Page 94 of Tempt

Wonder coughs. She gapes at a torn ceiling, her arms and limbs akimbo, her body distorted upon a knoll of paper and vellum. Tilting her head produces a throbbing skull and shrieking joints. When she sucks in air, stardust slips down her throat, melting away the dryness.

Wonder contemplates the rafters. And she remembers.

The lava rock arrow. The astral sphere. The Hollow Chamber.

It had caved in. They had fallen.

“Malice,” she croaks in panic.

A set of knuckles strokes her temple, then the blade of a fingernail gently outlines her cheekbone. Twisting her head, she blinks as a face shivers into view.

Those intelligent cinder eyes and deceptive golden waves. That wiry, foul mouth.

Malice stares down at her, his eyes scrambled with worry. “Shh. I’m here, Wildflower.”

Wonder leaps to a sitting position, hurling her arms around him. His bare arms envelop her, holding on while she shakes. Pulling back, she inspects the gashes and bruises splotched across his body, but he’s in one piece.

Wiggling her fingers and toes verifies she’s also intact, albeit bloody. Not far off, quartz and hickory weapons lay scattered, cracked in parts but repairable.

That’s when it hits her, dread and grief slamming into her chest. “No,” she cries out, staggering to her feet.

What she sees wipes thought and speech from her soul. Her mouth parts, and her eyes mist at the sight.

Malice rises as well. Together, they gawk at the haphazard levels and sloped walkways, at the green glaze of stardust and the debris of parchment. It’s a wasteland of legends. Stashed between the outdated and prohibited, they had hidden themselves, waiting to be found.

Now there is only ruin, detritus of paper and ink. Bits of the central sphere rest in various areas, each flickering with wane lights like hearts fighting to beat. Amidst the destruction, pieces of the globe struggle to survive.

Wonder’s hand shoots to her mouth, her shoulders lurching on a single sob. The Hollow Chamber is a sunken ship, a fallen city of knowledge.

It’s the end.

But where is Harmony?

Where are the keepers? Where are Hope and Joy?

Wonder longs to holler, to call out for her mentor, if not by voice then via the stars. But she has no vocal cords, and she has no power. Those privileges have vanished beneath the carnage, because it’s too much, so much.

Her knees buckle. She lands on the ground, pages fluttering around her. She scavenges, plucking leaflets and scraps like flowers, trying to reassemble them, to rebind them into hardbacks. Her movements increase, hectic and rushed, picking through the mess. She has to fix this, she needs to fix this, shewillfix this.

Malice speaks to her, but she shakes her head. She can put everything back together. She can do this.

Squatting, he takes her hands, balling them with his own. “Look at me.”

He knows this crazed feeling, and she has wielded arrows against this crazed feeling. Wonder slumps, the salvaged items tumbling from her hands. She hunches over and begins to rock back and forth, strapping her arms around her knees.

No, it cannot be. Not this place.

If she weeps, it will be true.

Malice hunkers behind her, wrapping her into himself. His forehead presses to her nape, his muscles convulsing. And together, they keep rocking.

In her peripheral vision, a rosemary-tinted dot hops across the ruins. Wonder glances up, sweeping the hair from her face. She traces the illumination, the path of which leads to a surviving book spread atop a pile, its contents displayed.

It’s the same book that they’d discovered hours ago, the one that had initiated the others to ignite, to trigger the trap. It’s one of the books that had gotten displaced when she and Malice made love against the shelves.

It pulses, invoking a familiar spark of sensations inside her. “Malice.”

She doesn’t have to say more. He follows her gaze.

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