Page 1

Chapter 1

Wren

H ow much trouble would I get in if I accidentally shot someone with a real arrow instead of an arrow of Fate?

Death was a kind of fate, wasn’t it?

It probably wouldn’t be worth it, even if the momentary flair of satisfaction would make something inside me sing.

The men who stood in front of me were talking in hushed voices, and the soft shine of want radiating from the taller of the two stretched out in a red line, desperately reaching across the distance between them. It was a sparkling thing, a sweet pink thread that burned brighter and darker the closer he stood to his would-be soulmate.

It was so tenuous, so ready to be connected to the answering shimmer of red flickering in the smaller man’s chest. They were practically begging for my attention. This wasn’t one of those situations where their auras were wavering and might remain pink. For every person who sparked a crimson thread of Fate, there were hundreds who never found the person they were looking for.

Most people spent their entire life never finding their soulmate.

Soulmate.

Fuck, I hated that word.

I understood lust on a base level. It wasn’t often that I wanted to indulge in it, but when I did, it was palpable and sweet; a ripe fruit ready to burst saccharine on my tongue, even if it made my stomach turn when I swallowed it down. While it was there, it was all fire and a burning ache that demanded release. It was the emotion that came after lust that I didn’t understand—the red swirl of aching, stretching auras. The desperation. The need.

Cupids couldn’t feel it.

Love.

Fuck love. Fuck emotions. And fuck the fact that I couldn’t kill the two people standing in front of me and walk away before I had to see the same thing I’d watched so many times before.

My fingers snapped, and the arrow that appeared in my hand was bright red. When I pulled my bow from my back and drew the string, the damn thing practically flew without me even trying. It was the eager essence of a cupid’s aura. It wanted to lodge itself home in the smaller man’s chest after passing straight through his taller companion and catching that line of red.

The pink faded. Vanished. And in its place was a connection . The arrow dissolved, becoming a part of their bond and sealing their fate.

Soulmates.

I turned as they stepped toward each other, before I had to watch the wonder in their eyes as they kissed like it was their first time. I hated this moment, impossible and intangible to me. My insides were frozen to the very emotion I’d been created to spread—cupids weren’t allowed to feel the gifts they were born to give.

I would never know what love tasted like—the only flavor in my mouth was bitter ash as I fled the scene. I didn’t need to see them kiss to know they’d go home together, that their desperate clinging would change to something softer as that red line burned brighter with every touch.

Their world would spiral and tilt on its axis, and they would stay together unless something dug into their very souls and broke the line between them.

As long as I was around, I wouldn’t let that happen… but I couldn’t always be there, blinded by the crimson burn of their affection.

Gods, I really, really hated love.

It was ironic, since my aura—my capacity to feel love—was the very thing that had drawn my maker to me. It was so strong I could create a cupid’s arrow, so strong I would have found a love that could have stretched beyond one life and into the next. I would have painted the world crimson and found my soulmate…

I would have been happy.

Instead, I’d been plucked from my mother’s arms before I’d even taken a breath, before I’d had the chance to experience that first, innocent love of a mother and their child.

I had no idea what jackass thought it was a good idea to snatch babies from their parents, but whoever they were, their methods had existed since the first breath of human life.

Still, it was probably the damn practice that gave humans the idea that cupids were fat, cherub-like children. We’d started out that way, but we weren’t allowed to operate in the field until we’d trained for twenty years. A cupid only stopped aging when their first arrow hit its target. After that, we were immortal… unless we were killed by our only enemy.

The Enmity.

I wondered sometimes if they were picked from birth as well—they were our opposites, after all, our adversaries in a war older than time itself—but they seemed to grow their ranks more with adults, with humans who experienced the world around them and learned to hate, learned to open themselves up to something darker.

Something I was trained to kill.

And fuck me if I wasn’t in the mood to find one at that very moment, to let myself get lost in the sensation of the fight, the danger of my sworn enemy. I could find a half-turned Enmity and slit its throat with no repercussions before it had a chance to beg me to stop. Our battle was the only thing that stood between a world of loving mortals, or one enslaved to the hatred the Enmity spread—a world of raving, mad monsters. Things that killed with deadly teeth and razor claws.

Sometimes when I killed them, I could still see a spark of humanity in their eyes.

And sometimes… I wished they’d just left me in my mother’s arms, so I could know the blissful ignorance of most humans in the world.

I’d been alive for a century, but it felt so much longer.

“Wren?” A voice caught my attention. My head snapped up from the arrow I’d been idly twirling between my fingers while I contemplated stabbing myself with it. I knew it wouldn’t help—I’d get a brief high, but the sensation wouldn’t last. My aura would remain a shimmering glow of gold.

I wouldn’t feel love .

“What is it, Angela?” I snapped my fingers and the arrow disappeared as a tall, slender figure stepped into the lobby of our apartment building. Her eyes were the same violet color as mine, and the long length of her satin curls fell to her waist. I’d yet to see an unattractive cupid, and I half wondered if that was part of what made them choose us—the knowledge that we could have grown to be something beautiful, something so much more.

She smirked before reaching into the top of her dress and drawing out a vial. It swirled in a mixture of shimmering red and white, and for a second I wondered if she intended to take it in front of me. Instead, she tossed it in my direction without warning.

I caught the vial of Ardor against my chest and frowned. She’d thrown what was practically the most precious commodity amongst our kind like it was nothing.

