19

Isa sprung her little enigma on me and left me to drown in my questions.

Physically, I was exhausted, but my mind didn't want to rest. It reeled from one wild scenario to another as I locked myself in the adjoining bathroom to wash this horrible day off of me.

They don't call him the Prince of Broken Hearts for no good reason.

Apollo was far from the heart-eating monster the papers described, but he still must have done something to deserve such a cruel title. But what? And why should I be careful? He and I were just… traveling companions, after all. Maybe I didn't want him to get eaten by a demon, but that didn't mean I cared about him. Okay, I cared a little, but not romantically. And, yes, I did find him insanely attractive and charming and thrilling to be around, and the skin would probably melt right off my bones if he ever tried to—

"Get yourself together, girl," I snarled to myself in the mirror that faced the bathtub. I looked flushed and wild-eyed, neck-deep in bubbles. I released a breath and started rinsing myself off, curiosity still gnawing at me.

Walder had claimed that Apollo kept a distance from his family to spare their feelings, but surely there had to be another reason as well. Apollo was looking for something. I'd known it from the moment he'd walked into the Shop. He'd kept asking about mystery boxes and other Curiosity Shops that might carry them. But what could a mystery box obtain that would interest Apollo so much? A cure, perhaps? Could there be a cure? I supposed that depended on what kind of curse it was. Was it witch-made? Or was it from the gods? And most importantly, what had he done to deserve such a horrible punishment?

The questions were like needles pricking me from the inside, and the fact that Apollo was going to put me on a ship tomorrow morning and I would leave Thaloria without ever obtaining the answers only made my curiosity sharper. It was nearly unbearable.

Hours later, I got dressed and ventured out of my bedroom to find the moon high in the sky, dangling over the manor like a bright, silver spotlight.

I meandered around the whimsical, overflowing rooms until I discovered a library, dark and tremendous, with floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves and enormous upholstered armchairs. I spent what felt like an hour in there, scanning Isa's impressive collection of potion-making books, until I spotted one of Rya Ellison's Encyclopedias, which I had read all except for the one in front of me—a complete and extensive catalogue of demons, creatures, and the fairy folk. These types of books were always mysteriously missing from our local libraries and bookstores back home, and even my magical bookcase couldn't recreate something exactly like them. Magic was often too stubborn to leave the North, even in the form of simple information.

I tucked it under my arm and went on a mission to find the kitchen. A cup of tea and a little bit of reading in front of a cozy fire would soothe my mind enough to even salvage the day.

It was strange to think that I almost died this morning, and now I was thinking about tea. Life had such a funny way of becoming marvelous or unbearable, only to fall back into its usual rhythms as if nothing of consequence had happened at all.

As I crossed the abounded with curiosities foyer for the second time, I started to suspect that Isa was managing this entire estate with the use of magic alone, as there were no maids or butlers around to ask for directions. A secluded life indeed, but certainly not one devoid of color and whimsy.

I entered another room, still searching for the kitchen, which ended up being Isa's private study, judging from the massive worktable in the center crawling with ominous-looking black grimoires and spiraling vials containing mysterious pink liquids.

Not wanting to impose, I backed out and continued my exploration toward the other side of the manor.

At last, I heard the soft murmur of voices from inside a room and quickened my steps.

The voices got louder and angrier.

Then, I heard my name and froze mid-step.

"Gods, Apollo, I can't believe you brought this girl here. What were you thinking? Nepheli could have died today!" Isa shouted.

I pressed my back against the wall next to the half-opened door and watched as the light leaked out in the hallway with my heart pounding so avidly inside my chest that I was terrified they'd hear it.

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't realize the consequences of my actions? I'm heartless, not a fucking idiot! But what was I supposed to do, huh?" Apollo's voice thundered, harsher than ever. "Fuck up her whole life and abandon her to pick up the pieces?"

"You shouldn't have fucked up her life to begin with. You were supposed to be more careful. After seven years, you ought to be more careful!" There was a pause. A moment of realization. Then, in a panic, "Unless you did it on purpose. Oh gods. Oh gods! Did you destroy her Shop on purpose?"

My heart stopped. I felt myself go numb. The bodice of my dress seemed to tighten around my sternum, cutting off my oxygen until everything around me spun.

"You honestly think I would do that?" Apollo snarled.

"Yes," Isa hissed. "Gods, I swear, Apollo, if you break this poor girl's heart just to—"

"I won't!"

Isa scoffed. "As if you haven't considered it already!"

"I have considered it, damn it! I have! But that doesn't mean I will act—"

"Please," Isa implored. "Please tell me the truth for once. Tell me you're not using this girl to break the curse. I know what Walder told you. Love breaks all curses. But damn it, Apollo! Making someone fall in love with you just to break your curse is too cruel. Even for you."

