Page 100 of Torn

Merry’s head slants. What secrets? Before his banishment, before he would have found value in the legend, what alternative tales had he been looking for? What information had he sought, badly enough to risk exile?

“The difference between you and Wonder?” the braided ruler continues. “You were stupid enough to get caught.”

“But smart enough to remember what I found out,” Malice replies.

This earns the rage god a look of contempt. “Thus, tempting Anger into action while you sat back and loafed. Though, you were nimble enough to convince us that Merry was the only anarchist, plotting to communicate with mortals about free will.”

“You what?” Merry snaps.

So she’d been wrong.Thisis why the Court had chased them—chased her—in the carnival. Malice had slandered her in order to make himself and Anger seem innocent.

Had Anger known during their escape? No, he hadn’t. Merry sees the truth etched into his face, and she trusts it, so he must have perceived this twist later.

“When in reality, all of you have had the same end in mind,” the god summarizes.

“Malice is a tyrant, but he never forced me to do anything. I make my own choices,” Anger says.

“Breaking a heart in order to break banishment, forcing your way back to the Peaks. How presumptuously ambitious of you. How entitled.”

“You taught me well.”

The Court members slit their eyes at him, but they make no reply to that.

The braided god continues to rattle Wonder, who’s struggling to maintain eye contact. “As for you, we should’ve known better. You’d claimed that Love ascertained how to become human on her own, that she trespassed into the Hollow Chamber’s forbidden aisles and made the discovery herself. Yet here you are, a frequent patron of the Chamber. Let us guess: If Malice is the one who approached Anger, you’re the one who approached Merry.”

“I made her tell me,” Merry fibs. “I would not rest until she did.”

The rulers appraise her, from the dress to the sneakers, from the fishnet gloves to her digits plaited with Anger’s.

“How we remember you,” the gossamer goddess says. “A spectacular failure, birthed from a defective star. To deprive the human world of a love goddess, whom we’d had such hopes for? To dispose of her? That aggrieved us more than it did you. Mortals need us in every capacity. You were not sufficient; reclaiming your place would have solved nothing. To assume it’s that elementary, that you can master the skills, weather the training when both require inherent proficiency?” Her gaze rakes over Merry, not with scorn but pity. “Being born as a goddess doesn’t make you a goddess. You were smeared in sentimentality from the moment we first beheld you, a fault which hasn’t altered. At least our former success, with all her penchants for touch, showed resilience to affection.”

“So you thought,” Merry rebukes. “She was just better at hiding it.”

There’s a squint of disapproval. “You will never be good enough.”

“I don’t want to be good enough for you. I want to be good enough for humanity.”

“The conceit. An exiled goddess speaking for a people she doesn’t belong to.”

“I suppose that makes me a true deity.”

That provokes another squint, perhaps a little impressed by her moxie. “This is precisely what makes you sentimental.”

“I’ve lived among them.”

“You’ve livedin proximityto them.”

“Gracious, do you hear yourself? That’s true for all of us, and yes, especially exiles, which is why Malice wasn’t entirely wrong about me. Free will is—”

The male ruler delivers an elegant groan. “This again.”

“Free will is an illusion,” the gossamer goddess insists, her butterfly gown swishing. “Granted, that illusion of control sustains a mortal’s hope, which bolsters their world, which preserves us. But without destiny, without that underlying reality, humans would languish in their battle for control. What’s more, there is bliss and strength—there is autonomy in relinquishing control. There is courage in that.”

“That’s a poor excuse,” Merry argues. “Humans don’t know they’re relinquishing anything. Even if they did, there’s courage in having a choice, and there’s courage in giving someone a choice. So maybe you should take your own advice.”

“Given free reign, misguided emotions lead to misguided acts. Mortals would extinguish themselves. They do not choose or act perfectly.”

“Neither do immortals,” Malice remarks.

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