34

The clouds were a melancholic blue. As I walked past window after window on the long, familiar corridor that led to Apollo's bedchamber, the sky outside seemed to grow denser, each frame darker, as though the sun was setting instead of rising. I wondered if perhaps the sky felt the same kind of wrongness as me.

"Nepheli!" A male voice called out to me, urgent and a little exasperated, as if he'd requested my attention more than once already.

I stopped in my tracks and turned, feeling both numb and aching, anxious and inert.

"Ryker," I realized as his tall, lean silhouette enlarged at his approach. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."

He was dressed for a journey, with a long half-cape draping over one shoulder and a large rucksack over the other. "Hello, Nepheli. I was actually looking for you."

I shook my head, surprised. "You're leaving your apprenticeship already?"

"No, I'm just going to visit my parents for the Spring Festival in Elora."

Something flipped inside my stomach. Of course, it was the Spring Festival. Of course, life was still moving forward, people were still celebrating, the sun was still rising in the mornings, and the sky was not growing darker at dawn. The sky was the same. I was the one who looked at it differently.

It hadn't been that long—fourteen days since the last time the sky had looked normal to me—yet it felt as though it'd been years, decades, a standstill moment in time.

He was healing, and I was patient. I was told to show patience. But patience was a period of eternity for the one who waited.

Thea—wonderful, kind, generous Thea—had tried her best these past few days to distract me with magic. But what would have once made me shimmer with happiness now brushed me with indifference. She was helping me practice my summoning technique, but no matter how many times I was able to conjure starlight between my fingertips, I could not feel any contentment, let alone joy. I didn't know how to feel joy in the same world in which he was suffering.

Ryker stared at me intently, waiting for my response. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself to smile. "Give your parents my best, will you?"

I went to leave, but he put his hands on my shoulders. "Nepheli." He took a deep breath, as if he needed to give himself some courage, before reassuring me gently, "He will be okay. And you will be okay too. Just—"

"Be patient?" I clipped, averting my eyes.

He searched for them regardless. "Don't lose your hope. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps I don't know you as well as I thought I did. But to me, you'll always be the most ineffably bright and optimistic woman in the entire world. Yes, the world isn't as beautiful and romantic as you thought it was, but that doesn't mean you should cease believing in all the things that have made you who you are. I understand that your journey to Thaloria has changed you. I know you want to be new. I know because I felt exactly the same when I first got here. But don't disregard the girl you once were for the woman you are now. She was perhaps a little naive, a little softer, but she still deserves to be a part of you."

"Ryker," I sighed, dumbfounded as to what had incentivized him to say all this to me. Ryker had never been prone to such displays of sentimentality, much less to heartening monologues. In fact, this was the longest I'd ever heard him speak for something other than his own ambitions.

He read the question in my eyes, and his face softened. "This is the fourth time this week you've passed me by at the hall without noticing. I just hate to see a friend so despondent."

A smile rose to my lips. It was small and exhausted, but it was there, and there was hope in it. "Thank you," I said. "For being my friend."

"Always, Nepheli," he promised. "Write me when he awakes and you feel a bit better, okay?"

I nodded. "Write me when you get home, too. Tell me all about the Festival."

Ryker bowed his head in farewell and continued down the hall.

I watched his familiar figure shrink in the distance, smiling to myself and feeling heartened. Because, well, would you look at that? Life induced those moments of connection and friendship and beauty despite everything. Life continued to offer joy despite itself.

◆◆◆

You could spend a lifetime looking for connections and never work it out. What were the chances? What were the chances that our lives, mine and his, would come together with such violent force only to be driven apart under the most excruciating of circumstances? What were the chances that a handful of stardust would spark the love for magic inside me, only for that love to lead me to his heart? As I looked at Apollo now, I saw it clearly: our lives, bound by that star—a celestial convergence of destinies that existed now and forever.

He was frighteningly pale today. For the life of me, I could not understand how someone as robust as Apollo could ever look so fragile, as though one wrong breath could kill him.

He was lying on his bed in an endless sleep, a fresh linen sheet wrapped around his hips and his chest moving slightly beneath his white shirt—the sole indication that he was still with us.