Making someone fall in love with you just to break your curse—

I jolted sideways and bumped into the marble pedestal to my left. The porcelain vase atop it staggered and shattered on the ground in countless smithereens. The book under my arm followed as my hands flew up to my mouth in shock.

"What was that?" Apollo's gasp came from inside the room.

For a second, I stood perfectly still, on the edge of confusion, watching their long shadows slip in and out of the light.

Then fear hit me—hard and fast, like a slammed door.

Then adrenaline.

And then, I ran.

I ran as if my life depended on it. I ran as if I were trying to escape the clutches of a terrible dream where the whole world was upside down and everything my eyes saw was nothing but a cruel illusion. As if by running until every little mechanism of my body strained and throbbed and ached I could snap myself into a less horrid reality.

Please let it be a dream. Please let me wake up now.

Tears welled up in my eyes, spinning everything around me into a haunted dream space, the manor's darker, more sinister twin closing in on me with its towering walls and its daunting endlessness. But I could not stop. I could only hear my heart ripping from my chest as violently as my boots were stomping on the granite. I could not think of slowing down or where I was going to go. All I could think was, of course. Of course, this was why Walder kept pushing Apollo and me together. Of course, this was why Agathe was trying to convince me to stay in the North. And like an idiot, I'd believed all of their talk about friendship and belonging and reaching out. Gods, how they must have laughed at me. Silly, ignorant, desperate Nepheli.

Was Apollo pushing me away at Walder's just another trick? And his confession last night? Was it premeditated too? Another manipulation? The cursed prince who wanted to keep me at a safe distance but couldn't resist telling me how he really felt?

Oh, how tragically romantic.

And I'd fallen for it like a fool.

Cold air whipped into my lungs, and as I blinked the tears away, I realized that I'd already left the manor behind. The star inside me pulsed like a second heart, fueling me with such force that it became impossible for me to stop running. Even as my limbs burned and my lungs collapsed and my heart bruised inside my ribcage, I could not resist my descent into the yawning mouth of the forest.

A fog, thick like cotton, swept over my path. The ground beneath my boots cracked and crumbled like dry land. The wind lashing past me smelled of loam and rot. The brambles, sharp like talons, reached for my ankles and scraped at my calves. Above, the trees outstretched, shot out into the sky, the clouds rolling out bruised, black and blue and purple, the stars peering in between like the gleaming eyes of a celestial beast.

I could have sworn I heard murmurs and saw things—deadly, horrid things—glinting amid the thorny shrubs. But I was more scared of the monster I had left behind to turn back around.

What if the fairies had been right? What if Apollo was planning to do something awful to me? There were certain magical practices that required the sacrifice to be willing in order for them to work. What if this was the case? What if there was some kind of ritual and Apollo was planning on making me love him before ravaging my idiot's heart?

If I were a heartless monster, I would choose someone like me too. Someone easy to manipulate. Someone who was friendless and inexperienced. Someone no one would look for, at least not in time.

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.

I ran faster and faster until I was only instinct and fury interrupted by cleaving sobs.

And then—"Nepheli! Wait! Stop!"

My foot caught on an uprooted tree, and I tripped and fell forward on my hands and knees. A tremendous gasp tore off my chest as I fought for breath, the act so painful that fresh tears swelled in my eyes.

"Nepheli!" Apollo shouted. His hands, large and firm, seized me around the waist and pulled me up to my feet. "Darling, are you hurt? Did you scrape your knees?"

"Don't touch me!" I choked out, staggering around. "Don't you ever touch me again!"

I wiped my tear-stained face on the sleeve of my dress, trembling from fear and exhaustion, and the permeating cold.

In the blue-black blade of the night, Apollo looked like a god. A dark one. A cruel one. The kind that ate hearts and bled his victims' heartbreak. The kind that was as rotten on the inside as devastatingly beautiful was on the outside. His face was part darkness and part moonlight, and his eyes were harsh and wild, almost inhuman. He had never looked so much like him—the Prince of Broken Hearts.

"Did you plan it?" I demanded, a sound etched between anger and despair pushing at the back of my throat. "Did you bring those creatures into my Shop just so you could have an excuse to drag me into your kingdom and make me fall in love with you? After all, everyone here knows you. You had to seek a woman from another part of the Realm."

Apollo kept perfectly still as the wind rampaged through his hair and the moonlight cut his face in two. "If I wanted you in love with me, then why push you away at Walder's? Why not seize the opportunity?" he argued. "Come on, Nepheli, you're smarter than this."

"Oh, now I'm smart?" I snarled. "I thought I was just another silly little girl."

"Nepheli—"

"You knew what you were doing! It was perfect, wasn't it? The tortured prince, who doesn't want to hurt me, whispers sweet nothings in the dark. How romantic, right?"

