Had it been a dream?
The soreness between her legs testifies that it hadn’t been, prompting Wonder to cup her mouth. There’s additional evidence in the form of a thicker limb against hers, extending from the opposite side of the sofa. The other leg pitches like a roof, its masculine foot flattened on the cushion.
Wonder balances on her elbows and scans the bookcases, midday yawning through the windows. She notes her longbow and quiver propped against a bookshelf.
When had Malice collected the weapons?
He lounges across from her, his back resting on the couch’s arm. Absently, he sketches her toes while an open book rests in his free palm, his head tipped toward the pages. It’s a mouthwatering sight, that bare torso and those tousled waves. He narrates aloud, uttering in low tones to the assembly of juvenile dragonflies flitting around him.
Reading. He’s reading to them as if they understand.
Wonder mashes her lips together, stifling a grin as she gets another flashback of him play-chasing three dogs across a prairie hill, then rubbing the flank of his horse and feeding it an apple.
She cranes her neck toward the title.
Not in time, because his fiendish grin swings toward her, and he whispers to his guests, “Fina-fucking-lly. She’s awake, mates.”
Without another greeting, he continues reading. “History says that a star once wandered in the sky, searching for its devious, wayward match. At last when they met within the galaxy, their collision woke up a shit ton of drowsy, hungover constellations, and then—”
“That is not what the book says.”
“Details, details.”
“Let me guess. The genesis of destiny and deities?”
“I like to remind myself how it all started. Now let me guess.” He licks his thumb and turns the pages. “Your favorite part is page one thousand and one?”
Wonder laughs as he dramatically clears his voice. “Some attribute the dawn of the Fates to a meteor shower. When it smashed into the dormant stars, they shook from their eternal slumber, blinking in surprise and breaking open like rifts in the darkness. Their radiance spilled into the galaxy, splashing through the universe, brighter than any planet.
“And it was their unparalleled light that gave them agency. And it was their agency that gave them authority. So marked the beginning of an era—the stars evolving with the capacity for thought and intention. They began to wonder, was this planned? And so began the concept of destiny…”
Wonder curls onto her side like a snail and listens to the rest. It would be eons before deities came into being, a solution forged once the stars began to anticipate a turning of the celestial tides: the impending rise of humanity.
Because she’s read this text dozens of times, her mind changes course and resurrects last night. She and Malice had performed a ravishing act, disturbing one another’s bodies to the point that it strikes her dumb. Already, her limbs hum as she pictures his hips in between her thighs.
Is this healthy? Is this common?
She should meditate, but she cannot. And as a goddess, moreover as promiscuous Envy’s classmate, she should know the answers. Wonder has been privy to plenty of graphic stories aside from her own limited experience. But hearing about orgasms versus actually recovering from a mind-bending one is another matter.
She clenches in too many private areas to count. Malice would be delighted with himself, but he wouldn’t have gotten there if it hadn’t been for her. She started that first kiss by instructing him, and he had shut up quickly, collapsing into her like mush.
Huff. Is she keeping tally of who’d dominated whom? This isn’t another rivalry.
It’s blissful. It’s stressful.
This morning? It’s intimately simple, maybe a tad bashful since they keep glancing at one another and looking away. Maybe they need this breather.
Done reading, Malice twists, his muscles rippling as he plucks a chronicle from a stack on the floor. Wonder appraises the selection. Knowing him, he’d gathered this stash from the Chamber’s forbidden level, each candidate a perceptive choice. He had been considerate of her research methodologies, as well as his own.
Though each option appeals to Wonder, she selects a circular book and sprawls nude. Hours pass, lethargic and unrefined. At some point, the platinum dragonflies scatter, hardly entertained by silence.
Malice’s eyes scan the chronicle while Wonder folds and unfolds a particular page, mindful of the book’s spine. Limited by the vellum binding, she tests whether some variation of origami might alter the content and yield a mystery. Then she tries holding the book to the window from endless angles, in case clandestine words are embedded in the paper.
Her wrist gets a cramp, and without looking away from his book, Malice massages the offensive spot for her. Lowering the tome, Wonder peeks over the rim and studies him. Like his facial features, he has retained other traits from his past, such as his inability to read aloud for long without his vocal cords giving out; a common god would not suffer such an ailment, much less any other ailment, for that matter. Deities are not born with impairments, nor are they susceptible.
Then there’s Andrew, who still limps despite his immortality. He might not be a deity, but he and Malice live as the products of two worlds.
“Isn’t it sucky when vellum-bound books play tricks on you?” Malice remarks, aware that he’s being watched.
“I know the signs,” Wonder says. “I’ve tried exposing the page to light, a gust of breath, and even this.” She indicates the fold lines from her origami disaster. “But there’s nothing.”
“Then move on.”
“The stardust ink changes tint halfway down the page.”
“That doesn’t guarantee shit. It could be a fluke.”
“Ink doesn’t change like that unless there’s a chink in the paper, which could indicate a secret.”
“Or it could be a common trickle of light. It could be nothing.”
A trickle of light. That brings to mind the glowing trail that she has witnessed twice in her existence, in two other libraries: in Malice’s past life and in the Celestial City.
“What are you reading, smarty-pants?” Wonder asks.
“An oral history of fucking,” Malice answers.
Aghast—and intrigued—she leaps forward and snatches his book, pouring over diagrams of genitalia, in addition to erotic positions that would baffle a contortionist. “Where in the Chamber did you find this? Amongst the texts on primitive celestial psychology?”
Malice retrieves the title from her, his gullet producing a grating buzzer sound, as though she has lost a point. “It wasn’t with the ‘head case’ books. Tsk, tsk.”
Wonder narrows her eyes. “Astral social behaviors.”
“Warmer.”
“Eternal anatomy and physiology.”
“Very warm. Impressively warm.”
“Mythic anthropology.”
“Hot. Hades hot.”
Wonder bubbles with mirth. She would ask how Malice knows what “hot” is, but then she remembers that he does know. He used to know very well.
For a second, she had almost forgotten this.
Nevertheless, on some intrinsic level, he still comprehends the sensation of warmth. She makes a mental note to inquire about temperature later. To know what heat is to Malice? That intelligence would be a delicacy.