Page 81 of Torn

“Don’t do that. Don’t confuse being in love and having a partner withneedinga mate. Don’t assume both mean the same thing. And don’t assume that’s an unprecedented notion.”

The words revive Merry, refocus Wonder, and boost them from the bed. They journey outside, joining the archers at the summit, where they gather on the lounge chairs. Merry cradles her glass of lemonade, and none of them mention Anger’s name.

Beyond the observatory, the carnival shears into the skyline. Lights bounce off a vista of panes, connecting every building, every person. It reminds Merry how similar they all are, immortal or not.

Everyone feels wonder, sorrow, envy, anger, and love. No one is an expert at any of it.

For everyone, it just comes. And then it goes.

22

Anger

Rising three levels within a damp nimbus, the park’s purple fountain spritzes water from a jug. From the looks of it—and considering the sculpted hedges of figures situated throughout various lawns—this landmark celebrates Aquarius.

Anger stares at the bubble of air where she’d been standing. It’s vacant and hollow, where there’d once been such depth and complication. Such light.

Even while she’d faced off with him, she hadn’t lost that luster, that evasive sheen. She’d only given so much of herself, and it appears, he’d done the same with her. He’d held back the full windstorm, while she’d held back that full glow. He’d missed his chance to know all the goodness and badness, the perfection and imperfection between them.

His throat cracks, and his temple smashes against his skull. It’s a collapsed sort of feeling, everything crumbling into brittle pieces. It reminds him of when he was younger, glowering at his reflection in a mirror, wanting to be taller, wanting to grow up, assuming that it would make him wise.

That it would make him strong. That it would make him worthy.

He misses Merry. He misses her more than he’d ever missed Love.

His eyes pinch with something to which he’s unaccustomed. Even when Love had broken him, his ducts had stayed dry.

Now a liquid pressure splashes against his rims. But he won’t let it out. Not here, out in the open.

Not with Malice strutting up and pausing beside him on the curb.

The fountain hisses, spraying their clothes with moisture and glazing the vegetation in dew.

To Anger’s surprise—what should surprise him, at this juncture?—the rage god doesn’t speak. He doesn’t gloat or congratulate Anger on pushing Merry further toward heartbreak.

Had Malice known that Merry would show up? Had he planned it that way?

Anger swallows bile. “Did you orchestrate this part, too?”

“No, mate,” Malice answers. “This one’s all on you.”

His tone of bafflement and empathy clashes. For some reason, Anger suspects it has less to do with the scene in the library, more to do with the goddess who’d tried to intervene.

If Wonder hasn’t approached Anger yet, it means that she’s vacated the premises, which means that she’s gone after Merry.

Humans stroll through Midnight Park, experiencing their own permanent grievances, their own fleeting celebrations. Fates, he’s sounding more maudlin by the second. This must be a day for the unexpected—and again, when has anything thus far been predictable?—because Malice says with perplexing, preoccupied reluctance that they’re almost there. That Merry’s heart is about to shatter and needs one final nudge.

When that happens, Anger will know. He’ll feel it in his bones.

Malice spews a bunch of rubbish, the tirade nothing but a drone of white noise urging Anger to remember that moment with Love, reminding him that she’s in the library, ripe for communication. The outcast God even offers to distract her beau, Andrew, by making a few dictionaries levitate—or seem like it—giving Anger the chance to finish what he started.

It’s all worthless commotion. It’s all jabber, jabber, jabber.

“I’m done,” he says, shoving past Malice.

A vice-like grip jerks on his arm. “No, you’re not.”

A thousand glass shards can be plucked from that statement. A tedious and cutting task yielding a thousand jagged implications, which amount to a warning.

---