Page 79 of Tempt

And all that befell him afterward.

It’s now or never.

Malice shifts, a reminder that they’re still intimately joined. He withdraws but remains above Wonder, entwined with her as he lightly drags a thumbnail over her cheekbone.

She swallows, making that digit lurch. “What happened to you?”

Inconceivable images flash before him, his inhalations growing shallow until she grasps his waist hard, stifling the onslaught. Despite the tension in his joints, his body settles against hers.

“The cell was dark,” he says. “As damp as shit. And the sounds were a clusterfuck. I heard people shrieking, so many people shrieking.” Air skates through his teeth. “And then I was shrieking, too, because they were tying me down, harnessing me in, buckling me in. And I couldn’t get out of it. I wept…I-I fought back, scratching them and wishing I had claws to destroy them.”

“Them, who?”

“The doctors.” He twitches in thought. “No, not them...the guards. Their faces blurred together, and they bound me to a bed. For days, people prodded me until I stopped kicking. They asked questions, so many questions, and some of them tried to be nice, tried to listen, but they didn’t understand, and that made me furious. I kept telling them you were real, you were so real, if they would just look at your letters. But of course, they couldn’t, because I’d hidden the envelopes in a book.”

And that book had been thrown by the townsfolk into the flaming pile, right before the asylum wagon had come to collect him.

His voice cracks. “For an instant, I’d forgotten that.”

A sob tumbles out of Wonder. “Malice.”

“Let me finish. I need to finish.” His eyes glaze over. “Not all of the doctors were detached, and not all of the guards were brutal. Some cared, some brought me blankets and spoke kindly. But still, there were a handful who glowered at what they couldn’t understand or control. The longer I was there, the more I feared. The more I feared, the more I raged. The more I raged, the more I hurt them back. The more I did, the more often they called me a devil possessed. The more they said it, the more I believed them.

“They pumped shit—I don’t know what—down my throat. For weeks, for months. And all I kept thinking was, what happened to the library? What happened to my dogs and my horse? What happened to you? Where were you? Where did you go? I bellowed for them to take off the bindings. I wanted to go home; that’s what I kept saying. ‘There’s a library goddess, and I’m a library god, and I want to go home.’”

“I-I’m sorry,” Wonder weeps, the words scrawny and unstable to her ears. “I’m so sorry.”

“What the hell for?”

“I wrote those letters. I terrified you. I contaminated your mind.”

“Fucking listen to me! Your letters didn’t send me away!” He snatches her face. “Mine did.”

Wonder tenses in his arms. His…what?

Malice nods. “Think, my wandering Wildflower. I was a master researcher even back then. I wasn’t afraid or disgusted by you…all right, maybe at first. But after? No. And why? Because I figured out who you were. Even then, I liked figuring out things.”

“That’s impossible. There’s no text remotely close to uncovering the true mythology.”

“I’m reincarnated,” he states blandly. “Love had a quick stint as a human, Andrew’s fallen down the rabbit hole of immortality, Anger rebooted his power, Merry survived a failed love-goddess birth, and Sorrow’s willingly humping Envy. Talk to me about impossible.

“Knowledge was my crack from the beginning. I got the gist, read between your lines, and had an obsession with the stars. I cobbled out enough to know you were harmless, somehow part of the sky yet real on earth. So it wasn’t your letters that did me in, Wildflower. It was the letter I wrote back to you.”

He’d written to her?

All this time, she’d thought him repulsed and petrified by her antics. And while he may have been at the onset, his feelings had changed. In the end, he had wanted to know her, to contact her in return.

Malice holds her gaze.“Dear Wandering Star, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. That is, it wasn’t a pleasure at first, but I get now that you’re real, and I’m not spooked anymore. Though I gotta say, it’s a damn shame that I can’t see you, the way you can see me. I’m figuring I can’t hear you, either, since I’ve been hollering but getting nothing back. Doesn’t seem fair. But stories always begin when things aren’t fair, don’t they?

“So what’s it like to be an invisible divine being? I mean, besides tedious like you said. Can you feel the wind? Can you hold a book in your hands?

“You mentioned loving to read, right? If you’ve been watching me for a while, I guess that means you’ve been tailing me in the library. I’ll tell you my favorite book, if you tell me yours first.

“Oh, and if you fill me in on this other realm you’re from. I’d sure like to know more. I like knowing things.

“I’ll take one guess that you’re immortal. I wouldn’t mind trying that out, living forever. Maybe the stars will align, and it’ll happen one day.

“Or maybe you can help me out with that.

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