Page 22 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

“I was just trying to cover you with my side of the blanket. It’s really cold tonight,” he bit out, clearly offended. “Gods, Nepheli, what did you think I was going to do?”

To be honest, nothing of this sort.

Surely I wasn’t as seasoned as the Prince of Thaloria, but I was far from naive either. I knew when to be on my guard, and a man who occasionallyforgotto check his moral compass had to be on top of the list of people one should suspect of the utmost impropriety.

“I… Nothing,” I stammered, pulling the covers over my head. “Goodnight.”

Apollo snorted. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping my hands to myself, you know,” he said before adding with just the right amount of scorn to infuriate me, “Besides, you’re hardly so irresistible.”

“Shut up,” I hissed.

Although I couldn’t see it, Iheardthe audacious little smirk in his voice. “Goodnight, Little Butterfly.”

“I said,shut up.”

7

Apollo

Iwoke up in the middle of the night when something feathery tickled under my nose. Realization came to me slowly, like a seaweed rising to the surface of the ocean. Hair. Long, soft hair. I blinked a few times, and there she was—Nepheli, curled inside my arms. Her fingers had dug deep into my back. Her face was pressed into my chest. Her knees were tangled between my own. She smelled of magic and wildflowers, and I felt like basking in the sun.

Something that resembled panic overcame me, for how lovely the pressure of her body was, how comforting it felt to be bathing in each other’s warmth, and how perfectly our limps were locked together, in all the right ways and in all the right places.

Or perhaps all bodies fit like this, and I’d simply forgotten. When was the last time I’d stayed around long enough to sleep the entire night next to a woman anyway? Six years? Five? It was impossible to remember.

I slipped out of the bed as stealthily as I could and threw another log into the hearth to keep the fire going before I stepped towards the one window of the room. The glass was fogged, and I had to rub my shirtsleeve over it a few times to take a look outside. The night was cold, but beautiful. The mountains dreaming beneath their verdant covers in the moonlit distance, the giant trees wavering under the wind, the dragonflies flickering like the lights of a faraway city, the sky rolling out in a buttery, delicious shade of plum, and the stars… well, the stars…

I stole a glance at Nepheli, her silver silhouette aglow in the night. She looked like a star, too. Something you could bestow your most unutterable wishes on. Something you wanted to believe in. Something you knew you couldn’t ever have.

Or at least that was how she looked to a man like me.

I taunted her about it because she was fun to tease, but if I was being honest, truly honest, I envied her life. Her reassuring, steady, slow life with its small curiosities and simple pleasures. I could not remember the last time I’d taken pleasure in anything, yet I could easily picture Nepheli taking pleasure ineverything. A warm cup of tea in the morning, a lazy afternoon nap on her sofa, a chilly night hiding under the covers with her pretty nose stuck in a book, and her clear-water eyes wide with excitement. Her only tragedy was an internal conflict between her twin cravings for curiosity and life and her twin fears of newness and otherness.

She had no idea how ineffably lucky she was to have the option of being new, to hope for change and discovery.

I could never change. To become someone better, you needed theheartto do it.

If I were normal, I would be in pain now. I would feel a delirious sort of pressure on my sternum. I would feel lightheaded from breathing too hard. I would want to scream to the skies:I’m sorry. I was a fool. Please change me back. I made a mistake. I want to change now.And perhaps some god or ancient entity would hear my pleas and deem me worthy of saving after all.

It was ridiculous, wasn’t it? To stand here, wishing to be able to feel pain and despair once again.

But on nights like this one, it was all I could think of.

To have a heart.

8

Nepheli

Sometimes, I had these elaborate, vivid dreams, and when I’d wake up in the morning, I’d be convinced that reality was a dream and that the dream was reality.

I felt exactly like this now, overwhelmed by a dreamlike, upside-down sort of sense.

I was certain that I had opened my eyes to a dream, and in that strange, tender dream, I was trapped. My face was buried in Apollo’s loose undershirt. His huge arms were flung possessively around me, one hand at the small of my back, the other around my neck. His hips were flush against mine, and his knee was tangled between my own. And I was holding on to him too, my fingers deep into his back, making little fists around the fabric of his shirt, as if he’d tried to move away during the night but I’d forbidden him.

I knew I should move, but my body disagreed. The room was cold, and he was so irresistibly hot, like a patch of sunbaked gravel. His heat permeated me to the bone and lulled me back to sleep. For those brief seconds, in that odd yet lovely dreamscape, he wasn’t Apollo Zayra, Prince of Broken Hearts. He was just a boy with rough palms and warm arms, his scent fresh off his chest wrapping me up in notes of woodsmoke and mint. I wished to stay like this forever, basking in the wonderful and almost inexpressible comfort of being held.

But then, I feltsomething. Something thick and hard prodded at my abdomen.

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