When all the immortal testosterone leaches from the atmosphere, Wonder consents to drop from the oak and join the females. Merry drapes herself across the grass, inviting Love to rest her head atop Merry’s lap. Love paws like a needy feline until Merry chuckles, obliging the request by combing through her friend’s hair.
Sorrow flops onto her back, landing in a puddle of shredded skirt layers. Absently, she mimics Envy’s previous performance, twirling one of her ice arrows.
Wonder is the last to recline as they watch the sky awaken. They form a mesh of color, a pinwheel from Merry’s pink layers, to Love’s ebony tresses, to Sorrow’s purple strands, to Wonder’s marigold locks. She muses at the disparity between her peers’ personalities, their clothing, and their vocabularies. Some of them have adapted eagerly to a mortal’s template of fashion and modern speech, while some of them cling to their roots.
“Don’t listen to Envy,” Sorrow grouches. “He’s nothing but a sexually frustrated harlot blowing hot air. Talk about one for the history books.”
There’s bafflement in Merry’s reply. “Oh, but I thought you were—”
“We are.” Sorrow clears her throat and amends, “We were, but you know.”
“He’s Envy,” Love translates.
“Wandering eye, wandering cock. It’s not a grand arrangement. We’ve never even kissed—what?” she asks when all three gape at her. “Kissing isn’t essential to get the job done; that’s what bodies are for. It’s hard and fast, without the residue of sap, but obviously, he’s grown bored. And what did I expect?” She flips her hair as if it’s a trivial matter. “He can do whatever, and whomever, he wants. I don’t care.”
A sharp nod from Love. “You tell him.”
“Brava,” Merry echoes.
“So don’t worry,” Sorrow assures Wonder. “He’s just tossing judgements like he tosses his prick—impulsively and stupidly.”
“I don’t love Malice,” Wonder stresses.
No, she doesn’t. She loves a person of whom he’s merely a celestial forgery.
If she closes her eyes, she’ll see that human boy resting on his back in the middle of a wildflower prairie. He’d had a name. It’s a name stamped onto her heart, a name she hasn’t permitted herself to say aloud in well over a century.
Not since she lost him. Not since she destroyed him.
Love stares at the firmament. “We worry, is all.”
“But we’re with you,” Merry chimes, abandoning Love’s hair and reaching out to clasp Wonder’s hands. “Always.”
Sorrow windmills her translucent arrow. “We’ve got to admit: For a nemesis, our prisoner is one erotic asshole. His criminal beauty rivals any thriving God in the Peaks, and don’t lie—we’ve all been subjected to his sleazy mouth. If it weren’t intended to harass, it’d be an aphrodisiac. The heckler’s pornographic vocabulary would be fodder for every deity who’s had their fill of Envy.”
Woefully, the appraisal is correct. Among the males, Andrew is boyishly pretty, while Anger is a handsome tempest, and Envy is a spicy rogue.
By contrast, Malice is…provocative.
Whenever he opens his dirty mouth, someplace in the universes a riddle is published, dynamite explodes, and hymens break. To consolidate his delinquency, the stars have anointed him with wily features—an impish countenance and blond waves piled atop his head like a farce. The tyrant possesses a deceitful sort of attractiveness, the kind that makes one second-guess every truth in existence.
Wonder drags her palm across the grass, which reminds her that she’s yet to locate her corsage. Perhaps she should hike to Stargazer Hill and search. Hadn’t she lost it while training?
On second thought, she doesn’t recall wearing the corsage during practice.
Mentally, she retraces her steps, going back in time, before the training session, before she’d brought their captive pomegranates for breakfast, before…
Her fingers seize the blades of grass, her starburst scars tensing. She had been wearing the corsage when she’d thrust a stopper into his bad dream. The blossoms had been tethered around her wrist as she’d reached out to touch his hair, unaware that he’d been awake.
The deviant must have divested her of the corsage by some sleight of hand.
The significance floods her. Wildflowers and pomegranates, an immaterial combination in this realm, a notable one in another.
When one grinds a petal and seed rooted from the Peak’s soil, the sequence fuses and yields a liquid that opens barriers.
It’s called Asterra Flora.
Although the Fate Court had buried this information, Wonder is the only one who knows about it. She and one more soul, it seems.
Someplace in the vault, Malice must possess a pomegranate originating from the Peaks. That accounts for the tart scent of fruit down there. And if he’d pinched the spray of blooms gathered from her home, and if he’d combined the two, the result would dismantle blockades.
Hindrances like star-dusted bars within a vault.
That’s how he’d escaped. And if he had successfully fled once, he’d do it again.
And oh, he wants her to know this.
I’d rather prolong the inevitable and then take something that matters to you. Something precious.
An alarming notion squats in Wonder’s gut. If he hasn’t simply used the Asterra Flora to escape for a second time, then he’s waiting for a more valuable commodity…an asset that only she can provide in exchange.
An idea of what it is percolates, because he knows what this discovery means to her. He knows why she’ll want the mixture.
Inwardly, she festers until her class leaves the carnival. Then she festers all day until midnight. Then she festers her way into the vault, where he reclines in the rocking chair, his ankles and hands bound in chains of starlight, his head angled nonchalantly toward her.
“Where is it?” Wonder demands.
“Where’s what?” Malice inquires, guileless.
She nocks a quartz arrow and targets his chest. “I won’t ask again.”
“Yes, you will. You’ll ask three more times. No mates for backup?”
“Where is it?!”
“By all means, go treasure hunting. You won’t find it.”
True. She and her peers may comb this vault, then this entire library, but they won’t find a concoction of petals and pomegranate seeds. Malice has spent a century and a half dwelling in this repository, becoming fluent with every nook and cranny. That means he has stashed the brew someplace inaccessible.
He must have done so before stalking Wonder in the library. He’d hidden the pomegranate and corsage as a precaution. A bargaining chip for later.
For now.
“What do you want?” she demands.
He raises his arms, illustrating the manacles. “You know what I want, Wildflower.”
“Don’t call me that, Demon.”
“Why, I want the same thing as you: for us to make a deal.”
“Which is?” she draws out.
His orbs darken, confident and malicious. And then he smiles. “We’re going to abduct each other.”
4
Wonder has done a few stupid things in her life, not limited to breaking rules, which has led to breaking into restricted places. But the stupid part isn’t that she actually took such actions. No, it’s that she’d eventually gotten caught.