Page 7 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

Andmostcertainly, I could not die falling from the sky.

“Stop writhing, damn it, I’m going to drop you!” Apollo shouted over the manic howling of the wind as we plunged through the airspace to what appeared to be our inevitable deaths.

“We are already dropping, you bastard!” I cried.

Below, the clusters of trees enlarged rapidly, and the forestland looked like the yawning mouth of a giant monster, ready to swallow us whole.

Apollo wrapped an arm around my neck and pushed my face into his chest, immobilizing me completely. Blindly, desperately, I fumbled behind his back to open my parasol to create some kind of wind resistance, despite knowing that at this mad velocity, the delicate structure would only break.

“Hold on!” he warned as he brought his other hand around my waist, squeezing me so tightly that I began to fear I would die from asphyxiation before I ever reached land again.

I was unable to see anything with my face buried in his shirt, but Ifeltthe collision with the birch trees. Their long, leafy branches—sharper than a set of claws—scraped over our bodies while furious birds crowed at us for the terrible disturbance, a frenzied symphony of flapping wings and snapping beaks.

For a second, we caught on something—then a fierceripandcracksounded, and to my utter dismay, we started falling again.

We fell, and fell, and—bam—the ground at last.

“Fuck, that hurt,” Apollo groaned. After a moment of painful stillness, he slipped his fingers over the sides of my face and pushed back the wild mess of my hair. “You okay, darling? Is anything broken?”

I was immobile from shock. I could not believe what had just happened.

For the love of the sky, how were we not dead?

I tried to feel my body for broken or dislocated bones, but other than the persistent ringing in my ears, the frenetic pounding of my heart, and a series of muscle spasms from the tremendous fall, I was perfectly intact.

But then, in a nauseating blur, fury and despair overtook me, as fast and hard as our collision with the ground. I straddled Apollo with my thighs and began hitting him however and wherever I could. “You bastard! What did you do? Take me back! Take me back now!”

Apollo, in one fluid, alarmingly deft movement, seized my wrists and thrust me to the side. Before I knew it, he was on top of me, pressing me down on the forest floor with his powerful body and pinning my hands above my head.

“What did you want me to do, huh? Abandon you with the creatures?” he snarled.

“How about not kidnapping me!”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” Apollo growled. “Isavedyou.”

“You’rethe reason I needed saving, you lunatic!” Pure, blood-curdling panic gripped me in its claws, and a ragged, tearless sob racked my chest. “How—How are you still alive? I landed on you, and you’re completely intact—oh gods,oh gods. I don’t even know who you are orwhatyou are, and I’m stranded in the middle of nowhere with you!”

“You’re not in the middle of nowhere. You’re in the Dragonfly Forest. And I don’t know who you are either, darling, but you don’t see me screaming at the top of my lungs like a banshee on fire,” Apollo retorted, his voice lowering to a rough rasp.

“It’s not the same! You fell from the sky and lived. I’m just a nobody from Elora.”

“How strange,” he mocked. “I’ve lived twenty-seven years in this world. I’ve traveled from North to South and seen all kinds of peculiar creatures, yet I’ve never, not once, met someone who’s anobody.”

Oh, the bastard really thought himself clever, didn’t he?

I thrashed under him, trying to twist my wrists out of his hold. “Get off me. Get off me now, or you’llwishI was only a banshee.”

Apollo lifted off me at once, muttering something obscene under his breath, and went to grab one of his leather sheaths that currently hung from the lower branch of a birch tree. The opal handle of the dagger was illuminated by the long sunbeams that blazed through the boughs and twinkled like a star amid the greenery.

I stood, smoothed down my skirts, whipped back my hair, and walked straight up to him, determined to get some answers. But when he veered, dagger in hand, I regretted the closeness. More so as he leaned over me to pick a leaf off my hair. I tried to keep still, hating to give him the satisfaction of retreat. But it was hard and almost painful not to cower away because, for all I knew, Apollo Stranger was not even human. I could almost see it—the dark creature skulking beneath his pretty skin. Something boundless and wicked and absolutely lethal.

I clenched my jaw. “I demand to know what you are. How are you still breathing after that fall?”

He looked at me like a disheveled demon, with his smoldering lines, ruffled hair, and steely gaze. “Well, darling, ask any girl you know, and they’ll be happy to tell you just how resilient heartless men can be.”

A handsome Stranger will walk into the Shop today. Do not entrust him with your heart.

I froze, a glacial sense of dread setting deep in my bones.

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