Ardor was pure emotion in a bottle—it was the closest we would ever come to true feelings . It was our reward for being competent in our jobs, and I think sometimes the leash that tethered us to stay. When taken, we could feel the soft, shining edges of humanity, the slightest hint of what our arrows did. For twenty-four hours, we were excused from our duties and allowed to feel . Fucking became something more than perfunctory. Food tasted better—the sun felt warm on our skin. Touching someone felt like it would burn right through you, like it could shape you into something different.

It felt like…

I didn’t want to think that it felt like love, and I’d only used a vial of Ardor once before I realized it was better not to feel anything than to have a taste of something I couldn’t keep. It had been nearly a century ago, and the memory of that what-if was still bitter on the back of my tongue.

This was the tenth bottle I’d earned, though I’d already traded a few of them away. Technically, we weren’t supposed to… but I hadn’t gotten in trouble for it yet.

“Nice catch, Wren.” Angela’s voice was full of snark, and I pushed myself to my feet with a snarl that would have made anyone else recoil.

“What the fuck, Angela?”

“Aiden came by to dish out our rewards. Since you’re Daddy’s favorite, of course you got one. I told him I’d give it to you since you weren’t here.”

Daddy… I hated when she called him that, but if Aiden was here, her actions made sense. She wouldn’t have taken the chance of stealing the vial for herself while he was in the building. He was a cupid too, but older than either of us… older than anyone or anything I’d ever met. I could see it in the near-white fade of his eyes, a soft lilac instead of deep, intense purple. He looked just as young as I did, and somehow older than any human I’d ever encountered.

Time was a strange thing.

“You know, we could share the Ardor, Wren. You and I… we could have a good night together, don’t you think?” Angela was smiling when she stepped forward, leaning into me so I could see the swell of her chest pressing against the black fabric of her top. I tucked the vial into the top pocket of my leather jacket and gave my chest a little pat to make sure it was secure. She watched the motion with eyes already gone dark with the realization that she wasn’t going to win.

Again.

“I just got off an assignment. I’m tired, Angela. Maybe later.” I lied like it was second nature and ignored the pout forming on her pretty features. I didn’t care. I pushed past her to the elevator at the end of the lobby and pressed the button before she had a chance to rethink her strategy. I knew she was only in it for the Ardor itself.

I didn’t even bother to look back as I stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut behind me. The sour expression on her face would look the same as it had every other time I’d turned her down.

There were times when I thought about moving out and getting my own place, but Love’s Ace was one of the better perks my job offered. Aiden owned the building, and only supernatural creatures could take up residence. The top floor was sequestered completely for cupids who did their jobs well—I had an enormous bedroom, a fully stocked bar, a jacuzzi, and a balcony that had the best view in the city…

I didn’t want to think about my brothers and sisters who had lost one too many of their charges to the Enmity.

It paid to be good at the job, and I was one of the best. I didn’t care about the Ardor, and I wouldn’t let myself be distracted with the longing and addiction it seemed to produce.

What I would be distracted with was the way my body ached with exhaustion. I needed to go to sleep before Angela decided to sniff me out and try her luck again—she’d been at it for a decade, and I still didn’t have the urge to peel her out of her skintight clothing.

I groaned as I pushed open the door to my flat and immediately started shedding my weapons. I tossed my bow onto the coffee table and dropped the two blades I had strapped to my thighs onto the couch.

I didn’t even bother to strip before I collapsed against the cool silk of my bedsheets.

When I closed my eyes, the first thing I saw was that fucking couple fawning over each other like they’d seen the moon for the first time—it was ridiculous, because I felt my body twitch in response.

Not my body… just a particular space between my shoulder blades.

I rolled over onto my stomach so my wings could burst from my back—they usually stayed tucked away, just beneath my skin in the form of a sweeping black tattoo that crawled from my shoulders to my ass. The feathers twitched, ruffling in something akin to irritation now that they were finally free. I almost swatted at them, menace that they were, but I simply dragged my pillow over my head instead.

I’d done my job… and if I hadn’t let the feathers burst from my back so I could fly home after, it wasn’t something they could be mad at me for. But they were, because the damn things seemed to have a mind all their own.

“I’m tired,” I grunted.

The muscles in my back twitched again. Maybe my wings couldn’t speak, but they were very good at getting their point across without words.

“I could rip you off, you know. Maybe I’d get some rest then.” It was a hollow threat. A cupid without wings was a sitting duck—they were our greatest asset, and the thing that connected us to our power, to our strength. If I ripped them out, the ink that made up my tattoo would bleed out around me, and I would be one-step up from a mere human… an immortal with never-ending pain trembling along my spine and no way to make it fade.

It was enough to drive anyone to the point of insanity.

Yeah, my wings knew my threat was completely empty, so they twitched again.

“Fine. Fine. You win.” I understood. The anger and bitterness I’d felt earlier was a thick, palpable thing in my chest. My wings wanted the night sky, the crisp air. They wanted to bathe in cloud and moonlight until it all faded away. Until, for a moment, the world was… peace.

Of course, they were just wings—the emotions were my own. My body knew the balm to my soul, even if I would rather have stayed silent and angry in bed.

When I stood, a small smile crossed my lips. I took a second to grab my bow and blades. I had no intention of giving another mortal a happy ending tonight, and I didn’t intend to let my feet touch the ground… but I never left the apartment unarmed.

“Let’s go.” My feathers rustled in excitement as I took off at a run and dove from my balcony, giving myself over to the rush of exhilaration as the wind caught my wings and I took off into the clouds.