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Wonder

When it’s over, Wonder has no breath left. Perhaps she doesn’t have a heart left either. She may have just sacrificed it. That’s the price of telling the truth, its overgrowth germinating like a jungle, the weeds of history choking every promising bud and petal.

Wonder’s mind drains. Whereas her body only has room inside for two emotions: regret and loss. One of them seeps into her pores, and the other digs a ravine into her stomach.

Once, she had uncovered her first legend, a scroll about a human and a deity falling in love. It hadn’t worked in her favor.

Initially, she didn’t tell any of her crewmates about that scroll. Not until Love met Andrew. Although the legend never helped Wonder, she’d wanted to believe it could aid her friend.

And it had. It gave Love and Andrew a future.

After that first discovery, Wonder acquired a taste for unearthing such marvels. This passion eventually led to another legend, which united Anger and Merry.

Across from her, Malice sits in ominous contemplation. His silence is the loudest noise she’s ever heard, more abrasive than his temper, his threats, and his midnight screams.

If he’d heard years earlier about Wonder’s torture, and the mortal man she risked everything for, Malice might have connected the dots to his own haunting visions. Fortunately, as he once said, the tale of her indiscretion never reached him.

Wonder’s gaze makes the steep journey from his bare feet to his tense jaw. At last, she catches his eyes, ashes whirling in the irises like a vortex. He stares at the ground, processing the information he’s spent eons pursuing, his forearms draped loosely atop his knees.

Please say something.

Please don’t speak.

Resting the back of his skull against the shelves, he lifts a finger and rubs it across his chin. “Sounds like you really did a number on that mate. He must have been one hell of a temptation.”

Wonder straps her arms around her upturned limbs. “I loved him,” she whispers from the pit of her soul.

That finger halts. “What about now?”

“The heart doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t just stop. Not with him.”

“You sure it was love? One, we didn’t grow up in a trite world where deities provided monogamous examples for us to learn from.

Two, we were raised to believe deities can’t even feel love.

Three, you never shared a tangible moment with him.

The admiration was one-sided, so how do you know what you felt back then? ”

“I just know,” she defends, the words strung tight.

“Then it must have been excruciating, seeing your library-god-slash-sweetie-pie hauled off.”

“I’d have taken his place.”

Malice rakes his tongue across his teeth, testing the weight of a hundred plausible replies. At which point, he nods. “So then what happened to me?”

You died.

But he knows that now. That’s not what he’s asking.

He wants insight into the asylum and what befell him there. Dismissing the details of his untimely death, Malice seeks access to the years of his detainment.

What happened to him in that place?

Despite the nightmares, they only provide glimpses. Not the whole grisly tale.

Nevertheless, Wonder is incapable of closing the gaps. She feels, rather than hears, herself tell him this.

A dull ache cramps her chest. Technically, her response is the truth. Because she was caught by The Fate Court, and because she’d been heavily monitored until her deployment to the mortal world, she hadn’t been there to see what they did to Malice behind those walls. At least, not the extent of it.

But she does know how it ended.

“You were reincarnated,” she says. “You became…”

Malice jabs a thumb at his chest. “I became this.”

He was reborn as a deity, yet his past traumas accompanied him, cursing Malice in a new way.

Whatever monstrosities befell him in purgatory, they plague this god in the afterlife, slithering into his nightmares like cobras.

So instead of retaining his benevolent nature, he’s become a devil, someone equipped to handle upheaval. Or so, he thought.

Does he blame Wonder for his misfortune? Does he mourn the life she poached from him?

“Hmm,” Malice hums. “Can’t say any of this jogs my memory, except for the bits and pieces that crawl through my sleep.

Now it’s clear why I became a fan of The Archives and parked my ass in The Celestial City’s library.

They both felt safe, the only places that made sense, where I felt most like myself.

“When I found my new home, away from home, away from home, I conjured the rocking chair and antique telescope, then planted the pomegranate tree. I thought making replicas from the flashbacks would help me root out the chaos in my head. As for the envelopes, those were easier to recreate, but not so easy to fill in the blank pages. It took a while to replay the nightmares and recall each sentence you wrote. But when an outcast has an eternity to transcribe—” he flings up his arms, “—what is time?”

