Page 15 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

“Funny,” he sneered. “And I’m notexiledfrom Thaloria. You shouldn’t believe every piece of gossip you hear about the North. I’m still very close with my family.”

“Then why are you sleeping in a rat-infested inn and not at the Dreaming Palace?”

“It’s called seeing the world, darling. Some people like to leave the comfort of their homes every now and then and have actual interactions with someone other than their cauldron.”

Oh, how I wanted to slap that self-assured smirk off his face!

I wasnotsome unsociable hermit. And even if I was, it was hardlyhisbusiness to judge me for it.

A tiny, vexing voice at the back of my head argued that I too had a tendency to judge people for their way of life, as I constantly complained that no one cared about how uncurious and dull our city had become. But that was different, wasn’t it? The Dreadful Mundane was a sickness, after all.Hewas just being a world-class jerk.

I whirled around, refusing to indulge him in this pointless conversation any longer, and came face-to-face with an utterly exposed brass bathtub on the other side of the room.

Panic spiked up my blood pressure. “Wait—Where are the walls around the bathroom?”

Apollo pointed to the little arched door left from the bed. “The toilet is through there.”

I must have looked absolutely mortified because he raised his brows at me in genuine surprise. “You’ve seriously never been in any sort of inn before?” When I failed to respond, he persisted, “Not even as a child? You’venevertaken a trip?”

“I think we’ve established that I’ve never been anywhere!” I barked at him, my patience spreading thin.

“Might not want to be this loud when announcing to the world how pathetic you are,” he retorted.

For a moment, I honestly tried to see myself through his eyes, and the image hurt me as much as his words. If the rumors about him were just that—rumors—then he really was some worldly prince who spent his days diving into thrilling adventures, charming his way through all manners of people, and gliding through all kinds of places, while I was nothing but an ordinary girl with a funny Shop.

If life was measured in moments of courage, I began to fear that mine was very small indeed.

I looked away, wrapping my hands around my middle. “You really are heartless.”

“If I had acted truly heartless, I would have sold you to these men just to get some peace tonight,” he bit back.

“Then why didn’t you?” I challenged.

His face hardened, and gods, was it a fearsome sight. His eyes had a wildness to them, an absentminded power. He could kill you with just one cold look, and he wouldn’t even know it. “Maybe I will,” he said, point blank. “They’re still downstairs, aren’t they, darling?”

I swallowed my tongue and turned away, trying to push down a sob.

You will not cry. You are not allowed to cry in front of this horrible man.

I could feel his eyes on me, keen and insistent, as though he waited for me to retort something, to taunt him back.

When I failed to say anything, he cleared his throat. “What’s with the hair, anyway?”

On reflex, I reached for the ends of my hair, the silver curls dangling just below my breasts. “What do you mean?”

Apollo shrugged. “I’ve never seen hair like this on a human before, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything on the face of the Realm.”

I sucked in a breath. I had told this story so many times that my voice left me blunt as I explained, “When I was a child, my parents got a large shipment of stardust for the Shop. The cauldron needs it to stay alive. I was playing around with it, and I accidentally swallowed a bit, but thankfully not enough to kill me. It did change the color of my hair, my brows, even my eyelashes, though, from black to silver.” I shrugged, reaching for my pendant. “Everyone always tells me that I would have been pretty if I still had my dark hair. And, I suppose, I do look a bit odd, but… I don’t know. I kind of like myself like this. It feels like the star is a part of me now.”

“They’re just idiots,” Apollo blurted out. My head whirled back to him. He had leaned against the wall and was now fiddling with a short, hunting knife. His cheekbones, to my bemusement, were stained a subtle shade of pink. “I mean, how many people can say they’ve eaten stardust and survived? You’re a miracle. And apparently as resilient as a heartless man,” he added, offering me one of his charming little half-smiles. “You know, considering you fell from the sky and lived.”

His words rumpled me a little, although I tried not to take them too seriously. The star had changed me outwardly, but there had been no previous evidence to indicate that it had also made me stronger than the average human being. But then again, I had never fallen from the sky before. I supposed it was something worth looking into, but what I really wanted to know right now was howhewas made unbreakable, because that must have taken some serious magic.

“Now your turn,” I prodded, tingling with curiosity. “How does one become heartless exactly?”

His smile waned into a thin, stubborn line. “We aren’t doing that, darling.”

“Doing what?”

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