Page 35 of Tempt

9

There’s more.

There’s more because she uncovers more.

Sometimes a crack in research becomes a crater. Sometimes the secret has more to say, more clauses to impart. Any respectable Archive diva wouldn’t merely take a legend at face value without making sure this is the extent of it. There might be branches, a family tree of mysteries.

She tries different techniques: twisting the overlapping paper like a knob opening a door, turning it clockwise above the manuscript, then counterclockwise. When that fails to clear a path of new information, she presses down harder and steers the leaflet across the surface, highlighting and obscuring certain parts. She treats the page like a map, sweeping the sepia sheet across its typography, bearing northward and then southward.

Still nothing.

But thereissomething.

A tremulous sensation passes through her, similar to past visits when she’d uncovered other forbidden scripts. This is her, in her element at last. This is her, remembering what it’s like to ally with these books, privy to their secrets. How she loves this feeling!

There is more, there is more, there is more.

She will figure this out. Perhaps it’s not on this page, but on another one. So begins an investigation of the manuscript as she flips from chapter to chapter, repeating the process and layering paper over paper, gliding the sepia sheet across ravines of calligraphy, scaling elevations of ink. This, with the aid of a yellowed and weathered letter belonging to her rival.

But enough about him. This is about two pieces of paper reacting to one another.

Wonder almost reaches the end of the book when thereismore.

Trying one last method, she lifts the sepia paper and then releases it, letting it flutter atop the manuscript like a quill’s plume. That’s what she had done upon her first discovery hours earlier.

Has it truly been hours?

Yes, it has. This tome is large and heavy, a breeding ground of text. Although she’s immortal, the book’s density would nevertheless fracture her toe if she dropped it. Therefore, it has taken a while to pore through its girth.

Wonder watches as the stolen paper drapes itself over the anthology, as delicately as a feather. The moment that happens, text surfaces like seaweed from the bottom of an ocean. Except the sentences have the shine of tinsel, drafted in the same nimble penmanship as the first part of this legend. It’s the handwriting of the stars, emancipated after who knows how long.

Her kind has many assumptions, including that gods and goddesses are incapable of feeling love. But oh, what a falsehood. For deities indeed possess hearts, and those hearts beat, and writhe, and shrivel, and grow.

In fact, that’s how immortal kinships and friendships begin. This begets brotherhoods and sisterhoods, if not families.

Therefore, the legend says that while a deity might release their own heart, they might also recover that heart. Wonder mouths the words, tossing them about in her mind. To recover one’s own heart can mean a thousand things.

She pushes away from the table, her chair scraping the floor. Perhaps this legend is only able to reveal itself when human paper makes contact with immortal paper? And is it a coincidence that a letter belonging to her antagonist is the key to this secret?

She tests that theory, tearing a blank paper from the notebook she’d procured in the Archive’s storage facilities. The random page yields the same message, which causes simultaneous reactions, her breath whooshing while her shoulders slump. So it is coincidence, yet not. Although she could have used any paper, kismet has seen fit to deliver this information via a particular sheet, one so near and dear to Malice.

If a deity releases her heart…

If a deity recovers his heart…

This has no bearing on her mission. Does it? Or what’s the correlation?

Though somehow it’s important, if not to the battle ahead, then to those involved in that battle. And in some roundabout way, it’s relevant.

The first part, certainly to her. To release her heart, must she endure a specific test? Resist a specific temptation? Reject a specific moment?

Must she utter certain words? Perform certain acts?

In any event, she’ll be ready. She has endured a lifetime of heartbreak and torture. Yet here she is, still a library diva, still an archeress, and still damned intelligent.

She can do this. She must do this.

The second part may very well pertain to Malice. To recover that black, pounding organ in his chest, what task must he face?

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