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Just before the demon seizes her mouth again, an endearment falls off her tongue. In an instant, Malice tenses. And it isn’t until she encounters the sudden absence of him, it isn’t until he jolts backward, that Wonder comprehends the error.

What she said. What she called him.

She has one second to glimpse his stricken expression, a single moment before those features condense. With a grunt, Malice pushes Wonder away. The magnitude sends her careening, stumbling backward.

“What did you say?” he seethes through bared teeth.

Wonder claps a hand over her mouth, wanting to take it back. At the wounded fury slicing across his features, panic ensues.

Drawing her palm away, she shakes her head. “I… I… I didn’t…”

But she did. She had recited from the letter she’d taken from him, the letter she wrote to him, back when he was someone else.

Dearest Wayward Star

That’s what she had called him.

Knifing his fingers through his hair, Malice glowers as if she’s a stranger, or as if he’s been waiting for this. He stalks up to Wonder, backing her into the opposite bookcase, and brackets his hands on either side. “Who are you?”

Wonder deflects, “What do you mean?”

“Who. Are. You?” he fumes in a deadly register.

“From the moment I met you, you’ve been looking at me like I haunt you.

You checked on me during my nightmares in the vault.

Before Anger blew the library roof to pieces, you glanced at every object in my crypt like you recognized each one.

The rocking chair, the telescope, the crate of envelopes.

And here, you stole one of the letters from my quiver—”

“You knew?”

“Do I look like a fucking idiot? I let you get away with it because from the beginning, something wasn’t right.

You’re too invested, too concerned, and way too shitty at faking it.

You came into my room the other night to snuff out a nightmare that isn’t even yours, and it’s not because it was ruining your fucking sleep.

” Malice looms, stepping into her, burrowing down.

“Why do you care? Why do I pass out every night only to end up trapped by flashes of old letters, pomegranate trees, a library in some backwater town I’ve never seen, in some century I don’t recognize?

Why do I dream about my arms bound in straps, a barred cell, and blood pouring from my mouth after what seems like hours of screaming? ”

The straps. He’d looked so traumatized when she pointed out the ancient journals. The texts had been bound in tethers. The sight must have triggered a recollection, a mortal memory of being incapacitated.

He had a nightmare that same evening.

“Why are the visions always the same?” Malice rants.

“And why do they feel like more than just a vision? You want to know why the fuck I’m here?

Because from the second I was born, half of me has felt immortal, the other half not.

I’ve had these nightmares since I was a little shit trying to nock a bow.

But why did I choose wood for archery? What fuckwit deity picks that?

Why do I remember smells and sounds and tastes I’ve never known?

Why did I grow up in The Dark Fates with scars I don’t remember getting?

Why doesn’t my past feel like my past? And why do I get the feeling you—” he stabs a finger toward her, “—know the answer to every question renting space in my head?” To emphasize, he taps that same finger hard against his temple.

“Why else have you acted in a million fucked up ways since you first saw me? That’s also the reason I brought you here.

So I’m going to ask again, and again, and again.

What do you know? Who the fuck are you?”

Wonder fumbles for a response, but she takes too long. Impatient, Malice slams his palms against the books on either side of her head, the noise firing through the library, rattling the bookshelves. She jumps, struggling with how to answer, her pulse clattering.

Once, she would have taken this as a physical threat. But not any longer. This demon is furious and confused, his mind not fully his own. Yet Malice won’t harm her. After the time they’ve spent together, everything has changed.

With a gruff sound of defeat, Malice’s features constrict. His ragged face drops against hers, his eyelids clenching shut.

“For Christ’s sake,” he whispers. “Don’t make me beg.”

A dry sob escapes Wonder. The rims of her eyes glisten from that turbulent kiss and the desolation in his tone.

His tormented features wait, the sight wringing her out like a cloth. That he was never kissed until now is proof enough, to say nothing of that lost and lonely expression, as well as his inability to process tenderness. For all his cruel ways, who in this life has ever shown him kindness?

Malice was exiled at a young age, left with no one for thousands of years. Each of Wonder’s crewmates has suffered in their respective ways, including Andrew and Merry. Yet each of them at least had community, supporters there to catch them.

Not Malice. Despite his cult, amassing followers isn’t the same as being part of a fellowship. No kin. No crew. No Guides. He’s had no one, abandoned with only harrowing memories to keep him company.

What can she say? What must she conceal?

What does he deserve? What does she owe him?

Nothing. Everything.

“All right,” she whispers.

His body relaxes. But when Malice straightens, his skeptical frown is a fixed point. Moments ago, he craved Wonder with the same intensity infusing her veins. But now the demon wavers, unsure whether to trust her, a reflex he’s more accustomed to.

The knowledge pierces her soul. She wishes it was about to get better, but she’s not a fool.

Malice backs up, then turns and stalks to her quiver, the firm shape of his buttocks on display.

Extracting a pair of damp pants from her quiver, he steps into them.

Although he’d claimed earlier to have quested outside without clothes, Wonder doesn’t have the energy to reproach him for this lie. Presumably, he’d been teasing her.

Malice leaves the waistband loose, the pants hanging low and exposing the arrowlike V of his hips. He slides to the ground. Reclining against the respective shelves, he steeples his legs and pats the ground, though it’s hardly a benign gesture.

From the opposite end, Wonder matches his pose, lowering herself to the floor, her foot soles scratching the fibers. Although her endearment has leached away the passion, her lips still feel the rush of his mouth, the flex of his tongue, and the heat that shouldn’t exist between them.

But if any of those effects linger for Malice, the god doesn’t show it. He waits, and he waits, and he waits. Then his patience thins, and he stops waiting.

“Tell me,” he murmurs.