Page 1 of Tempt

Prologue

Now she knows what loss feels like.

Her bare feet sink into the earth, the high grass tickles her ankles, and petals brush her calves. And when a breeze rustles her gown—dyed the green of a calla lily stem—the little pirouette of air billows the material, the hem flapping in a farewell gesture.

Something akin toGood-bye.

Of all the forbidden words that she’s ever written, she has never penned that one. She’s never had a reason to do so. Not until today.

Lupines sprout across the vista, a landscape not of her childhood, nor of adulthood. It’s a realm caught somewhere in between, a pasture of budding fruit rather than flowers, of moon beams rather than sun beams. Hence, it’s not her place.

No, this is his place. Or this used to be his place, back when she hardly knew him.

Back when she hardly knew herself.

He’d once growled an inquiry at her, demanding a truth that she hadn’t been able to grasp.

Who are you?

It has taken a long time, but she knows the answer.

Yet it’s too late. He’s too far from her, too far away.

What she wouldn’t give to have that demon back, to tell him she wants the lightness and darkness. She yearns for that angel’s face and devil’s heart. She wishes to tell him the past doesn’t matter as much as the present.

She wants to call him by his name and mean it.

But she can’t. She cannot even scribe these things on paper for him, because he’ll never read those words, never any words from her. Not ever again.

Because he’s gone.

He’s gone because of her.

And this time, he’s not coming back.

1

The demon is wailing again. The sound blazes through the library floor, reaching out to her from the underworld of his lair. It’s a brushfire raging fast across the room and has the texture of a blister, which shouldn’t be possible, heat being an intangible thing to deities.

But nothing concerning him ever makes sense.

Wonder stiffens, her finger arrested on a book title, the pad of her digit pressed hard against the embossed letters. He always manages to stir the attentive parts of her. Perhaps that’s why she cannot stay away. She shouldn’t be here at this hour, tucked between the nonfiction shelves, the repository a midnight tomb.

Starlight trickles in from the high windows, illuminating writing desks and reading chairs and strands of ivy in a metallic, secretive sheen. It gives inanimate objects a trembling quality, as if his screams torment them as well.

The cacophony builds to a guttural howl, frayed at the edges. By some force of nature, it stings the scars on her wrists.

Her hands fall to her sides. She has never lied to herself before, and she shouldn’t do so now. She knows why she’s here. Sneaking into the library at this hour has less to do with research and more to do with those shrieks and the wilted feeling in her heart.

Beneath the ferocious calls, there’s grief, and confusion, and delirium.

Beneath all of that, there’s madness.

She hates when he does this. She hateswhyhe does this.

Wonder brushes the pulp of scars running across her skin. Then she draws in a shaky breath, inhaling the wildflower corsage cinched around her wrist—a bundle of eucalyptus, white stephanotis, and a single purple peony.

She strides from the bookshelves containing tomes about languages, the hem of her forest green gown swishing around her bare feet, a delicate sound compared to the riotous one coming from below. The longbow and quiver of quartz arrows rattle across her back as she vacates the four-hundreds section, steps through a partition at the building’s rear, and descends into a pit.

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