Wonder slits her gaze, fixing the pearl longbow on the cloaked god. How stubborn of her, yet the corner of Malice’s mouth creeps upward.
Nevertheless, Wonder should know better. The goddess imprisoning him cants her head, issuing a silent but crucial reminder: They might not kill Malice, now that they have him contained.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t do damage.
Without looking away, the female uses the flat of her arrowhead to smack a blade of glass protruding from Malice’s chest. The blade sinks halfway into his flesh, below his heart. On a guttural howl, he seizes up, his furious eyes rolling back.
Somehow, he remains standing, shaking with effort.
Pandemonium crawls up Wonder’s throat, but she mashes her lips to stifle the protest. Her arms plummet as she lowers the bow, chucking it to the floor. The gossamer ruler swipes it off the ground and inspects the nicks within its pearl limb.
At which point, the goddess’s palm crashes against the side of Wonder’s face.
22
In her two centuries, Wonder has been the recipient of precisely three slaps.
Once by Hope, because Wonder had been daydreaming while strolling straight into the archeress’s line of fire during another class’s training session. Needless to say, Wonder’s stream of consciousness had directed her into an opal arrow’s path, disrupting Hope’s aim and causing the female to accidentally shoot her own Guide, inadvertently blasting the mentor off his feet and knocking the wind from him.
Another time, it had been Wonder’s Guide, right after Wonder had reappeared from one of her unsanctioned excursions to the mortal realm. Harmony had been waiting as Wonder floated on a cloud into her home. To say the mentor’s expression toggled between livid and terrified is an understatement. The elder who’d educated and inspired Wonder since her inception had known what her charge had been up to, though not by intuition. No, it was because Wonder had left a trail of evidence in her house: drafts of her letters to the human named Quill.
Startled, Wonder had opened her mouth to explain. The crack of Harmony’s palm had silenced her, and the shimmer of reprimanding guilt in the mentor’s eyes afterward had kept Wonder silent. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your moves?” the female had said, then pointed a solitary finger. “Never again.”
Wonder had nodded while holding her cheek, knowing that she wouldn’t keep her word.
And here in this gallery of desecrated manuscripts, she experiences her third shockwave. It’s one thing to be struck by a fellow archeress or a Guide. It’s another thing entirely to be the recipient of a ruler’s hand.
Former episodes had slung Wonder’s head sideways. But this smack knocks the skeleton out of alignment, rattling her ribcage and jostling her mandible. It turns her face into an exploding star, baubles of light popping before her eyes, her body twisting under the force.
She staggers but catches her balance, righting herself as soon as the spots ebb from her vision. In the background, a protest tears through the space, the voice stripped through a cheese grater and peeling apart at the ends.
Wonder focuses on Malice. With his face scrunched in pain from the glass wedged in his chest, he spews nonsensical venom, his eyes murderous toward the gossamer goddess who’d hit Wonder.
The female pays him no heed, only waits for Wonder to compose herself. It’s not a long intermission, because Wonder understands why the ruler had lashed out. It’s a grave offense to handle the weapon of another deity, graver still when it’s a Court member’s bow, punishable in too many vile ways to tally.
Wonder may as well have spit on the goddess.
That’s why Wonder inclines her head, acknowledging the error. She may disagree with these rulers, may abhor them for defacing the Chamber and extending violence toward those whom she cares about, but she hasn’t lost her respect for their weapons.
The ebony beauty pauses, her profile tilting as she regards Wonder. A spark of intrigue rips through the female’s copper irises, unlike anything Wonder has previously seen from her. Following this, a subtle film of regret coats the ruler’s eyes.
Wonder knows the signs of inquiry, the moment when unforeseen questions simmer to the surface of one’s cranium, be they random or formerly dormant. This female is known to sing lullabies to immortal youths who cannot sleep. Despite her vicious reaction to Wonder, she has an empathetic side. And prior to her ascension, she’d held a different title.
She used to be the Guide of Wonder. That is, until she advanced to the role of ruler, with Harmony taking the goddess’s place. Such is the hierarchical evolution of the Peaks.
Once upon a time, this grand figure had been a mentor. Before that, she’d been an archeress like Wonder.
She’d been Wonder.
Glass clinks, nudged by the purple-haired goddess. Glass crackles, collapsing beneath the weight of the braided god’s foot. Glass tumbles, bumped by the cloaked god, as well as the frosted female pointing her crystal arrow at Malice.
In the semidark, paper flutters as though pushed by a breeze, painted images and texts twinkling, alive despite having been shredded.
Surrounded by the mess, everyone waits, debating how to proceed. For some reason, Wonder suspects they hadn’t anticipated capturing their quarry. They had expected a cunning sleight of hand and an escape.
Have Wonder and Malice frazzled them that much? Is that remotely possible of any archer?
“What a pity,” the purple goddess says, observing the scene.
“It’s damned reprehensible, is what it is,” the cloaked god grumbles, his brows taking a steep turn for the worse. “If you two weren’t enemies, we would congratulate your proficiency.”
“Never in our existence have we…,” the braided god cuts himself off, his hawk nostrils flaring. “It seems our dispute with you and your peers last year hasn’t dwindled. We should have known it wouldn’t end in that mortal library, however much we’d hoped you would see reason.”
“On that score…,” the frosted goddess hints, pricking Malice’s flesh with the tip of her arrowhead, to which he squints, “finally, he’s learned to be silent. However did you manage that, Wonder?”
“You credit me too soon,” Wonder predicts.
Because three, two, one: “Go to hell, mate,” Malice grits out to the ruler, right on cue.
The goddess moves to impale him, render him mute.
But she halts when the gossamer goddess stares at Wonder. “Are you in love?”
The question thrusts from the ruler and spears through the room, staying everyone’s tongues. The word is a force unto itself, ill-fitting in the sovereign’s mouth, too large for her to bear, too massive for her companions to catch. Coming from her, it has an alien shape, a slippery texture, and a translucent body, lacking visible composition.
The braided god balks. The cloaked god scowls. The purple goddess is aghast, her eyes jumping between the gallery’s occupants. The frosted goddess hikes a single brow that fails to reach her hairline, as though she’s gazing through a lens, searching for an object that isn’t there.
Wonder’s heart lashes against her breastbone.
Is she in love? With whom?
Because it’s such an inconceivable query coming from a sovereign, Wonder fails to apply it to anyone. That a Court member would ask borders on acknowledgment, a willingness to believe that such an emotion might be possible amidst their kind. Or this goddess is just toying with Wonder.