It should have been me, I thought for the millionth time.It should have been me lying motionless on that bed right now, not him. But, of course, Apollo had to be the most infuriatingly protective man in the Asteria Realm and get between me and death. What were you thinking? I wanted to scream at him until my voice was raw. What were you thinking using your body as my armor? How dare you make me suffer like this?

And then I reached his bed, and suddenly the only thought left in my head was that I needed more time. I needed more time to watch his eyes turn black in moments of desire. I needed more time to memorize the sensation of his hands on my body, his voice in the morning, his smile moving slowly across his face like a drowsy sunrise. I needed to live with him all the days and all the nights to that first I love you. Not the I'm falling but the I fell.

You. I need you.

Eloise stood from the couch and came to greet me. She and Xander had placed a wide, upholstered couch—large enough to sleep on—right next to Apollo's bed a week ago when he was first transferred from the infirmary to his bedchamber. Most nights they slept here, watching over their son, and when they didn't, I was secretly, selfishly relieved, for those nights I could curl on his side and watch the tide of his breathing until exhaustion would win me over.

I stared at him over Eloise's shoulder as she hugged me. "How is he?"

"The same," she sighed.

"I thought he shifted earlier," Xander muttered, looking almost as pale as his son. "I swear I saw his eyelashes flutter."

Standing here in this room, gaunt and shaky, watching them be as devastated as two humans could ever be, I felt like my flesh and bones were made of clouds—massive, grey clouds—and I could not stop raining over them.

"Shouldn't he be awake by now?" I rasped, fighting with the boulder in my throat. "It's been two weeks. There must be a healer who can perform magic—"

"Nepheli, dear," Eloise soothed, rubbing her palms over my arms, "the physician did have magical assistance. Otherwise, Apollo would have been—" Dead, she meant to say but couldn't. She was struggling with tears of her own.

"Let's give you some alone time with him," Xander suggested before he came to wrap an arm around Eloise's dainty waist to usher her towards the door. I'd hung three little bells around the gilded doorknob, for protection, as we Curiosities believed, and for some sense of normalcy. The jingle made me think of my Shop and the day Apollo walked into it. That first smile. That infuriating charm. That initial darling, I'd hated so much. I would give anything to hear it again.

"Thank you," I whispered to them belatedly.

After the door closed behind them, I slipped off my shoes and climbed onto the bed as carefully as I could.

Sometimes I would tell him about the Palace's latest gossip. Sometimes I would read him the paper or one of his massive astronomy books. Sometimes I would unfold that letter I always kept in my pocket—the letter I'd found on his desk while tidying up his room one day—and ask him how dare he write something so beautifully messy and not tell me about it.

Today, I merely watched him, tracing with my fingertips the lines of his face until I knew them like my own and my fingers could recognize his texture even with my eyes closed. Then, I leaned over him and pressed my ear to his heart.

It was neither slow nor fast, just… steady. Unchanged.

For fourteen days I'd been listening to his heart, yet the sound was still novel to me. I craved a time when his beating heart would no longer be new. Because I would have heard it so many times and learned it so intimately that I would recognize it anywhere, in a different body, in different worlds, in a crowd of a million heartbeats.

"I've never told you this," I whispered with my face pressed on his chest, "but I've always hated stories with unhappy endings. In fact, whenever I would get the sense that a book would end tragically, I put it aside and made up my own ending. If only I could do that now. We're so powerless in real life. We can't do much but endure the tragedies and hope that the next chapter will be a bit more bearable. But I don't want to leave this chapter without you, Apollo. Don't you understand? I cannot bear to know that after everything, I am your unhappy ending." I was sobbing now, shaking and panting for breath. "You told me that I made you feel, but I never got the chance to tell you that you made me feel too. You made me feel things I didn't know I could feel… Gods, I'm begging you. Please. Come back to me. Come back before I lose my heart too. I swear, Apollo, it's going to leave my body. I don't know what's wrong with it. I don't think it wants to belong to me anymore. It wants you. It belongs to you."

"Darling, don't cry. I have a heart now. You don't want to break it already."

I could have sworn that even my tears froze. His heart was no longer steady. It beat fast. As fast as mine.