He stepped forward.

I stepped back.

"What sweet nothings?"

"I heard you last night!"

His throat bobbed. "You weren't asleep?"

"As if you didn't know!"

Apollo took another step, his hands raised in mid-air between us. "Nepheli, please, listen to me—"

"Were you looking for someone like me in Elora? Did you realize I was all alone and you thought I was the perfect victim?" A little voice inside me begged me for breath, for reason, for a moment to consider: You're just scared and overwhelmed. There has to be some other explanation for what Isa said. Deep, deep in my gut, a windswept sense of wrongness told me Apollo didn't want to hurt me. But I still felt frightened and almost heartbroken, betrayed by my own self. Could I have really been so wrong about him? Why was it easier to believe Apollo had been trying to trick me all along than to believe he'd meant those things he'd said to me last night?

Apollo shook his head, the motion almost manic. "No. No. I didn't plan any of this. Please, Nepheli, you have to believe me. I never, ever meant to hurt you. Yours was just the last Curiosity Shop I hadn't searched yet. I was just looking for…" he hesitated. The muscles along his jaw spasmed. His eyes turned to stone.

"For what?" I heaved.

"My heart!" he exploded, white knuckles beating against his chest. "I was looking for my heart!"

What does that even mean? I was about to ask, breathless and confused, but Apollo surged forward lightning-fast and trapped me inside his arms.

"What—" I started, shaking from as much surprise as adrenaline.

He clamped a hand down on my mouth and tried to shove me behind a giant alder tree.

But it was too late.

"Now, what do we have here?" A hoarse, male voice sounded from beyond the glade. I twisted around, scouring the dark. A tall, bulky figure emerged from the fog-dazed darkness. Behind him, another man followed, shorter and leaner but with a horrid edge to his look. And another one, with a gritty scar cutting along his face. But what alarmed me more than their off-putting looks and threatening smiles, were the belts full of blades that dangled from their hips.

Apollo yanked me behind him and drew his body forward in a fighting stance. My stomach twisted into a tight knot. A terrible, awful inkling hiked up my spine—an inward sense of doom. And the worst, most shocking thing of all, was that in a moment of such gut-wrenching panic, my first instinct was to seek protection from the man I had just run away from.

The man with the scar trailed to our left, laughing a low, vicious laugh. "I'd say a certain rogue Prince and his newest plaything."

"I wonder how much the Queen will pay for her son's safe return to Thaloria?" the tall one mused darkly, his wide, green eyes leering at Apollo.

"I wonder how much the merchants will pay for that hair,"the short one crooned at me, inching closer.

Apollo growled. "Don't look at her."

"Oh, the princeling thinks he can fight," the short one whistled.

"I don't want to fight. But I will kill you if I have to," Apollo warned, and his hand, out of sheer habit, went to where his sword would be sheathed. But Apollo had no sword with him. No dagger. No weapon of any kind. He was dressed only in a billowy white shirt over his black trousers and boots.

We were completely unarmed.

The taller of the bandits whipped his dagger out and came to wield it against Apollo's throat, turning the blood in my veins to ice. "With what exactly are you going to kill him, boy?"

It happened so fast. Apollo grabbed the bandit's arm and yanked it forward with one hand as he swiped the dagger with the other. Then he spun, beat his elbow on the back of the bandit's head, knocking him out, and moved forward to bring the dagger against the other one's midriff.

Suddenly, there were hands on me, hauling me from behind. I screamed and thrashed and kicked in the air until the cool metal of a blade hungered against my throat and I was forced to still.

"Might want to drop the knife, princeling," the man behind me hissed, threading his fingers into my hair. He tugged at the roots and yanked back my head to fully expose my throat to the blade, dragging a whimper out of me.

Apollo froze at once, his eyes wide and feral. In his condition, it shouldn't be possible to feel mad, truly, incandescently mad. But the white-hot fury in his face was as pure and raw as any emotion known to man, so much so that it frightened me. For a moment, the only movement around us was the flounder of my heart. Thud. Thud. Thud. Then, with a slow, calculated bend of his knees, Apollo dropped the dagger on the ground, and the deadly little thing glinted like treasure amid the underbrush.

Within seconds, the other two grabbed Apollo around the shoulders and forced his hands behind his back. Every muscle in his body strained, wanting to resist but holding back for my sake.

A brutal pang of shame went through me, even more excruciating than my despair. This was all my fault. I had allowed judgment and fear to overtake me once again, and this was my punishment. Why couldn't I have stayed and listened to what Apollo had to say instead of running away? Why couldn't I show some faith to someone other than myself, for once?

"You want to take me for ransom?" Apollo growled. "Take me. Do as you want with me. But let's keep this between us. She isn't worth anything."

