Page 98 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

Don’t leave me, I wanted to beg. “Don’t speak,” I only said. “Don’t strain yourself. The physician is coming.”

My eyes drifted to the gaping double doors, then to the shattered windows, their frames dangling, bared, and crooked, like broken bones. The stars outside twinkled, watching down on us with bated breath.

Please, I prayed.Please, please, please, save him. Please don’t take him from me so soon.

“Nepheli,” he muttered.

I looked down. He was grasping at his chest. Tears, his first tears in seven years, fell from his eyes and rolled over the sides of his face. “Nepheli, my heart beats so fast,” he said.

And closed his eyes.

33

Apollo

My heart was beating again. It was beating for her.

She put her hands on either side of my face, and the world dissolved. There was only her, holding my bleeding body in her arms with her light shining over me like a glorious constellation falling into place.

There was pain too. But the pain was not as unbearable as I’d once believed it to be.

How strange it was. After all this time, I regained my heart, only to lose it again. To her.

It’s been yours all along. It will always be yours.

34

Nepheli

The clouds were a melancholic blue. As I walked past window after window on the long, familiar corridor that led to Apollo’s bedchamber, the sky outside seemed to grow denser, each frame darker, as though the sun was setting instead of rising. I wondered if perhaps the sky felt the same kind of wrongness as me.

“Nepheli!” A male voice called out to me, urgent and a little exasperated, as if he’d requested my attention more than once already.

I stopped in my tracks and turned, feeling both numb and aching, anxious and inert.

“Ryker,” I realized as his tall, lean silhouette enlarged at his approach. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

He was dressed for a journey, with a long half-cape draping over one shoulder and a large rucksack over the other. “Hello, Nepheli. I was actually looking for you.”

I shook my head, surprised. “You’re leaving your apprenticeship already?”

“No, I’m just going to visit my parents for the Spring Festival in Elora.”

Something flipped inside my stomach. Of course, it was the Spring Festival. Of course, life was still moving forward, people were still celebrating, the sun was still rising in the mornings, and the sky was not growing darker at dawn. The sky was the same. I was the one who looked at it differently.

It hadn’t been that long—fourteen days since the last time the sky had looked normal to me—yet it felt as though it’d been years, decades, a standstill moment in time.

He was healing, and I was patient. I was told to show patience. But patience was a period of eternity for the one who waited.

Thea—wonderful, kind, generous Thea—had tried her best these past few days to distract me with magic. But what would have once made me shimmer with happiness now brushed me with indifference. She was helping me practice my summoning technique, but no matter how many times I was able to conjure starlight between my fingertips, I could not feel any contentment, let alone joy. I didn’t know how to feel joy in the same world in which he was suffering.

Ryker stared at me intently, waiting for my response. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself to smile. “Give your parents my best, will you?”

I went to leave, but he put his hands on my shoulders. “Nepheli.” He took a deep breath, as if he needed to give himself some courage, before reassuring me gently, “He will be okay. And you will be okay too. Just—”

“Be patient?” I clipped, averting my eyes.

He searched for them regardless. “Don’t lose your hope. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps I don’t know you as well as I thought I did. But to me, you’ll always be the most ineffably bright and optimistic woman in the entire world. Yes, the world isn’t as beautiful and romantic as you thought it was, but that doesn’t mean you should cease believing in all the things that have made you who you are. I understand that your journey to Thaloria has changed you. I know you want to be new. I know because I felt exactly the same when I first got here. But don’t disregard the girl you once were for the woman you are now. She was perhaps a little naive, a little softer, but she still deserves to be a part of you.”

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