Page 31

He leads her across the gangway, down the funnel’s stairs, and into forbidden terrain.

They travel to a section where stacks of books tower from the floor, each offering a challenge.

At one column for example, pick the wrong title, and the pile will rearrange itself, confusing the visitor.

After all, loopholes remain secret for a reason.

At another tower, Malice releases Wonder’s hand. At which point, she inhales through her nostrils and pulls herself together.

“Far be it from me to disappoint. But I do believe…” The least impressive title in the bunch, with a weathered spine and faded gold leaf, fits in Malice’s hand as he slips it from the collection.

Deftly, he flips through the pages, then stops and rotates the open book toward Wonder.

One of the leaflets has been sliced from the inner crease.

She grabs the book and peers closer. “You cut out the page.”

He wiggles his digits. “As I demonstrated earlier, manicures are practical for lots of things. But this discovery wasn’t merely a page.”

No, it hadn’t been. Again, Wonder has an inkling.

When he tugs on a random page, the paper unfurls into a scroll, rolling like a bolt of cloth to the floor. However, nothing about the text itself alters.

As Malice gives the scroll another tug, the volume’s crease sucks the page back into place. “The tactic was right,” he says. “I just had to find the exact page. When I did, it yielded—”

“—a secret,” Wonder finishes. “With an insignia at the bottom.”

He tilts his head. “Do tell.”

She taps the book’s cover. “Page two hundred and six.”

Using the same process, the sheet unravels, except this one reveals a hidden message that stretches across the surface, replacing the original content. It’s the second half of the legend that brought Merry and Anger together, which Wonder had unearthed.

Malice scans the text. “Looks like I missed a spot. Then again, I was in a hurry. The keepers had just caught me red-handed, so I couldn’t go through the whole book.”

“That’s when you got exiled?”

“Another five minutes, and I would have found what you did.”

The urge to tease him gets the better of Wonder. “Five minutes? It took me only three.”

His eyes crinkle. “Smart goddess.”

Unable to resist, Wonder chuckles. “Naturally,” she quips while retracting the text and casually flipping through the rest. “What did you expect from—”

The words freeze like ice on her tongue, her mirth dying a swift and expedient death.

Wonder stalls at one page, her eyes have inadvertently landing on the contents.

Blood whooshes in her ears, blotting out whatever Malice is saying, his confused voice giving way to the drumming in her pulse.

Her disbelieving eyes stumble over lines of text, every sentence crushing her soul.

It cannot be. But what is seen cannot be unseen.

Her name. Her crime. Her torture.

In finely penned script, the details of Wonder’s prior misdeed litter the parchment. It chronicles her attachment to a mortal man, her obsession and attempt to communicate with him, and the price she paid as a result.

The crew cutting flower shapes into her hands. The scars that remain.

A lifetime of servitude, of duties performed, of destiny aligned. And yet, she has been reduced to one mistake, one error of the heart, one moment when she fell in love, one time when she destroyed what she held dear.

That part isn’t indicated, nor the particulars of the human or what became of him. Even if Wonder had imparted that information to The Court, their kind would have found the story immaterial in light of Wonder’s transgression. What matters is that she committed treason.

Her feelings. Her grief.

That human’s life. His death.

None of it had ever mattered in this world.

Here, in her favorite place, her happy place, Wonder has been immortalized as a traitor. That is the stamp she will leave in these halls.

The book drops from her fingers. Then Wonder is running, sprinting down the aisles, tears blotting her vision. Malice’s voice carries after her, but she can’t turn, won’t turn.

Dashing into an uncharted corner, she halts against a wall and clamps a hand over her mouth. Sliding to the rug, she curls into a ball, a garbled cry peeling from her throat.

The ink had been fresh. In a mean-spirited, contentious, discriminatory move, The Court must have had Wonder’s past recorded following her banishment in The Celestial City.

To rub salt into that wound, they’d chosen the same book that houses the legend she uncovered for Merry, as if to mock those efforts.

Whether or not they believed Wonder would enter this place again and actually find the passage, it doesn’t matter.

They did so out of spite, in case she did indeed make it back here.

