Page 82 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

I shrugged him off. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I cannot believe I’m hearing this,” he scoffed. “You’ve spent the past seven years hunting down your heart, wishing, hoping, dreaming this would happen, and now you’re telling me thatit doesn’t matter?”

“My heart won’t return to me just because of love, damn it!” I snapped as something like panic welled up my throat, making it harder and harder for me to breathe. “That’s just a recipe for disaster. You know how I can be. You know how easily I can change. One moment I’m in control of it and I’m thinking straight, and the next I do all the wrong things or say all the wrong things, and someone always gets hurt. And I will not hurt her. I will not be the one to break that woman’s heart. In fact, if anyone ever breaks her heart, I will hunt them down and kill them with my bare fucking hands if I have to.”

Dad gaped at me. “You love her.”

“For fuck’s sake, you can’t love someone you hardly know,” I growled. “This isn’t a fairytale.”

“What nonsense is this?” he demanded. “Love doesn’t have a timeframe. You should know by now that love tends to be strongest when it is the most unreasonable. I fell in love with your mother from the moment—”

“The moment she marched into the middle of your training session and demanded you show her how to properly use a sword because she refused to be the kind of Queen that could not fight her own battles, I know. I’ve heard the damned story about a hundred times,” I bit out.

“Do not disrespect our story, son,” Dad said somberly.

Guilt crawled beneath my skin. “See? One moment we’re having a nice conversation, and then I’m acting like a complete fucking wanker. I cannot do this, Dad. I cannot—”

He took my shoulders again, shaking me a little harder this time. “Breathe,” he ordered, and I tried. “That’s it, one more time.”

I breathed in and out. Again and again. But it was pointless. Something had packed down my sternum. A pain, almost. An agony.

“I’ve never met anyone like her,” I panted and started pacing up and down the balcony like a madman. “She’s insufferable, really. She’s frustrating and stubborn and never listens to me. She’s quick to judge and even quicker to take offense—I swear that woman burns like ale on fire. I’m telling you, she makes me insane. Worse. She makes me murderous. If a man evenlooksin her direction, I want to kill him. What’s up with that, huh? And she’s so… so…” I grunted. “Perfect. Surely someone can’t be perfect. That’s just the insanity talking, right?”

“She’s perfect for you,” Dad said with a smug little smile on his face that actually managed to enrage me even more. “That’s all that matters.”

“I can never give her the love she deserves. I invited her to stay, but I understand now that it was a mistake.Anothermistake. Let’s say she does stay, not for me but for reasons of her own, then what? What happens then?”

“You tell her how you feel and pray she feels the same.”

The pressure in my chest convulsed and expanded. “But it is not enough! It is not enough that I care! It is not enough that I see, understand, desire her! She deserves to beloved. Wholeheartedly.”

Trumpets exclaimed from inside the ballroom, probably announcing Mom’s arrival.

Dad stepped out of the balcony, nodding for me to follow.

The room’s sky had transformed into a midnight dream: dark blue clouds, bright constellations, and a silvery full moon. The prism chandeliers had dwindled to a candlelit glow, and the heavy draperies had been exchanged for gauzy, wraithlike curtains. Rectangular tables had been set up along the corners of the room, overflowing with golden plates of food, fountains of sparkling wine, and tall vases with exuberant bouquets of white roses and blue hydrangeas.

The orchestra had assembled and was ready to perform as the court gathered in the center dressed in the night’s hues: blues, purples, blacks, and silvers. And of course, my mother was already with a glass in hand, making a toast, smiling for miles while her eyes hunted for me in the crowd. She said something, and they all laughed. But I could not listen. I could hardly keep myself upright as I finally spotted Nepheli in a corner across the room, talking animatedly with a Lady of the Court.

The magic of the room waned before her, like the sun at dusk yielding to the stars to let us lowly creatures know that it was time to dream. What was it about the stars that always made us dream? We looked upon the sky every night, and instead of seeing a graveyard of celestial objects, we saw beauty and possibility. Perhaps it was our nature. We were bodies of light, and we couldn’t help but worship the things that guided us through the darkness.

So how could I resist?

In all my life, I had never seen anything so beautiful. So unreachable. So easy to love and so hard to possess.

She was wrapped in a midnight-blue gown, the garment cinching in that perfect curve of her waist before unraveling into a long bouffant skirt. Her shoulders were bare, save for the delicate puff sleeves that fell on her upper arms. Blue butterflies trailed her neckline—real ones, fluttering delicately with their glittering wings. Mother’s work, no doubt, to match Nepheli’s pendant, the silver chain aglow on her clavicle.

To think that I had tasted that spot on her neck was both a curse and a blessing. I’d never been very respectful of the gods, but in the lines and curves of her body, I knew there was faith to be found.

The other woman said something, and Nepheli laughed harder. Her head tipped toward the ceiling, her eyes sparkled with amusement, her loose silver curls trickled down her shoulders like all the secret wishes the mortals had bestowed on the sky.

Then, somehow, she looked straight at me. Our eyes collided, fast, hard, and brutal, like planets out of orbit, and I could only hope my face didn’t betray the magnitude of my longing.

“Whatever you feel about her,” Dad said quietly, “she feels the same.”

“What are you talking about?” I whispered.

“The way you look at each other,” he said. “She knows about your curse. She knows all the volatile, shameful parts of yourself. You think you’ll hurt her with your darkness, and here she is, looking at you like you’re the sun.”

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