Page 54 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

She sighed, her head lolling back. “Agathe said that I have magic inside me. Because of the stardust. I’m just trying to figure out what this new magical Nepheli ought to look like.”

As she said it, her hair and skin gleamed pure silver in the firelight. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been besotted with the sky and its many, outlandish mysteries. And now, here I was, looking at a real, breathing star, desperate not to yield to her light.

It was our mortal destiny. We looked at the stars, but the stars did not look at us. And so she sat there, more precious than anything I’d ever known, utterly oblivious to what she was doing to me.

“She looks pretty good to me,” I said in the most noncommittal tone I could manage, covering the look of want in my face with a mask of boredom.

Her eyes hardened, but it wasn’t anger, or resentment, or even spite. It was more raw, more vulnerable, a sentiment I didn’t have the emotional depth to fully comprehend. “She lookssillyto you, Apollo,” she said. “She looks like someone you don’t even respect.”

How powerful she was, really. She was so strong that she didn’t feel the need to pretend that I hadn’t hurt her last night but instead admitted to it openly, in the most human way possible. If I’d had a speck of that dignity in me seven years ago, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now, and Nepheli would still be kingdoms away, safe and warm, and probably much happier.

Tell her that. Tell her everything,my slow-dying sense of morality screamed into the hollow of where my heart was supposed to be.

But reason won me in the end.What’s the point?

I pretended to yawn and lowered my eyes to the flames, looking no more engaged than someone who was about to nod off in the middle of a conversation.“So what happened? With your almost fiancé.”

Nepheli blew out a breath, disappointed at me but unsurprised. “He left Elora to attend university. He wanted me to follow him. That’s why he proposed. He was so sure I was going to accept that he had already talked to the High Priestess. I couldn’t leave an offering at the Temple for weeks without getting dirty looks.”

“Why didn’t you accept?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t leave the Shop. So we just… grew apart. I’m not even sure where he ended up. Kartha most likely,” she considered, and I wasn’t sure if the wistful look on her face was because she missed him or because she regretted not going with him. Either way, I hated it, and I had no idea that I was in a position to hate anymore. Perhaps hatred was a thing of the soul and not of the heart—dark and assiduous, and gut-wrenching. But wasn’t love the same? So maybe my soul had nothing to do with it. Maybe Walder was right. Maybe she could change me. Maybe I was already changed. Maybe she was my only chance at a cure, a chance I shouldn’t miss. Or maybe I had become so good at imitating an actual human being that I couldn’t recognize how hollow I still was.

“Do you still care for him?” I asked casually.

She didn’t even have to think about it. “I will always care for him.”

I could have sworn a jolt of pain went through me—a sort of stabbing sensation in the middle of my chest. “So you regret not leaving with him,” I said, not much of a question in my voice.

She answered anyway, a hesitant whisper, “I don’t know.”

A pang of disappointment jabbed at my ribs, but I managed to keep my face straight. “Do you want to find him?”

Her brows furrowed. “What?”

“If you’re still in love with him, I can help you find him.”

“You’d do that?” she gasped.

If there is one person who deserves all the happiness in the world, it’s you.“Well, I do owe you,” I said matter-of-factly, shrugging my shoulders. “Shop’s damages and all that.”

“And all that,” she echoed, a little bewildered.

“Although, you’re probably better off.”

Her face hardened, but there was something pleased in it too, as though she was secretly glad that I didn’t want her to find her ex-lover. “You don’t know that I am better off without Ryker. You don’t even know him.”

“It has nothing to do with him,” I blurted out. “The problem is with love.”

Nepheli’s fingers slid to her pretty butterfly pendant. She did that a lot in a self-soothing manner every time she was nervous or needed some courage, and I’d grown fond of the look of her twirling it between her fingers. You’d think that after being alone for so long, it would be hard for me to find someone else’s unconscious habits and nervous ticks charming. But it wasn’t hard. I was starved for such tender human things. I was so hungry, I could just lay back now and feast for hours, for days, forever, at her every mannerism, every slight movement of her body.

I was not lonely. Not like Nepheli was. But I was still very much alone. And I was starting to get sick of it.

“What’s so problematic about love?” she argued. “With the right person, I imagine it’s wonderful.”

“Only the beginnings are wonderful. Love…” I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment. A constellation of memories rocketed past the orbit of my thoughts. Smiles and kisses and promises twirled kaleidoscopically behind my closed eyelids. Shouts and accusations and a thousand brokenhow-could-youbleeding out from invisible wounds. “Love dies screaming. Ask me. I would know.”

Before she could say anything, I stood up and strode off, craving the dank, pitch-black night, and to disappear into something as empty and lightless as I was.

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