Page 95 of Torn

“Forgive me,” Anger says.

“Not until you forgive me,” she replies.

Malice is the first to jerk his head toward Merry, blinking in stupefaction. Anger’s eyes follow, snapping in her direction.

Forgive her? For what?

Merry cringes. “See, the thing is, I was supposed to win your heart.”

She reveals what she’d wanted to tell him in bed, before they’d fallen asleep. It’s another legend, or perhaps a limb of the same one, with the same magical reward. The chance to go home, to prove herself a goddess, and to advocate for a greater cause.

They gape, his frazzled expression reflected in hers. They’d been imposing on each other’s vulnerabilities, pawing at a goal from opposing angles. It had only been a question of who would succeed first.

“Who told you?” Malice asks her.

“I did,” another voice streams into the vault.

Swathed in a foliage of green that sweeps dust off the floor, Wonder’s figure swells into the room. It has taken her longer than Anger had anticipated to answer his call.

Malice emits the strongest reaction to Wonder’s appearance. His eyes cut toward goddess, from her bare feet to her marigold locks. She has relocated the posy of blooms from a headband to a corsage at her wrist, a mimicry of her fluctuating personality.

The demon god blinks at her with aggressive uncertainty. A rare moment in which action and rationale abandon him.

His gaze slithers from the starburst scars on her hands to the quartz arrow fixed on him. Wonder’s arm cranks back, her bowstring poised to let the weapon fly. Only Anger spots the slight tremble in her grip, the bob in her throat.

She will strike Malice, if she must. She will exert enough force to twist his neck or knock him through a window. But she doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t want to hurt him.

Malice’s inertia won’t last. Anger takes advantage of the boon and steps closer to Merry without losing sight of the demon god.

Can Anger deflect two arrows with a single one? Yes.

Does he want Malice to take that chance? No.

Malice recovers from the spell. “I see the Archive diva has arrived,” he announces. “Anger was too rude to introduce us in the library. But oh, I know all about you. Wildflower Wonder of the elite class. The face of a cherub, the body of a truffle, and the mind of a hot air balloon.”

Anger has never seen Wonder greet a soul with hostility. Even when his class had tortured her, she hadn’t held a grudge. But right then, he witnesses a marvel: a muscle slides across her cheekbone, pulling the skin taut. Her expression, strung between two conflicting and clandestine emotions, finally chooses a side.

Her fingers grow steady on the bow. “You swine.”

“If you insist. Pigs are smarter than they look. What happened to your hands? Looks too intricate to come from a hasty brawl. Formal abuse, then? What did you do to get tortured? Or better yet, who were you willing to get tortured for?”

“Don’t pretend to know me!”

“I’m not the one who’s staring with recognition. Have you mistaken me for an incubus who’s haunted your dreams?” His voice darkens. “That wasn’t mockery or rhetoric. I’d very much like an answer.”

She doesn’t respond but instead inspects the lair with a sallow face. The rocking chair and saddlebag. The crude, antiquated telescope. Especially the crate of sepia envelopes and letters. Wonder absorbs it all like a sponge, the sight dampening her eyes.

Her reaction draws an insulted grimace from Malice. “I don’t know you? Meaning, you’re not the goddess who’s poked her nose into one-too-many Hollow Chambers, sashaying into prohibited areas, looking for clues to nothing and everything. You might’ve never noticed me there, but I noticed you. Uncovered a clause within a classified legend, have you? It seems we’ve shared a hobby.”

“There’s another part to the legend,” Merry tells her.

Wonder jerks her gaze from the room’s arcane embellishments. “I know. But I never thought…” She glances at Anger. “I never thought you’d do that.”

Try to break a heart? Of course, she hadn’t. Anger wouldn’t have predicted it of himself.

Spiteful, Malice shakes his head. “Wildflower Wonder. Maybe if your infamous psyche weren’t prone to drift, you might’ve had more foresight. I said, what happened to your hands!”

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