Her hands balance a tray laden with refreshment: a fruit bowl, plus a choice of lemonade (from Merry) or tea (from Love). The third option of arsenic (from Anger), Wonder had covertly discarded before heading to the library vault.
Yes, the two rage gods share a recent and bitter history. Nonetheless, the clash between Malice and Anger is getting old, and it’s very much getting on everyone’s nerves. With their temperaments, neither is to be trifled with, but Fates! Must they act infantile?
Dishes clink as Wonder sets the tray on the fire pit’s rim beside the rocking chair, within Malice’s reach. He regards the provisions with an impish sneer. “You might want to step back, unless you’d like your frock stained.”
“Spit your meal at me again, and I’ll wedge the rest down your gullet until you asphyxiate,” she warns.
To which he tsks, slapping the book shut with a single hand. “Your upbringing should have taught you the merits of being on the offensive. Otherwise, you’ll never win a strategy game.”
“I don’t play games.”
A smirk crooks into his face. “I do. Matter of fact, I invent them.” He indicates the provisions. “Feel like dining with me?”
“I’m more partial to cherries and peaches.”
“I wouldn’t mind tasting what you like.”
“Starve, for all I care,” she says, flexing her scarred hands.
“For all you do care,” he replies, steepling his digits beneath his chin.
His rasp takes on a curious, husky note. With his head casually slumped to the side, Malice possesses a conniving beauty that belongs in a crime scene.
In the beginning, his sinister twist of the mouth had racked her from head to toe. Now the impact has condensed to a few choice spots, unmentionable and unforgivable spots that tighten and chafe deep inside her, causing a tumult of friction.
All he’s missing are the horns, curling like cornucopias above his head. But in that case, he’d resemble a satyr instead of a devil.
Malice swipes a pomegranate from the fruit bowl. Balancing the flushed orb between slender fingers, his nails trace delicately. “Pomegranates,” he snubs. “This is a bit niche for a nutritional choice. What makes you think I like these?”
Because this antagonist’s “home, away from home, away from home”—as he likes to call it—reeks of the fruit.
“Do you?” Wonder asks.
“I think you’d like to find out,” Malice intones. “I think you’d like to find out many things, a great many things, and very much so. I think you expect me to savor these plump baubles. Why is that?” Without waiting for an answer, he continues, “I think you’re looking for a validation—or proof to the contrary. Against her very nature, I think the Goddess of Wonder is looking for a guarantee, so that she doesn’t have to dwell on hypotheses. So that she doesn’t have to…” He pretends to contemplate, twirling his free hand. “What’s the word?” Then he raises a finger. “So that she doesn’t have to wonder.”
His canines dig into the rind, biting clear through the pomegranate’s shell. With every crunch, she imagines the burgundy kernels bursting in his mouth, juice leaking down his tongue. It would be tart and sweet on the palate.
He swallows. “Tell me: Yes or yes? Am I right? I like being right.”
How marvelous it would feel to wedge that pomegranate down his esophagus.
Wonder feigns a grin. “And how often are you actually right?”
He stops chewing. His mouth falls, flattening to a plank.
Flippantly, he tosses the pomegranate into the bowl as if bored by the conversation, the discarded fruit causing the tray to quiver. Reclining in the chair, he switches tactic, brandishing the book cover at her. His current selection is about the myth of Hades and Persephone. “Pomegranates that resemble your cheeks and taste of deceitful shenanigans. Rather symbolic, so I’d bet you knew what I was reading. How thoughtful. But hmm, how did you guess?”
Andrew needs to stop giving Malice the wrong books. Captive or not, the misfit appeals to Andrew’s bookish side, which Wonder can’t blame since she has this fetish in common with both of them. But something tells her that Malice had specifically requested this title, which can only mean trouble, the likes of which she cannot discern from his selection.
As to his assumption, no. She hadn’t known he was reading about that particular myth, because she hadn’t been paying attention to his book stash while venturing here last night.
“Have you ever tippy-toed through the library’s romance section?” Malice inquires. “This classic tale has merit, but there are some amusingly pretentious mortal retellings of the myth. Christ, it’s always about the self-aware, wiser-than-her-age maiden taming her dumbass-but-muscular abductor. The bad boy versus the good girl.” He widens his eyes. “Who’ll win the battle? Will they fuck before or after the climax?”
Only one word stands out in his diatribe, and it’s the last one that she wants to concentrate on. But when he says that lewd word, flicking it out like a vice, she has a yen to catch it. Therefore, it takes her thighs a second to recover.
Wonder would ask where he’s going with this recitation, but one can never guess in which direction his cranium is pointing. It might be random, or it might be very intentional.
“Have you read this myth?” he asks.
“We’re not doing this again, dearest,” she affirms.
“That means no. I gotta say, that’s irresponsible of a deity, even if the human version of Greek mythology is inaccurate. I would have thought—”
“I’ve read it, Demon.”
“Which interpretation, Wildflower? Any risky modernizations or hybrids? Or are you a traditionalist who sticks to what you know?”
There’s an obsessive, harassing lilt to his commentary, badgering her to indulge him. And it’s not going to work.
Anger and Love get riled up too easily. Envy doesn’t care to face off with someone as good-looking as himself. Sorrow gets depressed by this cavern. And Merry and Andrew chatter too much to accomplish quick visits.
Wonder is the only candidate equipped to play Malice’s warden, which isn’t saying much. A spike of erudite rivalry curls up her throat like a weed, but she refuses to get dragged into another book-a-thon. It’s not entertaining or stimulating in the least. Not at all.
Not. At. All.
They stare at one another. Wonder does her utmost to remain taciturn, cementing her features into a mask. For all intents and purposes, he does the same with her, which is better than him throwing another colossal fit when things don’t go his way.
At least he’s blissfully unaware of last night, ignorant of his spastic grunts and her visit. That’s one less thing to fret about.
So, there. He doesn’t know everything. Let him spend eternity trying.
On that score, she’s got her own buttons to push. “Your envelopes,” Wonder demands. “The letters inside. What’s written on them?”
His leer vanishes, a snarl building in his mouth, which is probably the only thing left that fits inside it. Out of nowhere, he raises the envelope that she’d placed in his hand last night, the paper poised between his claws. “You mean, letters like this one?”