Page 19 of Tempt

“And by the way, hand over my bow.”

“An even exchange,” Love says. “Your bow for Wonder.”

“And your intestines,” Sorrow adds.

“I vote for the testes,” Envy says while aiming. “But nobody ever listens to me.”

“Let her go, evildoer,” Merry shouts.

“I will. Just not here,” Malice assures. “Now hand me my fucking bow!”

Of course. Malice has delayed for this reason; it had nothing to do with bidding the library farewell. He wants his archery back, to a kamikaze degree.

“Drop it!” Anger growls.

“Dearest,” Wonder gasps. “It’s all right. Give it to him.”

Anger’s on the verge of charging like a rhino. Therefore, she holds each of her classmate’s gazes, pleading.Trust me. I have a plan.

Indecision precedes a snarl of rage. To everyone’s shock, Anger vanishes and then reappears moments later, bulldozing into the rotunda with a hickory longbow and a quiver holding arrows capped in turkey fletching.

Once the quartz tip leaves Wonder’s scalp, Anger tosses Malice the weapons, which he manages to catch with his free hand.

The thing is, they had believed Wonder.

But then, her friends register the lie. Plan? She has no plan yet.

“I hate you,” she whispers to Malice.

To which, he chuckles. “If you’ll excuse us, mates. My perky, perennial partner and I have homework to do.”

“No!” Love and Merry squawk while leaping forward, forcing Andrew and Anger to disarm and ensnare them.

Wonder penetrates them with a warning look, especially Anger and Love, who have the power to cross worlds without Asterra Flora.Don’t you dare follow us.

The request sinks in, pulling her friends’ expressions into grimaces.

To shift realms, they need a portal, a shaft of celestial light. Malice jolts Wonder into a beam of starlight crashing through the windows. They have to travel individually, so their arms lift at the same time, extending toward the ray. That’s when the glittering fluid of seed and blossom begins to dance across their palms.

Her friends stand by, helpless as she vanishes into another world.

5

There’s a flash of light, a spiraling vortex so prismatic that she clenches her eyes shut from the assault. This is new, the sensation of falling and soaring at the same time, as if she’s caught between the above world and the underworld, both ends of the cylinder tugging on her. She’s a shooting star, moving and not moving at all, plunging and rising.

The whirlwind sucks out the noise. A beautiful silence trails in its wake, so that her inhalations and exhalations flutter like wings. It’s akin to meditation, when all consciousness drifts away.

And then she hits the ground.

A flat surface wallops her, from knees to breastbone to nose. She crashes flat onto her face, smacking into soil hard enough for her molars to clatter like castanets.

Needless to say, she has never arrived like this. She’s sprawled, her limbs akimbo, her body plastered to the earth. The trip must have aggravated the harness, distributing the archery around her. She deduces as much when her heels trace the quiver, knocking about a few stray arrows.

Her nostrils burrow into the undergrowth, which scrapes her chin and forearms. Dirt and grass clog her mouth, the textures gauzy rather than coarse, with the faint trace of moonlit incense. It’s a fragrance purer and riper than from where she’s just come. It’s the aroma of starlight: of sharp silver and fresh white.

Wonder flops onto her back, splayed and coughing at the sky pitted with celestial bodies that tinkle. It’s a million whistles, a million chimes, a million cymbals shrunken to pinpricks of sound that skip across the canopy. The stars wink, hovering nearer than they ever will over the mortal realm.

Because this isn’t the mortal realm.

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