15

Iknocked on Apollo's door a couple of times—the dark blue one on my left, as Walder had instructed—before cracking it open and sticking my head inside.

"Apollo, are you here?" I called, and here he was, indeed, with his suspenders dangling from his hips, his trousers half-unbuttoned, and his shirt completely undone, the bronze valley of his chest and abdomen peering in between.

He whirled on me. "Who the fuck knocks on a door and doesn't wait for an answer?"

"What can I say? Your crude ways are rubbing off on me," I drawled as I strolled inside, preoccupying myself with the details of the room and not the beauty of his body.

The room was ocean-themed. Turbulent seas for wallpaper, sand-colored rugs on the floor, and clusters of foamy lights hanging from the ceiling.

That's it, Nepheli, keep looking at the lights. Keep your eyes on the—

I stole a glance at him. He was leaning against the mahogany dresser, looking annoyed—and a little flustered. "How can I help you this fine evening, Nepheli darling?"

"You were supposed to show me how to use my new dagger after dinner, remember?" I prodded as I tottered towards the four-poster bed and hooked my arm around one of its lean columns for some steadiness. My knees felt numb and my head heavy, which was not ideal, but if I'd been sober, I wouldn't have found the courage for this conversation at all.

"Not in the mood," he said as he turned away to face the gold-framed mirror above the dresser. He shrugged off his shirt, and for a hazy, wine-infused moment, I found myself wondering how it would feel to bury my face in that perfect curve on the slope of his back. Everything about him was so masculine, so perfectly hard. But that curve on his body was sculpted by a tender hand.

Get yourself together, girl. He's just a man, the voice of reason huffed inside my head, but another voice, a clearly intoxicated one, felt the need to point out that not many men had backs that looked like that.

I shook my head as if it were possible to physically expel the thought from my mind. "Let's do something you're in the mood for, then," I offered, hoping I didn't sound too eager.

Apollo glanced at me through the mirror, his face dark. He had demons in his eyes. Destructive ones. "Lie back on the bed for me, darling," he said.

I blinked, certain I'd misheard him. My heart—much like the rest of me—floundered in confusion. In fact, I could not remember a time in which my heart had beaten such a fragile rhythm. I could feel it just below the surface of my skin. Throbbing. Leaping. "What did you say?"

"Go to sleep, Nepheli," he sighed tiredly as he threw the rumpled shirt into the first drawer. "We have a long journey tomorrow."

"It's going to rain tomorrow," I announced, sitting down at the foot of the bed. I rested my weight on my palms and felt the plush duvet with my fingertips. It was softer than a heap of feathers, and I was very much tempted to collapse over it. "Are you sure you don't want to stay and spend some time with Walder? You didn't talk much with him tonight."

"It's not going to rain tomorrow," was all Apollo said.

"My knee is bothering me, so it's definitely going to rain."

Apollo veered, crossing his arms over his bare chest, each sculpted muscle flexing. "Your knee?" he deadpanned.

"It's a real thing," I assured him.

"Of paranoid people?"

Ι sighed at the canopy. "So you'd rather travel in the rain and mud than confront your friend? He's clearly worried about you."

"No confrontation is needed," Apollo clipped. "We just disagree on something."

I squinted at him, prickling with curiosity. "On what?"

"None of your damn business."

This wasn't going very well, was it? I wasn't even sure what I'd expected coming here. That Apollo would suddenly become a decent human being and have a heart-to-heart with me? That we would emerge as friends? I was ridiculous for even thinking about it. Absolutely ridiculous and—

"What are you doing?" Apollo growled at me.

Slowly, too slowly, I realized that I'd fallen back on the bed, my hands resting on my stomach and my eyelashes drooping over my cheeks. I was so exhausted and drowsy and warm that even as the sensible voice inside my head screamed at me—You're not allowed to drink wine ever again!—it was easy to ignore it and let myself wallow in the comfort of his bed.

"I'm just a little tired," I yawned.

"You're drunk," Apollo accused.

"Not more than you," I pointed out, although, in all likelihood, I had it worse than him. The various knick-knacks atop the dresser seemed to have obtained halos of light that stretched beyond their physical boundaries, and I was fairly certain that this was odd even for the Dragonfly.