My head jerked up. His eyes were open—the most remarkable shade of grey. And he was smiling at me.

"Apollo!" I gasped and sobbed harder, the weight of my relief almost unendurable. I threw my body at him, flinging my arms around his neck. He groaned in pain. "I'm sorry. Did I hurt you? Are you okay? I should call—"

He seized my hands to prevent me from leaving. "Just… let me look at you for a moment." He looked at me for several moments. He looked at me until I knew what it felt like to be seen. Then the barest of frowns was carved between his brows. His voice came harsh after days of inactivity, "You didn't go home."

I threaded my fingers through his hair, laughing through my tears. "I am home."

With a ragged sigh, he leaned forward to brush his lips against mine. The kiss was so brief and fragile that it made me tremble.

"How are you feeling?" I whispered.

"Like glass went through me," he rasped as he tried to sit upright. I bent over him and fixed the pillows behind his back, my movements as jolty as the heart in my chest.

He is okay. We're okay. Gods, we're going to be okay.

Apollo fitted his hands around my waist and gently pulled me back. "I'm fine, darling. You don't have to do that for me."

I nodded, wiping my face with the sleeve of my dress.

"Is Isa—"

"In prison. But she is well," I reassured him. "Your parents are far more gracious than I am. I would have killed her for what she did to you."

Apollo laced his fingers through my hair. "Don't say that, darling. We both know you don't mean it."

"I'm so angry," I admitted. "It's eating me alive."

"The anger will pass," he promised, lowering his lips to my forehead. "We will rise above it."

His hand at the nape of my neck started to tremble, and panic flared in my chest at once. "Apollo, are you okay?"

"I'm just… I still can't believe…" He shut his eyes for a moment, breathing so hard that I was afraid he was going to faint. "I could have lost you. I dragged you into this mess and—"

"It wasn't your fault, Apollo," I choked the words out. "Please don't blame yourself for this. Promise me you won't."

He turned his face away from me and gazed toward the window, more reticent and solemn than I'd ever seen him before. Then, in a kind of breathless disbelief, he slipped a hand over his chest.

"Your heart," I muttered. "You have it now."

He glanced at me. "I've had it from the moment I met you, as it seems."

Without knowing how to even begin this conversation now that he was still tender and recovering, I pulled his letter out of my dress pocket and unfolded it carefully between my fingers. A spark of surprise kindled in his eyes. Then a knowing smile.

"I found this at your desk," I said, my voice strained. "Why didn't you give it to me?"

"Darling, I'm full of letters I haven't given you yet," he said.

Stardust began fizzing through my bloodstream. "But…Haven't your feelings changed? Now that I don't literally own your heart, I mean."

A rakish grin crossed his face. "Throwing myself in front of flying glass for you wasn't enough of a statement, huh?"

I scowled. "Don't tease me."

"Don't make it so fun to tease you, darling," he laughed. But I was too scared and overwhelmed to join in the laughter. Instead, I waited for realization to sink in, for him to lower his eyes and tell me that he was sorry, that it was all a mistake, that it was his heart dangling from my neck that had been drawing him to me all along and not love—how could he ever love a girl he knew so little?

"Nepheli?"

"What?"

"Look at me, my darling."

Desperately, I raised my eyes to his.

He slid his hand across my jaw, taking my face in his palm, before silencing my doubts and fears forever. "I don't know if it was stars, destiny, or just incredible luck that you found that necklace and that we found each other. I suppose people always like to think that something or someone up there is rooting for them. We might never know. But what I do know, what I'm certain of with every morsel and fiber of my being is that all these years you kept my heart safe, and I can only hope now that you'll continue to do so. Because it's still yours. You've had it, and you will have it for as long as you want it. I'm yours, for as long as you want me."

How could I ever put it into words? I didn't feel relieved, happy, or even renewed. I felt something that was more akin to awe at how much relief, how much happiness, and how much newness the right words from the right person could bring upon you.

"A year?" I asked, smiling as wide as my face allowed.

"A year," he promised.

"A decade?"

"A decade."

"Forever?"

He smiled the way he did. "Forever."

"Forever is a very long time," I argued.

His eyes cleared—a fresh, cloudless sky. "I disagree."