Page 20 of Torn

It’s only love, only heartbreak. How damaging or chaotic can that be?

Anger curses. A goddess steering his destiny. It seems history is about to repeat itself.

Only this time, he’ll stay in control. He won’t let another female nullify him. Not again.

6

Merry

He’d been in her bed. He’d slept under her blanket.

The God of Anger had seen her practically naked. It was all so sudden, so explicit, so scrumptious. And so very terribly—

“—humiliating,” Merry says, dropping her face into the basket of her crossed arms atop the counter. Beside her, the stuffed Cassiopeias say nothing, and she glances up at their vacant expressions. These Greek queens of mythology are too vain to care, but they just don’t understand.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “Neon words will never do him justice. But oh, he’s a veritable hurricane. That windswept hair and perpetual scowl. Those strong archer’s hands. I will never love like this again.”

Still nothing. This is what immortal quarantine has reduced her to. She’s talking to dolls, preferring this therapy to the company of kindred exiles like Surprise or Kindness.

Sigh. The renowned God of Anger. The archer who’d been banished from the Peaks. Outcasts have called his skill unrivaled, his temper deliciously feral.

She reminiscences. He’d been sprawled comatose in her boudoir, his body awakening in her linens, his waist shifting as he rose and strode toward her, while she stood in a crochet of black lingerie.

Presently, impure thoughts writhe in her mind. Merry wants to rewrite history, to give that moment an alternative ending, fanfiction wherein she never puts her clothes back on. The scene flashing before her turns into a bodice ripper comprised of mattress thrashing and bosom groping.

After he’d left, she traced his signature on the double doors. Anger hadn’t been impressed by her, having departed swifter than a dream. And here she’d deemed his arrival serendipitous. She’d believed him to be the one.

Her true love. The one whose heart she’d been preordained to win.

If a deity wins another deity’s heart, that winner becomes immune to the Fates, retaining the power he or she was born with. It’s a legend carried amidst the stars, or so she’s been told by another goddess who’d paid an unexpected visit to Merry recently. Other than the two of them, no other deity knows about this legend.

If she ever wins the heart of another immortal, she’ll become a legitimate goddess again, an active archeress. She’ll be blessed with the very magic that she’d lacked, reaping it tenfold. She’ll win back her place in the Peaks, a failed star no more, and the Court won’t have a say about it. For once, they’ll have their own power and influence taken from them.

And Merry can bring her soul mate back to the Peaks with her, renewing them both. And finally, she’ll have a stage on which to lobby for free will, to campaign on humanity’s behalf, to crusade for a balance of destiny and choice, something she fiercely believes in.

Why would the Court entertain Merry’s wish? The Fates might have no choice whether she reclaims her place, but harvesting a love goddess is an endowment. It took them millennia to create one, yet they’d lost their first success anyway. If they get such a goddess back—one who’s not a dud any longer—it will soften the blow, the insult of Merry revoking her own banishment.

More than any of that, she’d thought her time had come. With Anger, she’d seen a chance at passion, a chance to finally have a partner. At last, someone might actually want her.

But here she is, a woman rejected, a jilted heroine. She must bear the wound and move on. Hence, she pries herself from the countertop, straightens her corset dress, and lifts her chin.

She is Woman. She is Goddess.

At one of the Ethereal Arcade booths, a counter encircles a modular platform and its virtual splendor, a swirling nebula where players choose their game. Merry had long-ago claimed the role of invisible hostess, a title that she fancies. A teenage couple runs an obstacle course, racing along the circumference of Saturn’s ring and then hopping between moon craters while Merry shouts a play-by-play. She pretends the crowd is listening, her lungs striking the air.

“It’s close, ladies and gentlemen,” she boasts.

“They’re neck and neck,” she pipes.

“It’s a fight to the finish,” she belts. “It’s destiny!”

They don’t find out who wins because halfway through the round, the couple doubles over and cackles as if they’ve heard her.

Merry’s navel tightens, then she hops in place when the carnival blasts a song that reminds her of fireworks. She’s atop the counter in seconds, gyrating and lip-synching, tapping her heels and pumping her hips to the beat. She trills the words, sounding like a rabid crow.

Who cares? No one’s staring at her, because no one sees her.

Merry squawks the lyrics—and then screams. She really, thoroughly screams, because she’s no longer alone.

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