’t he the naivest, most gullible prig in history?

Of course, she snuck off to be the hero. Because she’s careless and brave and stubborn. Because he told her, no.

And because he’d shown her the way.

19

Sorrow

Talk about shitty ideas and shittier routes. Sorrow picks through the jagged tunnel, the new boots she’d conjured slashing through a creek. Slender waterfalls echo down the cavities, every sound bottomless and vibrating to unseen channels.

Deep into the vault, she passes through the cliff’s belly, following the directions that Envy had mentioned when imparting a vital piece of new information. After the intimacy in the boat, they’d sailed through the waterfall enclave, where he’d pointed out a passage that leads to the Astral Sea.

Needless to say, it’s been a crooked and twisted journey. Between the enclave and her destination, this course is supposed to cut travel time in half. It should take an hour compared with the two hours it required while swimming to the lagoon.

Envy had classified this route as precarious. Well, he’s right. This path isn’t a friendly one, chiseled as it is with razor rocks and slimy indentations.

That’s why he’s never tried it. And that’s why he hadn’t chosen this trek when they fled the Astral Sea. Not to mention, his injury wouldn’t have managed it; swimming had been the lesser of two evils.

Time is of the essence. Sorrow can extricate their weapons and make a return trip before nightfall, at which point, she and Envy will set out to meet their band.

The conduit veers, clouded in a blushing miasma. It sprays her clothes, glazing the skirt and vest in a sheen of water, as fine as pixie dust.

Sorrow trips on a slab of rock and roars an obscenity. The artery narrows, passable but even more treacherous. A bracket of stone nips at her elbows and draws a trickle of blood—the sixth piercing thus far, including a few on her forearms, and another at the column of her neck, and another down her thigh, where a point had cut through her skirt.

She counts herself lucky, since it could be worse.