Page 53 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

“Very kind of him, but I’m still full from the muffins. I want to get warm first,” she said, her fingers moving deftly through her hair to weave a long, silver braid. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “You don’t have to wait for me if you’re hungry.”

I folded my arms behind my head and leaned back on the hunched wall. “I’m fine.”

With a tiny groan, she outstretched her legs too, and as the hem of her dress slid up her calves, I noticed that the skin right above her ankles had gone red and almost raw from the friction with her leather boots. At the sight of it, something sank in my chest, like the anxious sensation of falling through a dream. “Why didn’t you tell me your boots were hurting you? We could have stopped.”

“I didn’t want toslow us down,” she clipped, her jaw tight.

Gods, I was such a bastard.“If something hurts you, you tell me. You don’t have to power through the pain.”

“And what would you have done?” she snorted.

“Carried you, for one.”

She glared at me. “I don’t want your hands anywhere near me.”

Of course, she didn’t. I was so remarkably good at being a heartless wanker that this woman would prefer to have her skin scraped raw than spend a second in my arms.

All of a sudden, she froze next to me, her round lips popping open in surprise. “Look,” she whispered as she leaned forward to lower her palm on the dusty patch of ground between the blanket and the bonfire. She brushed and brushed, and there it was: a heart carved into the stone floor, boasting two sets of crookedly scribbled initials in the middle. “Lovers,” she whispered dreamily.

“Idiots,” I argued.

Nepheli rolled her eyes. “Of courseyouwould say that. You’ve clearly never fallen in love with anyone but yourself in your entire life.”

Oh, the irony was just too good.

If I could feel resentment now, I would be choking on it. I would be compelled to confess how I’d once known love as intimately as the heart I had lost. I’d known all its colors and contours. I’d known it like a pilgrim knew his god—and a vicious, hungry, merciless god it was. The kind that craved blood. The kind that demanded sacrifice. Because if I looked back at love now, all I would see were the pieces of myself I had lost to it.

“And you have, darling?” I mocked, my tongue sharp and bitter. “With someone who isn’t fictional, I mean?”

Nepheli scowled. “If you must know, I almost got engaged a year ago.”

My brows shot straight up to my hairline. “You were?”

“Are you seriously so surprised that someone wanted to marry me?” she scoffed, pushing furiously the end of her braid off her shoulder.

“I’m not surprised someone wanted to marry you. I’m surprised they let you go.”

Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut every time I talked to this woman? There was a plan, a script. I was supposed to be acting like the complete and utter wanker I was, not blurting out sweet nothings in the semi-darkness like a lovesick adolescent.

“He didn’t let me go,” Nepheli said, her expression a dichotomy between offense and incredulity. “I did.”

Do not say that this makes more sense. Say something stupid.“A little heartbreaker, aren’t you, darling?”

She smiled coyly. “Feeling fortunate that you don’t have a heart for me to break, Apollo?”

“I’m the luckiest bastard in the world.”

“For not having a heart?”

“For being immune.”

“To love?”

“To you. I’m perfectly immune to you,” I said a little absently, fighting the urge to take that unruly curl that had fallen over her eyes between my fingertips.

Nepheli seemed distracted too, but managed a haughty little, “Otherwise you would have been half in love with me already, right?”

I smirked. “Confidence suits you, Little Butterfly.”

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