Wonder curls a lock of hair behind her ear. She peeks at Malice’s waves scattered around his face, unkempt and just as slow to dry as her tresses. “If I’d known what would happen, I would have never written to you.”

“I guess you found the bibliophile in me irresistible. Not that I’m in your league.”

“So you’ve chosen sarcasm.”

“You want me to have an episode instead? Just say the word, and you’ll get a sample of what’s going on under my skin.

If I were you, I’d take a compliment over the alternative.

Compliments are complimentary. And I wasn’t being sarcastic.

As enticing as I find your hips, it’d be lazy of me to salivate over your beauty instead of your intellect, which is sexier.

I’m pretty sure that’s the key to your heart. ”

“Malice—”

“Am I right? I like being right.”

Of course, he’s right. “Malice—”

“That’s me,” he confirms, irony corroding his tone. “Glad to know you’re aware of it.”

Wonder flinches. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“The townsfolk sent me to that shithole, and the doctors tortured me there. None of that was your fault. You didn’t kill me.”

He’s wrong. There’s more Wonder hasn’t shared, an addendum to the tragedy, a detail she cannot bear to admit. Her selfishness won’t let her.

It’s fitting that Wonder has bared herself here, protected within these walls. It’s her confessional, her saving grace.

It’s her life. And it’s his.

She detests this god for using her friends as pawns and then contriving to eradicate them. But Malice wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been reborn, and he wouldn’t have been reborn if she hadn’t meddled in his universe, entitling herself to his fate, branding it with immortal influence.

Perhaps being tainted with the residue of a deity had trapped him in between worlds, and that’s why he transformed after death. Perhaps it had linked him to their celestial world, to an unforeseen destiny instead of simply letting him rest in peace.

An apology splinters from her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Malice just stares at Wonder, his expression inscrutable. When he doesn’t respond, she drags herself to her feet. In their current moods, they need to spend time apart, to absorb this backstory in their own separate ways.

Pausing outside the aisle, Wonder glances over her shoulder. “You asked me once. I didn’t answer then, but I will now.” She braces herself, the declaration confident on her tongue. “Yes.”

“Such a bold and permanent word,” he remarks while glowering at the floor. “Yes, what? I’m all ears, Wildflower.”

“Yes, you were worth the scars.”

The angry pleats across his forehead vanish, as do the faint commas around his mouth. Like a snipped cord, his taut profile loosens. Indeed, it’s a rare and vulnerable sight.

And yes, she sees it. And yes, he lets her.

A thousand times, yes. A million times, yes.

Though, Wonder doubts this male has ever heard that word used in conjunction with him.

She pads away, strolling past countless books containing a wealth of knowledge. The farther she goes, the more her journey through forbidden territory fortifies her. She’s a tree shedding its leaves, making room for new foliage that will sprout and reach for the moon.

Wonder covers every inch of this place, traipsing deeper into the restricted channels. By the time oxygen returns to her in reassuring lungfuls, her nightgown is dry, and only the tips of her locks remain damp. How peculiar that she feels most at home amid revolutionary and scandalous texts.

She’s not the only one.

Wonder traces each volume, her eyes stinging. Here’s where she found the solution to Love and Andrew’s happiness, and the key to Anger and Merry’s future. The reminders flood her with gratitude, jealousy, and sadness.

Most of the books are rectangular, others circular.

Who first thought to shape them this way?

Who first decided to bind them in leather and imprint titles along the spines?

If she were a book, which kind would she be?

What secrets or revelations would she contain?

Which words would she tuck inside herself?

And how long has she been wandering?

Apparently, quite a while. Footfalls charge in her direction, cutting a furious path through the stacks.

She whips around. Turning the corner, Malice’s dark shape stalks toward Wonder. His eyes sizzle like explosives as he whips a misplaced reading chair out of his way with a backward slash of one arm, launching the furniture to the floor.

Wonder barely has time to foster another thought before he’s on her, snatching her waist and slamming her against him.

“Fuck it,” he growls.

And then his lips crash against hers.