Page 62

Wonder

His words tunnel through the room, stalling Wonder’s pulse. Malice’s erect cock is still lodged inside her, filling her to the brink. Suddenly, he’s one and the same being, the past and the present no longer separated by time and space.

Her limbs knit around his naked hips. Her palms grip his ass, her breasts graze his torso, and their breathing labors.

“But how?” she whispers, afraid to learn the answer.

Scared to hope. Scared to believe.

This might be a triumph for him. Or it might be his downfall.

Malice’s thunderstruck expression lingers on Wonder. As if some innate power exists within him, he says, “Because I heard you.”

The meaning clicks. This happened because he’d finally listened to her narrating aloud the desires of their past. Her verbal recitation somehow triggered this resurrection, the writing and her voice activating the change.

Her, speaking the words. Him, absorbing them.

She reaches out to cup the side of his face. “What do you remember?”

“Everything,” he grits, shoving out the response, getting the task over with.

The atrocity of his tone isn’t directed at her, but at the facts. He remembers everything that happened during Wonder’s attempt to lure him. And all that befell him afterward.

It’s now or never.

She swallows. “What happened to you?”

Inconceivable images flicker before his eyes. His inhalations grow shallow until she seizes his waist hard, her grip stifling the onslaught. Despite the tension in his muscles, his weight relaxes into her touch.

“The cell was dark,” he mutters, gaze remote.

“As damp as shit. And the sounds were a clusterfuck. I heard people shrieking.” Unsteady air skates through his bared teeth.

“And then I was shrieking too, because they were tying me down. And I couldn’t get out of it.

I-I fought back, scratching them and wishing I had claws to maim them with. ”

“Them, who?”

“The doctors.” He blinks in thought. “No, not just them… the guards too. They bound me to a bed, and for days, weeks, months on end they chained me, prodded me, sliced into me until I stopped thrashing. They asked questions—so many fucking questions—though one or two tried to be humane about it. They tried to listen, but they didn’t understand, and that made me furious.

I kept telling them you were real, if only they would just look at your letters.

But of course, they couldn’t because I hid the envelopes in a book. ”

And that book had been thrown by the townsfolk into the flaming pile, shortly before the asylum wagon came to collect him.

A sob tumbles out of Wonder. “Malice.”

“Let me finish. I need to finish.” Those haunted pupils glaze over.

“Not all of the doctors were aloof, and not all of the guards were brutal.

Some cared, brought me blankets. But most glowered.

The longer I was there, the more I feared.

The more I feared, the more I raged. The more I raged, the more I hurt them back.

The more I did, the more often they called me a possessed devil.

The more they said it, the more I believed them.

“They pumped unknown medical shit down my throat. They gagged me until my gums bled and my throat burned from screaming.” His brittle voice lowers into a traumatized hiss.

“So many chains. So much blood. Time ceased to exist. I became their experiment, a creature to exorcise, which only created hallucinations and sleep deprivation. Whenever they cut or whipped my skin, and whenever it didn’t send me into a stupor of pain, I thought, what happened to the library?

Who’s taking care of my dogs and horse? Who’s watering the pomegranate tree?

” His eyes crawl back to Wonder. “What happened to the angel who wrote me letters? Where was she? Where did she go? I bellowed for them to take off the fucking bindings. I wanted to go home; that’s what I kept hollering.

‘There’s a library goddess, and I’m a library god, and I want to go home. ’”

Wonder’s heart bleeds out. “I-I’m sorry,” she weeps, clutching his face. “I’m so sorry.”

Malice’s eyebrows slam together. “What the hell for?”

“I wrote those letters. I terrified you. I contaminated your mind.”

“Fucking listen to me! Your letters didn’t send me away!” He snatches her face in kind. “Mine did.”

Wonder tenses. His… what?

He nods. “Think, Wildflower. I was a master researcher even back then. I wasn’t afraid or disgusted by you. Maybe at first, but after? Hell no. And why? Because I figured out who you were.”

“That’s impossible,” she insists. “There’s no text remotely close to uncovering the true mythology.”

