Page 11 of Tempt

Poised on a skateboard, his lady love brightens the hall with an aurora of pink hair and a frothy sweetheart dress, layers of tulle flaring like a carnation above high-top sneakers. “Kindred!” Merry pipes while hopping off the board, about to make a beeline toward Wonder, which will put her within snatching distance of Malice’s claws.

Anger blocks Merry, preventing his girlfriend from achieving more than a step. The protective motion offends her, so that she’s about to shove past her lover. But Anger jolts again, shielding her from Malice’s growls.

“You’re a tad late, dearests,” Wonder wheezes at the gawking couples.

No one replies or budges. No one except the demon nursing his crimson ear.

Wonder has two options: joke or weep.

She hates both choices. She hates all of this. She hates that he’s locked in that vault. She hates the ash of his eyes, the inferno of his voice, the structure of his face—the familiarity and foreignness of it. She hates that he’s deceived her. She hates what his stare does to her heart, her skull, her womb. She hates that he has escaped, that he’s imprisoned. She hates that he suffers from nightmares. She hates everything, when she’s never hated anything before. She hates that he attacked her, forcing her to injure him, when she doesn’t want to injure him—and she hates that, too, because he deserves nothing short of contempt.

She doesn’t want to rush him. She won’t rush him. She won’t rush him.

“Motherfuck!” Malice thrashes to a sitting position. “You scholastic bitch!”

She rushes him.

With a battle cry, Wonder barrels toward the demon. Malice launches to his feet, an anticipatory grin leaping across his countenance, his bloody ear forgotten.

Two pairs of hands snatch Wonder’s arms, and she’s hauled backward, her heels skidding across the carpet. Merry and Love clamp on to her, the moment slapping Wonder with remorse. She goes limp, her eyes widening at the hideous, heartrending sight of Andrew and Anger restraining Malice, gripping his shoulders while he slings profanities her way.

“Who are you?” he sneers. “Who the fuck are you to me? Where’s my bow? Where is it? Don’t fucking touch my things ever again! They’re mine!”

Merry’s hold loosens, and it’s all Wonder can do not to dart forward, to pry her peers’ hands from Malice, to make them stop.

Stop hurting him! Stop it!

He’s unwell. His mind is unwell. He doesn’t know any better!

Doesn’t he?

Still harnessed, Wonder manages a step. But then, Merry’s there, swiveling in Wonder’s path and clasping her cheeks, filling her vision with sympathetic eyes.

“Don’t look,” Merry whispers. “Don’t look at him. Just look at me.”

Wonder focuses on her friend, who instructs her to breathe, just breathe. Their foreheads press, with Love hugging them both, the females knitting themselves together while Andrew and Anger haul Malice around the corner, his threats tearing down the corridor, marking a path back to the vault.

***

“Wonder, get down here,” Anger grumbles at the oak branch from which she hangs upside down, her limbs hooked over the bark.

“Leave her alone,” Merry peeps, smacking her soul mate’s knee. “This is no time to snarl at our kindred, so lost in her time of woe.”

The archer mutters to himself while holding Merry close, his limbs clamped around her waist on the grass. She caresses his arm as he makes a crescent around her middle, tucking her into him, her back nestled into the cliff of his torso.

It’s an endearing vision, one the lovers have earned. Shortly after Love and Andrew became a couple, Anger had been banished. Having been ordered by the Fate Court to prevent such an indiscretion between the goddess and a mortal, Anger had chosen to protect Love and Andrew instead. And so he’d been punished—ostracized from his people and shunned from the only life he’d ever known.

Four years passed in which he’d roamed the mortal realm alone, until he’d arrived in the Celestial City, the hub of fellow outcasts who’d been expelled from the Peaks either for disobedience or inadequacy. And here, Anger met and gave his heart to Merry, a misfit goddess who inspired him to redefine fate and free will.

That’s where Malice comes in.

He’d been exiled here as well, for his own indiscretions in the Peaks. Wanting retribution against his superiors, Malice had tried to manipulate Anger for help. When that hadn’t worked, Malice had attempted to kill Merry and Love, in order to get Anger to comply.

Malice had failed, especially when Wonder showed up and helped thwart him. At which point, their group had imprisoned that loose cannon for the sake of everyone’s safety.

Wonder gazes at her friends. The sight of Anger and Merry together warms her soul. Another becoming vision is Andrew reclining on the hill, his weight braced on flattened palms while Love straddles him.

What’s not a precious vision is the third pairing. Envy and Sorrow have stationed themselves apart from each other, still smarting from their earlier quarrel. It doesn’t cease to amaze Wonder how those two became lust partners in the first place. They’re polar opposites, with his narcissistic banter and fetish for bespoke suits, and Sorrow’s cynicism and frayed attire.

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