Page 97 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

I could not believe it. I could not reconcile with it. The first moment he had a body that could die, he made it my armor.

A second of dreadful silence. A second of horrible stillness. Then he opened his lips—“Nepheli”—and blood poured out.

No.

No, no, no, no.

He held on to me, his hands bracketing the sides of my immobile chest, and tried to say something, but he was crumbling, choking on the inflow of blood. “You’re glowing,” he managed before he collapsed at my feet.

Ragged, inconsolable sobs racked my chest. My very soul quaked in brutal pangs of rage and agony and despair—that broken voice inside my head wailing that the man I loved was lost to me forever.

Then, in a white flash of memories, his words settled in. He was trying to tell me something. He was trying to remind me of what stars did best.

They blazed.

Power, deep, internal, and blood-curdling, surged through me. With a raw, visceral scream, I blazed out of my thorny shackles and rocketed through the room, burning, shining, a fallen star spellbound to destroy everything at its passage. Things broke and splintered, my light booming, shaking the room to pieces. A rain of glass hailed over us as the windows cracked and shattered from the outside, the stars in the sky shoving into the room to see me shine.

Isa shrieked and snarled with eyes shut to the starlight and chanted things to no avail, spells bouncing off the star’s opalescence like arrows on an iron shield.

And then, I was on her, shoving her to the floor with my hands wrapped around her throat. “How could you!” I screamed, shaking her violently. She writhed beneath me, clawing at my arms, but the sharp shoots of pain only gave me a horrid, ugly thrill that made my light burn brighter. “Answer me! What did he ever do to you?”

“He took what’s mine,” she hissed.

“Youtook what’smine,” I howled back, my tears falling incandescent, searing and sizzling upon her skin. “You should have known that when stars fall, they burn the ground with them.”

She screamed in agony, thrashing against the silver, blazing droplets. I kept her down by the shoulders and burned her with my tears. The room tried to help her as the vines surged out of the walls and rushed right toward me, only to turn to ash upon contact with my light.

Finally, the magic of the room crumbled completely, and the doors gave out, banging into the walls. Guards, who had either heard the raucous of the windows breaking or Isa’s manic screams, barged inside, and the room stumbled into a flurry of heavy boots, flashing swords, and horrified sighs.

I heaved in relief as I staggered up to my feet, allowing my light to dwindle so they could approach. “He’s hurt. Apollo is hurt—”

But instead of rushing to his aid or seizing Isa, the men came straight at me. I felt like fainting, watching them race toward me. The tilt of the room had an inescapable, nightmarish wrongness. On one side was Apollo, immobile and red. On the other was Isa, in a sick hysteria. She sobbed, huddled in a banged-up corner, and coughed out her accusations: “She tried to kill us! She did this to him!”

In my shock, I didn’t resist as two guards grabbed my arms and forced them behind my back while another prepared a pair of obsidian shackles for me, the only stone in the world that could subdue someone’s magic.

I squirmed and cried out to warn them. I didn’t want to hurt them, but I had no other choice. I would not be imprisoned. I would not let him die and her win. With only instinct and heartbreak to guide me, I summoned the light—the fiery, starlit sensation rising through my bloodstream like a violent tide.

But then—

“Don’t touch her.”

It was barely more than a grunt, a harsh, pained whisper. But it washis. It was his. It was his, and my heart beat again, and my lungs pumped air and the light from my bones hushed into a tender, harmless glow.

“Apollo,” I gasped.

“It was Isa… She did it,” Apollo panted and tried to prop on his elbows, only to slump on the floor again, coughing out chunks of blood.

I wrenched out of the guards’ hold and ran to him, yelling hysterically, “What are you all waiting for? Move! Someone get a physician! Now!”

I did not care about Isa’s howls and curses as the guards forced the obsidian shackles on her. I did not care about her protests and promises of revenge as she was dragged out of the room. I did not listen to the barrage of questions the men hurled at me.

I only fell on my knees next to Apollo and did my best not to look at the back of his shirt, sticky and scarlet, each wound bleeding as avidly and hopelessly as the heart inside my chest.

He groaned as the side of his head dropped on my lap. “I’m so, so sorry, Nepheli.”

“Shhh. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll be fine,” I soothed in a hoarse, cracked voice I barely recognized as my own. I brushed with trembling fingers the wet locks from his eyes. His forehead was pale and beaded with a cold sweat. He was like a handful of stardust, beautiful and half-dead, slipping through my fingers into a moment away from reality.

“I’m so proud of you,” he murmured, his eyes glassy and damp. “My star. You shined.”

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