My eyes flicked back at him just in time to catch the cords of his neck tensing and his lips thinning into a hard line. It was a terrible time to be looking at his lips, really, because now I started thinking very intently about them. He was probably a great kisser. Passionate and firm. He would know what to do with his tongue and his hands. He would not be too tender or too sloppy about it. He would—

"Nepheli," he warned, the rough rasp of his voice doing terrible, unspeakable things to me. "Don't make this harder than it already is."

I frowned, struggling to make sense of what he was saying. "What do you mean?"

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "You need to leave this room, right now."

"What? Why?"

There was something tortured about his next words, as if he were in tremendous physical pain. "Because you've no idea what you're doing to me."

"But I'm not doing anything. I just want to understand what happened to you," I finally confessed. "I want to understand you."

"Okay, that's it," Apollo grunted.

Then he was on me.

He seized my wrists, yanked me off the bed, and before I knew it, he was pushing me up against the wall, his forearms bracketing my face and his knee slipping between my own, until I was pinned like a butterfly inside a picture frame with no hope of escape.

Thrill and fear pulled me into alertness. "Apollo, what—"

"You want to know why they call me the Prince of Broken Hearts, darling?" His hands roved down my body and gripped my hips. I braced my hands on his naked chest to push him away, but the contact with his hot skin was a shock to my nerve endings. A jolt of arousal spiraled through me. My mind screamed at me to escape, but my body melted in his hands. "It's because silly little girls like you get charmed by a few disingenuous smiles and frivolous compliments and start thinking they can get through me. But no one can. You want to lie back on my bed again, Nepheli? Is this why you came here? You want to fuck until we ache and then forget that it happened in the morning? Great, darling, I'm all for it. But don't come to me for a polite conversation. Don't act as though it is possible for us to be friends just because you're so miserably lonely and Walder felt cruel enough to put a few ideas in your head tonight. He's not your friend, either. He's no less than a god, and you, Little Miss Butterfly, who loves to read about magic, ought to know that no matter how benevolent, gods can't even fathom what it means to bear a broken heart." He looked straight into my eyes as he said it, pointed, deliberate, like pushing a blade into a body slowly, to savor the agony.

An incandescent swipe of fury shattered my insobriety, and I began trembling. There was a raw ache in my throat. The sweet aftertaste of the wine grew bitter on my tongue, and for a moment, I wanted to crash my lips on his, force him to taste his own words, and kill him with their poison.

I rose on my toes and met him breath for breath. "For a man who's supposed to be fearless, you're acting like a scared little boy. You want me away? I'm gone. It's not my job to fix you. But at least show me the respect I deserve and tell me the truth. Tell me you're terrified of hurting someone. Of becoming the heart-eating monster the papers love to write about. Tell me we can't be friends because I have a heart and you don't, and we both know what this means. But don't insult me with empty threats and vulgarity. I'm not nearly as silly and pathetic as you believe I am."

I pushed him back with my clenched fists and aimed for the exit. Apollo stalked behind me and put a hand on the door just as I opened it. He pushed it shut, trapping me in between. A little unsteadily, I braced my hands on the cool, wooden surface, panting, my pulse wild, my skin burning. His front pressed against my back. I wanted to recoil, but I couldn't. I was adrift in sensation. Skin and warmth, and that low groan that escaped him, vibrating through me. Something hot and fluid pumped in my veins, and it wasn't blood, or anger, or even adrenaline. Suddenly, I understood exactly what he meant when he said that the heart was an unwilling lover of the body. Oh, I thought, I see now. Because my heart knew better, but my body disagreed.

In the nick of that nervous silence, I heard his every ragged breath. I heard the bob of his throat. I heard that little fuck me he muttered through his teeth. And then: "Nepheli."

Gingerly, without exhaling a single breath, I turned around. "What?"

I thought he was going to apologize to me.

I thought he looked perfectly ashamed. Perfectly alone. Perfectly heartbroken.

How silly of me, indeed.

"Be ready at dawn or I'm leaving you behind," was all he said, cool and collected, and extraordinarily heartless.

I clutched the doorknob in my trembling hand. "For someone who has seen so much of the world, you really are terribly small, Apollo Stranger."