She strikes again, and then again, and then again. The lock collapses in its frame, and the door jolts from the molding.
Dropping her weapons, Wonder blows through the partition, which dents the opposite wall as it swings inward. She freezes, plugging her mouth with her fist to contain a gasp.
At the dorm’s heart, Malice thrashes under the sheets, the chaos bringing ghosts and exorcisms to mind. He spasms, his arms pinned to his chest, crossed like they’re stapled that way. His bare torso writhes atop the mattress, a serpent desperate to break free of its cage.
This is worse than the previous ordeals in the Celestial City. But that’s nothing compared to what he blares.
“It’s true!” he screams at the ceiling. “It’s true! She’s real, she’s real, she’s real! Keep away, let me go! She’s real!”
The serration of his voice dislodges Wonder from her stupor. Slamming across the room, she drops onto the mattress’s edge and grapples with his shoulders, yanking him upright. His waves press flat around his face, his cheekbones strung tight. He seethes, his claws batting at her, wrestling with apparitions.
He whips her sideways onto the bed. Wonder yelps, then lurches at him, using adrenaline to dominate his movements. Seizing his elbows, she shakes him, and when that doesn’t work, she resorts to the same tactic from the vault.
She slaps Malice. It doesn’t work. He bucks against her hold, growling in outrage as though restrained by something other than the blankets.
Instead of another blow, perhaps he needs something else from her.
Wonder gentles her tone. “Shh. Malice, shh.”
Cupping his warped face, she holds him steady. “It’s a dream, just a dream. You’re free.”
His body gives, the muscles cramped and quivering, and his wheezing begins to tremble at the edges. The careful moment reminds her of legends floating to the surface of a page, requiring delicacy.
He holds on to himself, those arms crossing once more, either for protection or to ward off something. The haunting vision of him as a mortal imprisoned within a cell stings her eyes. That’s what he’s dreaming of. Now that she has confirmed who he used to be, it’s obvious.
All her fault. All her fault. All her fault.
Wonder drags her fingers from his jaw, and it takes a steel grip to pry his arms from his naked chest, but he lets her.
“It’s all right,” she soothes. “Wake up, Malice.”
“Untie me,” he slurs. “Let me go.”
“No one’s tying you down. Not anymore. Wake up, now.”
“I’m…I’m wayward…I’m a wayward star.”
Wonder sucks in a breath. Did he just recite…did he just say…?
His face cranks to hers, his eyes splitting open and leaping all over her. Wild irises flash like cymbals, then dull. The atmosphere calms, the noise dissolving into the walls, leaving only tired gusts of air. He just stares at her. It’s a blank slate, sedated but lost, and she cannot tell if he recognizes who she is. He’s unconscious of his ramblings, only partially aware of anything.
Malice focuses on her eyes, his gaze dashing all over them. “Wildflowers,” he says in a hoarse tone. “I see wildflowers.”
The freesias springing from the corners of her lids. She’d neglected to remove them before sleep.
Wonder nods. “Yes. You’re home.”
Is he? Where is home for him? Where is home for her?
The answer feels irrelevant outside of this room. Starlight drenches them, tinting the world in violet. She scans him for remnants of the nightmare and finds none. His naked abdomen flexes with his inhalations, and the sight of a thatch of blond hair disappearing into the low waistband of his pants stumps her.
Wonder gulps. She’s never seen him divested of a shirt, the sculpted muscles stacked and thumping with oxygen, so very alive and close. Her fingers tingle with a hundred and fifty years of longing, itching to mold his skin, to make him sigh, and then to turn that sigh into something pliable—and savage.
It’s either suicide or survival, but she broaches the distance. With Malice’s gaze pinned to Wonder’s, her digits steal out to tuck a curl behind his ear. He doesn’t recoil, so her index finger grows bolder, sliding into the slot behind his lobe.
Malice’s square chin tilts, his eyes darting toward the contact. Tension radiates from his shoulders, caught between a protest and permission.
Then he resumes studying her. “You’re tired,” he says, the drowsy words injected with a tranquilizer.
Wonder bobs her head. She whispers, “And you’re awake.”
His hand snatches her wrist, bringing her with him as he pours himself beneath the blankets. She allows it, too stunned to withdraw. It’s natural, the way he curls into a fetal position and faces her, watching as she draws on the linen, cocooning them inside its weave. It’s as if he’s never seen anyone do that, and it fascinates him.
He’s not wholly present. If he were, she cannot fathom that he would appreciate being seen in this state, nor being coddled.
A terrible, gut-wrenching relief flows through her. It’s the fuzzy texture of safety and the coarseness of loss. She has dreamed of sleeping with him like this, of feeling his weight drag down the mattress, his shadow hugging hers after hours of…not sleeping. In each of her fantasies, they make love to the point of sweet agony, then fall into exhaustion.
In those imaginations, she isn’t scarred, and he isn’t crazed. Nightmares cannot infest him, and remorse cannot plague her. In that other life, they’re just like this—peaceful, with the free will to love each other, not the fate to abhor one another.
It’s true! She’s real, she’s real, she’s real!
This must stem from his past, which is also her past. He must have been ranting about her. Who else can it be?
I’m a wayward star.
That had been the most excruciating part. She knows that recitation, had penned it ages ago, and had reread it recently—in the letter that she’d stolen.
The truth floods Wonder’s senses, tugging her into oblivion. She’s remorseful as her vision wanes. Life blurs until all that’s left is a set of rogue eyes, wide open and riveted on her.
12
Dreams beckon Wonder, submerging her into a watercolor sea, where she pirouettes from one color scheme to the next, swimming in seeds and petals.
Then dawn calls for her to return, its resonance as dainty as a melody pouring from a flute. It’s been so long since she’s had such delicate visions that Wonder rouses effortlessly. She feels like butter, her figure swaddled in linens and the leisurely blue haze of morning.
A weight burrows beside her, rising and falling under the blanket, a bundle of masculine hums. His face is the first thing she sees. The fans of his golden lashes twitch, the hatches of his deep-set lids indicating blessed sleep.
It’s the visage of an angel and a demon, benign and malignant. Like this, Malice is a star, pure but blinding.
And he’s right here, his breath stirring Wonder’s hair. At her age, it’s hard to believe there are any new emotions left to feel, much less new experiences to have. But this moment proves her wrong. She has neither seen nor experienced anything remotely comparable to this.
And now she knows what gratitude feels like.