I tried to console myself with the fact that Apollo was unbreakable and that they couldn't really hurt him. He was strong and skilled and deviously smart. He would find a way to escape them. He would have already escaped them if it hadn't been for me. He was going to be okay. We were going to be—

The man gripped my hip from behind with his free hand as he buried his face in the curve of my outstretched neck. Instinct begged me to recoil. But I was immobile from fear, the dread pumping in my veins with a violence. "She's worth something to you, clearly."

Apollo thrashed. "Take your fucking hands off her—"

One of them punched Apollo in the face, and a rivulet of blood poured from his nose. "Apollo!" I screamed, lurching forward.

The blade scraped my throat. "You move when I tell you," the bandit snarled in my ear.

Apollo spat the blood from his mouth and curled back his lips into a wild, scarlet sneer. "You deserve what's coming to you."

The man laughed. "What's coming to us, boy?"

A sudden rustle sounded from behind the wall of shrubbery, then a familiar, relentless gallop tore through the glade.

Eiran lunged out of the shadows and landed right between us, massive and imperious, and as jarring as the night. He reared on his hind legs, his long sword glinting in the dark like a beacon as he declared in his deep, haunting voice, "Death."

I seized the opportunity to swing my elbow upward against my captor's face. He reeled back with a curse, cradling his broken nose just as Eiran wielded his sword… and decapitated him.

A soundless scream left me as the man's head tumbled on the forest bed before me, spattering the wildflowers with gore, the blood looking thick and black like oil in the night. I wanted to close my eyes, but I did not seem able to look away, not as Eiran galloped after the other two and took their heads as well with only one sharp swipe of his sword.

"Nepheli!"

With a gasp, I swiveled just as Apollo reached me, and our bodies collided.

He gathered me into his arms, and I let him. A sudden, deafening silence fell over the world as I pressed my face on his chest and he wrapped his arms around my neck. For a second, I couldn't think or feel anything else. Only us, shaking into each other's arms.

"Are you okay?" he panted as he slipped his fingers through my hair and tilted back my head to examine my throat. "Did he hurt you?"

My mouth went dry. "No," I rasped, curling my fingers into his shirt to steady myself. His chest was frantic. "Gods, Apollo, you're breathing so fast."

His hand in my hair tightened as he dropped his forehead on mine. "I can't remember the last time I felt this scared."

"I thought you couldn't feel."

"I thought I couldn't feel too."

Eiran cleared his throat, and we tore apart at once, stumbling in opposite directions.

"Are you injured, Lady Nepheli?" the centaur asked in his solemn manner.

I shook my head, willing my eyes away from the splatter of blood that glistened on his naked torso. There were a lot of things I was anxious to tell the Shop about my journey. Witnessing decapitation, however, was not one of them.

Eiran caught my nauseated expression as easily as he had slaughtered these men. "Forgive me for the brutality, Lady Nepheli. But there are certain offenses the Dragonfly does not forgive," he said, and with these words, something changed about the air. The night became cooler, almost bluer, unfolding into a swift, wintertime breeze that wafted over us like a silky curtain. I could have sworn I heard whispers rising all around me, not the mischievous pixies or the insouciant sprites, but as if the trees were talking, rustling something of great importance to each other. A nearly invisible sheet of magic swept over the severed bodies, and one by one, they misted through the air. Their corporeal forms turned into nothing more but clusters of golden specks, twinkling in the desolate stillness of the night.

I gasped in shock, burying my mouth in my palms. I had thought that this eerie golden mist that enveloped the entire Dragonfly was the trail of some night creature. I would have never imagined something as dark and morbid as dead souls.

"I will escort you back to the manor," Eiran said, his long, dark hair dancing like the branches of a willow in the speckled wind.

"Thank you," Apollo exhaled in relief. "I owe you."

Eiran almost smiled. "I'm just glad your soul is still intact, old friend."

Apollo faced me, as pale as the moon. "Are you okay to walk?"

"Of course," I croaked.

He nodded a bit spasmodically as he rubbed a hand along his forehead. "Look, I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you're scared, and rightfully so, I mean, look where I brought you. But please come to the manor with me and let me explain. And if you don't want to see my face ever again after that, I'll leave first thing in the morning, and Isa will help you get home. Just, please, come with me now. I won't ever forgive myself if something happens to you."

He offered me his hand as he waited for my decision. It was not an easy decision to make. In fact, it was the hardest and most frightening thing I'd ever had to do. Believe. Believe in the world and the people beyond my Shop and my books. Believe that it was possible to open up to someone and not have my heart ripped out of my chest. Believe that even if I did end up getting hurt, the experience was worth it regardless.

But a part of me must have already taken this decision because it was hardly a breath before I stepped forward and surrendered my hand to his.

Apollo laced our fingers together slowly, firmly and did not let go of me all the way back.