Page 24 of Tempt

Their arrows have reappeared in their quivers. Malice hasn’t bothered to change his attire, and the saddlebag is a burden while he’s got hickory archery strapped to his spine. If she advises against the bag, he’ll ignore her, which is what she’d do in his place.

The devil’s humor collapses, taking note of something. Stalking up to her, his head bends to study her hand.

A slit of blood carves across her wrist, across her scars. It’s dry, which means it must have happened earlier, when they’d transported here. It had been a bumpy ride, and they can tell from the demarcations that it hadn’t been from her arrows, but from his.

He’d cut the pulp of starbursts.

Wonder swallows. Malice tosses her a sideways glance. “Hmm. Sorry,” he says, sounding nothing of the sort.

She jabs a finger at him. “You got the date wrong. Look at the sky. Look at the sleeping body on the ground. The stars haven’t shifted, and our people are milling about. It’s not Stellar Worship yet.”

“Ah, yeah. I may have botched the calendar. Hey, I’m not fucking perfect, but what’s a single night early? There will be, what? One or two keepers roaming the Archives? We can handle that. Better yet, we can avoid them. It’s a big building.”

“You bastard.”

“That would require having a father, which would require being a human. Do you know something I don’t?”

“Just get moving.”

In two strides, he backs her against a tree, enveloping her with chaos—his width and height, both nerve-wracking menaces. He looms, bracketing a pair of toned arms against the bark on either side of her head, his muscles straining to break free from the sleeves.

He’s not robust like Envy or broad like Andrew. Rather, he’s an approximation of Anger, tall and tapered yet capable of tearing everything in his path to shreds. Even so, Malice is in a category all his own; he has the most sculpted throat she’s ever beheld and a torso built for rock climbing.

Not one word. He says not one word to her.

He just levels her with ashen eyes, a gaze on the verge of retaliation. Wonder lifts her chin, stunned to realize how close this puts her lips to his. His breath licks her mouth, his orbs swallowing her whole, his bulk blockading the forest.

She holds his gaze, refusing to back down. He would do well to remember the numerous times that she has wiped the floor with his backside, such as the night last year when he’d targeted Love and Merry, at which point Wonder had tackled him to the ground.

Not to mention recent events, when he escaped and stalked her through the library stacks. She has bested him before, and she can do it again.

For a ghastly length of time, he engages without blinking.

Fates. How does he do that?

At last, he steps away, letting fresh air swoop in. He puts his back to her, then changes his mind, raising a clawed finger. “Oh, by the way.” Returning to where she peels herself from the trunk, he gets in her face, his mouth curling. “I hate you, too.”

He slithers into the woods, letting the darkness consume him.

His ferocity is intolerable, but it’s also explicable. For one, he’s the God of Malice. For another, certainly he abhors her. Captivity will do that to a person.

But why does it sound like Malice wants to punish Wonder for something else entirely?

6

It sounds as though his grievances extend beyond the library vault.

Like he blames her for more than that. Like he has a history’s worth of blame to offer.

Like he knows what she’s done to him in the past.

And in order for him to know that much, he would have to bethatboy.

Adolescent dragonflies swim between the trees. Bracken trembles, and petals splay for the miniature creatures to slide down.

Wonder catches up to Malice. They walk an arm’s length apart, which isn’t enough.

It’s about time that she stops fooling herself. As a curator of legends and celestial loopholes, she’s wiser than this. She knows the stars’ enigmatic power and their infinite technicalities. She has the track record to prove it.

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