Henceforth, this is how she’ll be remembered over history. In this library, others will define Wonder solely by this one action, that she had the audacity to cherish a human and betray her people. She will be forever labeled as nothing more than an insurgent.

But that’s not the vilest part. No, it’s that Wonder cannot entirely fault The Court.

For she has earned this treatment after doing worse to that human.

She caused his suffering, all because she hadn’t been able to contain herself, because she’d needed to satisfy her own desires instead of thinking of the torment it might cause him later.

That’s why the tears are truly falling. Because this is no better than she deserves, because she’s the real monster.

Choked gasps spill from Wonder’s tongue. Tears slice a path down her face, leaking to a pair of hands that cup her jaw.

Wonder blinks through her wet lashes. Malice is kneeling in front of her, the fingers that had driven her to pleasurable madness earlier now anchoring her features to him.

Surely, he read the text and now knows who scarred her hands. Yet if he makes any connection between her transgression and his former life, Malice doesn’t show it. The notion is highly unlikely anyway, a stretch even for his perceptive mind.

Rather, the demon god is focusing solely on Wonder. For once, he doesn’t speak, only seizes her without preamble, gathering her against his strong frame, encasing her like a shield.

Wonder would be shocked if her world hadn’t just capsized yet again. Instead, she wheezes, hyperventilating in his embrace.

“Shh,” he murmurs into her hair. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”

The mellow words rush across her skin, his tenor more soothing that she’d have given him credit for.

Her blood slows, her sobs ebb, and calmness washes away the despair.

Like magic, a strange combination of relief and need grips her.

She angles her head and gulps into his throat, her fingernails curling into his collarbones as if he’s the only one capable of keeping her aloft.

As Wonder burrows her face into his neck, Malice twitches.

Not only had she not foreseen he’d been adept at comforting her, but apparently neither had he.

Though, she cannot blame him for that. This god is hardly the type to dabble in compassion.

However, after another moment, Malice gathers her tighter.

This is wrong. She does not warrant this embrace, and Malice would agree if he knew the truth. He’s done horrible things in the present, but so has she in the past. Accepting this support isn’t fair to him, that Malice would unknowingly console the person who caused his demise.

And yet. Wonder cannot pry herself away. She’s never been able to do that.

Malice speaks above her head, an underlayer of rage crackling in his voice. “Don’t cry. Don’t give them that.”

Like a weapon rather than a balm, the words stall her grief. Don’t give their rulers her pain. Don’t give them her regrets. Don’t give them her passion. If she must weather her mistakes, let them be hers alone, for The Court has taken enough.

Wonder’s sorrow ebbs. For a long time, they hunker in the shadows, the scents of leather and vellum settling her pulse. He didn’t smell like this in the past, but she likes it. Very much.

“Hey.” Malice finally pulls back and grips her face once more, thumbs wiping away the tears. “Eyes on me.”

Eyelids raw, Wonder glances up. He’d been the one to request this, yet as her watery gaze clings to him, something in her expression wrings a staggered look from his features, temporarily stalling whatever he’d been about to say.

They stare. And stare.

Mystified, the demon searches her visage, his attention dropping to her lips.

Then he snaps out of it. Something brutal crimps his face, an undomesticated light fuming in his pupils.

Wrath. But not at her.

“Fuck them,” he hisses. “You’re better than those cocksuckers have ever been, and you didn’t do shit wrong.”

Her heart aches, because that’s not true. “I deserve it.”

“The fuck?” Malice balks. “Why?”

A question he has every right to ask. An answer she has no right to deny him.

Yet as the confession crawls across Wonder’s tongue, it halts on the brink. After everything that’s happened today, and with their alliance still hanging by a thread, this cannot be the right time to tell him.

Instead, an ambiguous statement slips from her mouth. Not a falsehood, but not the full story. “I endangered both worlds.”

“The Court is endangering both worlds,” he overrules. “They’re judging, shunning, and sticking to archaic ways of thinking. Don’t give those hypocrites the fucking power to condemn your history. Don’t deny your past. Own it.”

Own her heart. Own her choices. Own her mistakes.

This much, Wonder can do. Technically, the only reason she wasn’t banished earlier for her crime of passion was because she’d shown as much exemplary promise as Love. As a member of the elite crew, torture had been the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.