Page 73 of Torn

“How did you conjure this?” Anger utters, unable to peel his eyes from the girl a few feet away.

“I told you, there’s a way for her to see you. I wasn’t planning on throwing this bone until your deeds were accomplished, but I moved up the schedule, seeing as you’re high maintenance and require yet another nudge.”

“I warned you not to spy on us.”

“I’m not above surveillance while you’re gallivanting in the city. Dare I say, the authenticity of your affections for Merry are slipping toward the genuine. Must be those eyes of hers; they’ve been igniting your cock like a set of jumper cables. I decided this would remind you of what you’ll be losing as a result, among many things.”

With no shortage of elegant boasting, Malice explains. This metropolis is half a day’s drive from Ever, the mountain hamlet where Love lives with her beau. It had been a matter of luring her to the city.

Mortality aside, she will always carry a residue of her mythical self, even if she doesn’t remember that time. She will always feel a confounding pull toward the stars, an interest in archery and matchmaking and mythology, an inexplicable need to climb trees like she used to. She will always feel deprived of something that she cannot name, a power that she’s lost.

And she will have rare but potent flashes of recollection.

Wonder had once said as much. And Anger had witnessed as much, while watching over Love those first years. The way she’d gazed at the stars and scanned the woods, as if she could see Anger standing there, missing her.

She’d channeled those odd occurrences and become an online sensation, her posts and videos on relationships and intimacy attracting the human population. In her own way, she’s still affects the destinies of others, offering insight while leaving the choices up to her audience.

A balance of fate and free will.

Anyway, Malice—fuck him—had manipulated that unfathomable connection Love feels toward her old self. A few days ago, he’d sent her blog a message from one of the library computers. Pretending to be a fan, he’d planted notions in her mind about the Celestial City, where the stars shine brightest, where destiny is most contemplated.

This is the prime season for stargazing, what with a meteor shower anticipated this weekend. Wouldn’t that make a great series of social media posts? Wouldn’t that be intriguing to see? Hmm?

Malice had mentioned this grand library, its infinite collection a “must-see” for visitors. He knows she has a bookworm for a beau, and if the mortal wanted to travel with her, it would be an incentive for serious consideration.

Love had lapped up the hints while he’d played to lingering threads of intuition. Trained in the art of steering humans, Malice’s charade had worked.

So here she is.

Here they both are. Love and Anger, a story that never got to happen.

He thinks not only of Love’s history, but of Wonder’s history. “To contact a mortal in any manner is a violation.”

“And what is the Court going to do? Banish me?” Malice mocks. “Let me remind you that you were charting the same course, making a deal that would briefly enable Love to see you. Here’s what I’ve read: Talk to her, tell her snippets, enough to remove the blinders. If you purr the right tidbits that once mattered to her, it’ll lift the fog. Not so lucid that she’ll see you in detail, but you’ll feel her eyes on you for a few minutes. As a god with power—power you’d be hard-pressed to lose—you can achieve this periodically, in snippets.” His tone lowers to a grinding murmur. “You still want that, don’t you?”

Anger won’t deny it. The pull of her is extravagant and devastating.

This moment has renewed the temptation. Hasn’t it?

The benefit of sight without the drawback of endangering the Fates. She’ll see him in wisps, not in particulars. It will satiate him yet protect his kind.

Garlands of ivy stir from the rafters, books crack open, and patrons mumble. The librarian will return soon, and she’s right here, right here for the taking. There’s a way for her to register Anger, if he has the desire. If he has the selfishness.

He takes a step.

“Don’t,” a feminine voice commands, the air oscillating with her appearance.

Speaking of Wonder, she materializes on Anger’s other side. Like an angel to Malice’s devil, she’s the voice of Anger’s conscience, sitting on the opposite mantel of his shoulder.

On the way here, he must have inadvertently called out to his old classmate, and she must have perceived his thoughts. Trussed up in a floor-length, forest green dress that swabs her bare feet—she’s foregone her harem pants and boots today—this female is a mythology nymph with a bountiful body. That band across her forehead still bears a posy of blooms against her temple, her mane spilling into a mussed braid, strands sticking from the weave.

An intervention proceeds. She squats, fishes his bow off the floor, and extends it to him like a life preserver. “Don’t do it, Anger,” she repeats, cautions, insists.

Because she cares about him, because she cares about Love, because they’re both her friends. From the past, present, future. Because she knows this will do no good.

And because of Merry, who’s also her friend.

“Christ. It takes a meddler to know a meddler.” Malice cranes his head and tut-tuts. “Wildflower, what gives you the right to be a killjoy?”

---