“I’m reincarnated. Love had a quick stint as a human, Andrew’s fallen down the rabbit hole of immortality, Anger rebooted his power, Merry survived a failed love-goddess birth, and Sorrow’s willingly rutting with Envy.

Talk to me about what’s impossible.” Malice drags his knuckles along her cheekbone.

“Knowledge was my crack from the beginning. I got the gist and read between your lines. I pieced together enough to know you were harmless, somehow supernatural. So it wasn’t your letters that did me in, Wildflower. It was the letter I wrote back to you.”

He wrote to her?

All this time, Wonder had assumed that human was repulsed and petrified by her actions. And while he may have been at the onset, his feelings had changed. In the end, Malice had wanted to know her, to contact her in return.

The demon god holds her gaze. “Dear Wandering Star, it’s a pleasure to meet you.

Not that it was a pleasure at first, but I understand now that you’re real, and I’m no longer on guard.

Though I have to say, it’s a shame I can’t see you, the way you can see me.

I’m betting I can’t hear you either, since I’ve been yelling into empty rooms and getting no response.

That hardly seems fair. But stories always begin when things aren’t fair.

“So tell me. What is it like to be a divine being? Would you recommend it?

“You mentioned loving to read. If you’ve been watching me for a while, that means you’ve been shadowing me in the library. Tell me, have any of the books caught your interest? I need to know. I like knowing things.

“I take it, you’re also immortal. I wouldn’t mind living forever. Maybe the stars will align, and it’ll happen one day. Or maybe you can help me out with that. Whatever the case, I hope living forever makes you happy. And yeah. I’ll be your friend.

Just do me a favor and write back. Please.

Your Wayward Star.”

Wonder presses her fist to her mouth, quelling the astonishment as Malice recalls placing that letter in his mailbox, hoping she would find it.

Instead, troublemaking children got their hands on the note while looting the receptacle on a dare. One of the youths had been an aristocrat’s son. That, and the local spectacle Malice had already been making of himself since Wonder entered his world, motivated the residents into action.

His became the only surviving letter. It had been handed over as proof of insanity, while everything else had burned in that pile.

Wonder focuses on her weapons, her fist abandoning her mouth.

“The legend I found recently. The one about restoring your heart. In the botanical garden, you implied I was hiding something else regarding that legend, and you’re right.

There’s another half about a deity releasing their heart.

” After swiftly recounting the details of this second text, Wonder conveys, “I suspect it’s a path I must take, to expel the guilt of what I’ve done.

You see… even if my letters didn’t send you there, even if I didn’t send you to the asylum, I still kept you there. Because I tried to save you.”

Malice freezes. Shock flashes in his pupils.

Wonder explains. After her indiscretion and subsequent torture, The Court kept her under close surveillance.

However, she did find a window of time to sneak away, intent on freeing Malice.

The nearest asylum was in a city, some twenty miles outside of town.

She had concluded that Malice must have been taken there.

But Wonder’s heroics only made things worse.

After locating his cell, she gawked at him through the bars.

Wonder hadn’t known what they’d done to Malice up until that point, but upon her arrival, she beheld the pallor of his complexion, the bruises and lacerations and scabs on his exposed skin, and the vacancy in his eyes as he stared at the ceiling from his cot.

From ankles to forehead, a dozen buckles and straps tied him down, the sight eradicating Wonder. Malice had been locked up for three years by then.

With an anguished growl, Wonder wrenched open the door and tore apart his bindings as easily as shredding paper. Malice hadn’t flinched despite her invisibility, nor the fact that his restraints had been destroyed presumably out of nowhere.

She longed to brush his hair, caress his face, heal the mortal wounds. Kneeling, she whispered entreaties and endearments, her fingers slipping through him like water. Yet his pupils had flickered, seeming to sense Wonder’s presence, and one hand had lifted as though to touch what he couldn’t see.

An alarm sounded. Desperate, Wonder got back to work freeing him. But within seconds, the wardens appeared. They got there in time to witness the bindings come off at lightning speed and ostensibly by magic. Or by satanism.

Like a fool, Wonder had acted on impulse, not giving herself the advantage of planning ahead. Rashness had made her sloppy.