Page 58 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

I wanted to obey, but my eyelids had melted, and like candle wax on paper, my eyelashes were glued together.

With incomprehensible difficulty, I forced my lips apart and felt as though I breathed out a lump of fire. “Apollo… I think…dragonfly fever...dying,” was all I was able to mumble.

“No one is dying,” Apollo growled and ran faster, so fast that I could only hear the hiss of air as he pulled it into his lungs. “Look, Little Butterfly. Look, we’re here. You’re going to be okay. You’ll go home tomorrow. I promise you, darling. I promise you.” He sounded as manic and incoherent as the swirl of my thoughts. Words slowly lost their meaning. There was only the fever eating at every part of me.

“Isadora!”Apollo’s voice came loud and broken, and my eyes ripped apart.

The first thing I saw through the white-hot blur of my vision, was a granite staircase bedecked with ivy and yellow moss leading to giant double doors, the glossy black surface looking like a portal to another world. Above, the setting sun blazed garish and cruel. Blood-red sweeps of clouds. A wildfire of a sky. And Apollo on his knees, leaning over me, panting and wild, his skin gleaming with sweat. He placed me down on the mat of moss and pounded his fists on the door. “Isadora! Isadora open the door!”

The door opened, but my consciousness fell shut.

???

“You said fifteen minutes.”

“I said it would takeaboutfifteen minutes.”

“Are you sure you gave her the right antidote?”

“Apollo Zayra, you did not just ask me that!”

I had a hard time believing that only fifteen minutes had passed, for I felt as though I’d been awakened from a week-long dreamless slumber.

My muscles were stiff and heavy, my skin was clammy and cold, and my eyes had trouble adjusting to the light as it blazed down from…Was that a glowing caterpillar that dangled over my head?

I blinked a few times and realized that it was only a caterpillar-shapedlight. I lay there for a few seconds on what felt like a velvet couch and just stared at the odd ceiling light, devastated by a dead-butterfly-floating-on-the-surface-of-a-pool kind of feeling.

Finally, I managed to bring a hand to my clavicle, expecting to feel the dragonfly’s mark, but the skin was smooth and empty under my fingertips. For a moment, I panicked, thinking I’d lost my pendant, before I remembered blearily that I’d tucked it in my dress pocket earlier. I released a relieved breath between my teeth, and with all the strength I could siphon from my groaning bones, I pushed on my palms and sat up on the fainting couch.

It took some effort to spot Apollo through the cheerful chaos of the unfamiliar room. The place was crawling with curiosities. Glimmering vials filled with liquids of every color imaginable, pans and pots, wands, and measuring cups were sprawled all over the floral carpets and the green wooden furniture, some even dangling from the caterpillar ceiling lights.

Apollo and the girl—his cousin probably—kept muttering furiously to each other with their backs turned on me.

I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles, swallowed down the horrible tangy taste in my mouth, and cleared my dry as sandpaper throat. “Um, hello?”

“You see!” the young woman exclaimed, swiveling on her heel. “Fairydust, ginger root, and a dollop of wasp honey. It always does the trick!”

Apollo’s grey eyes fell on me like a cold shower. It was a different kind of coldness than his casual indifference, though. His jaw was tight, his brows bunched, his mouth pulled into a rigid, downward line. “You okay?” he rasped.

I brushed a few damp locks away from my face and managed a nod. “I…” I wasn’t sure what to say. I was nonplussed, shaken. He had saved my life. Well, theantidotehad saved my life, but if Apollo hadn’t gotten me here in time…

The girl got right into my sphere of vision, commanding my attention. She didn’t look older than twenty-five, delicate-framed, with an open, heart-shaped face. She had Apollo’s coloring; bronze skin and two long braids of thick dark hair, but her eyes were big and gentle in a lovely shade of hazel, unlike Apollo’s feline grey-blue eyes that always struck you with a sense of debauchery.

“Thank you,” I finally breathed out. “I am eternally grateful to you. Whatever you gave me saved my life.”

“Oh, don’t mention it! It happens all the time. I got stung by a dragonfly twice this month. Apollo is just being dramatic. I’m Isadora, by the way, but friends call me Isa,” she said all in one breath in a high, mellifluous voice.

Isadora Zayra, as Apollo had explained to me during our little picnic earlier today, was his uncle’s one and only daughter. Prince Sirus, the Queen’s older brother, died a few years ago from a major heart attack, leaving Isadora not only the estate but also his title and position in the court. But according to Apollo, Isadora preferred leading a quiet, secluded life here in the Dragonfly and only visited the Palace on exceptional occasions.

I’d wondered if it was dangerous for a human woman to live alone in this wild beast of a forest, but Apollo had assured me that Isadora had plenty of magic in her veins—a gift from her witch mother, who had tragically died in childbirth—to render the manor impenetrable to all kinds of intruders.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, treading across the overflowing space to an oval table where a large cookie jar, a ceramic carafe, and a few empty glasses were lined next to a basket filled with tiny heart-shaped vials. She filled one glass with water, put a couple of cookies on a napkin, and came to offer them to me. “Here, it will help with the antidote’s aftertaste.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Apollo interjected, still standing in the furthest alcove of the room with his cape drawn back and his arms folded tightly before his chest.

“Yes, I’m just a bit rattled. The fever was…horrible. I thought I was going to die,” I admitted with a shudder.

Apollo flinched as though I’d said something to offend him. I was too exhausted to ask about it, so I merely raised the glass to my parched lips and drank the whole thing in three long gulps.

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