Wonder drinks him in. She counts the ways in which this demon has become dear to her, like when he produces books on topics that she muses about, or when he spoils her with blackberries in the mornings, as they’ve taken to sharing her bed.
He hasn’t had a nightmare since. And she sleeps through the night.
In defiance of their nature, they rest every evening, sleeping bare and fastened together. Once, she’d awakened to his mouth on her breast. Another dawn, he’d awakened to her mounting his abdomen. So much teasing and temptation in this room.
However, those specific events hadn’t led to consummation. They have exerted themselves in numerous corners, except in their chambers.
Until now.
Celestials trickle into the dorm and sprinkle the linens. Wonder inhales the perfume of the wisteria headband cinched in her hair, the only item that she’s wearing.
“I’m addicted to you,” he says, grabbing her face and plying her with restless kisses at her temple. “Your mind.” The inside of her bicep. “Your nerve.” The pulp of her scars. “Your resilience.”
Wonder pecks his lips. “Your daring. Your candor. Your humor.” Then she inches backward to gaze at him. “I wish you could see where I lived here. My home across the glen, over the tranquil pools. My favorite meditation spot, where my Guide taught me the art of breath. I wish that I could see where you lived here, too. All the places that matter to you.”
“Really?” Malice asks. “You mean that?”
Of course. Why wouldn’t she?
On a branch outside the window, the likeness of a mortal nightingale chirps a melody.
Malice’s ashen eyes jump all over Wonder, not like cinders but rather embers—desperate and erratic in their movements. He hunts for a sign from her countenance, some type of verification.
Those irises glint, making a decision. Slinking out from under her, Malice vacates the room and returns with the saddlebag dangling off his shoulder. Wonder sits upright, curling her legs sideways as he dumps the bag onto the blanket. Sitting on the mattress’s ledge, he pushes the carrier toward her.
Wonder glances at him, dubious.
He nuzzles her jaw, his voice muffled. “You’ll just read them behind my back.”
Her pulse races. With regard to the stolen letter, she hasn’t returned it yet, and neither has he asked for it.
The same can be said about her corsage.
Malice watches her with a flat expression. It’s void of vitriol or protectiveness, yet he teeters on the brink of a conclusion.
Her lungs expand and release. With shaky fingers, she flips open the bag and withdraws the sepia-stained envelopes. She starts at the beginning, on the day she first haunted him. Fishing out the worn paper, she unfolds it, the sound slicing through the room.
Malice winces. He scoots closer, their shoulders touching.
Wonder’s teeth ache, and her chest aches, and so much aches. But this reaction is fair, and she wants to oblige, because she wants to hear herself recite the words that she’d once written. She’d never gotten the chance to speak them aloud.
Thinking on it, eagerness skips through her. But for some reason, Malice’s face falls when he notices.
“Dearest Wayward Star…,” she begins. “I’ve been wandering, wandering this universe, searching for a destiny that I might call my own.”
“At last, I suspect that I may have found it,” Malice says from memory, as if he hadn’t asked her to narrate at all. “I suspect that I may have found it in you.”
She blushes at the letter’s presumption. As the words tremor into the room, she tumbles into the past. Her, sitting at home and composing this note, her desires leaking onto the page. It was her and not her, writing to a boy who was there and not there.
The composition is puerile, or perhaps naive is a better assessment. But it’s alive and unapologetic, each sentence surging into the next. The emotions have no veneer, no artifice, so intensely do they exist.
Yet it’s not precisely how Wonder recalls having felt. It’s slightly lackluster compared with the cyclone of responses that she has since experienced around him.
She lowers the letter and also recites from memory. “You don’t know me, nor do I know you, but I hope that may change.”
“Let this be a wish fulfilled rather than lost,” Malice adds, then takes the missive from her and sets it on the nightstand. “I could not bear it otherwise.”
“I fear that I’ve spoken too quickly,” Wonder says to him. “Please continue, so that I might introduce myself. I’m an invisible dweller, thus you cannot see me as I can see you.”
“Yet the sight of your life has brought me to heights.” He crawls toward her, and she reclines beneath him.
“I’ve been hiding, watching you,” she sighs, parting her limbs.
“But do not be frightened,” Malice intones, his lids heavy as he hitches her thighs around his waist and positions his length at her entrance. “I won’t harm you.”
Wonder arches, releasing a pleasured whine as he thrusts in slowly, executing a single, patient stroke. “I would never…,” she moans to the ceiling. “I would never do that.”
“Believe me,” he insists, their hips riding a sensual tempo.
“I’m not shy. But invisibility is tedious, and so I’m reduced to this letter…,” she gasps as his length searches her, sliding to the hilt. “…and hope to express my admiration, to tell you that I’m here, that I share your love of books and reading, even if I’m different, even if I’m a divine being and you’re a human, even if we come from separate realms.” She clings to his backside, spurring him faster. “You’re magnificent, and I adore the sound of your voice, and I should like to know your favorite book, and I should like to tell you mine. I long to know about your world. I yearn to be your friend.”
“Your ally,” he pants.
“Your confidante,” she keens.
“Your star.”
“Your fate.”
Breathless, she kisses his lips. Tireless, he kisses back.
They groan, on the verge of bursting when he hits a narrow spot, which accelerates their rhythm and pushes the depths of entry.
“Answer this letter,” he rasps, plunging inside her, “and I shall tell you more, and you shall know more, and we shall fuse worlds.”
“Me and you.”
“A wandering star.”
“And a wayward star,” she cries out.
He stills. Suspended above her, his body locks in place as if lashed by a whip.
The sudden break jolts Wonder out of her delirium. “Malice?” she heaves, gazing up at him. “Malice, what is it?”
His head plummets into the crook of her neck, then instantly lurches upward. He clutches her face, partly glaring, partly pleading as the embers dash from his eyes, leaving behind a surface cleansed of debris. Those aren’t the pupils of the demon she has come to know.
They’re the eyes of someone else.
She freezes as clarity stares back. Malice gazes at Wonder as if seeing her for the first time, or from a different angle, in a different slope of starlight.
“I remember,” he says.
20
Once the words are spoken, they cannot be unspoken. And while Malice should be relieved to utter them, and while Wonder should be relieved to hear them, they gawk at one another in turmoil.