Page 31

“Put your arms around my neck and don’t let go again, okay?”

The moment I did, he started running so fast that the air whipped over us with a near-unnatural force. Until all I could hear were his labored breaths and the hiss of the wind, manic and reverberating, as though we were speeding through a large tunnel. I knew it had only been minutes, but it felt as though hours had passed by until Apollo let me down to my feet again.

The blindfold was dragged away from my face, and light blazed over my eyes like a theater’s spotlight, white and troublingly bright. My senses hummed back to life as I took everything in: the shadowy embrace of the forest, the impenetrable canopy of branches, and Apollo, bending down to grasp his knees with the curvy handle of my parasol dangling like a sword from the strap of his baldric.

I didn’t know if I wanted to thank him or slap him across the face.

“You okay?” he panted at the ground.

Tremulously, I brought my fingers to the tender skin at the curve of my neck. The spot he’d bitten was still throbbing with pain, and I had no doubt it already bore an ugly bruise. “I can’t believe you bit me!”

Apollo gritted his teeth, red-faced and breathless. “Pain was the only thing that could snap you out of the fairies’ influence. I could never hit you—”

“So you bit me!”

“Yes, damn it!”

“And you couldn’t have bitten my wrist, you heathen?”

Apollo straightened up and growled at me like a beast indeed. “I just saved your life, and this is what you have to say to me?”

“Saved my life? Saved my—You’rethe reason my life was in danger to begin with! Iwassafe. I was home, and I was happy and—”

—and I was blissful in my ignorance, not knowing how cruel and unlovely magic could be.

An inexplicable, almost irrational sense of grief befell me, as though I’d lost something very important. Perhaps my idea of what curiosity actually looked like beyond magical trinkets and ink on paper.

Apollo had been right. Curiosity was dangerous.Magicwas dangerous. Perhaps the Dreadful Mundane hadn’t come to Elora to strip it of its color, but to save us from such cruelty. Perhaps it wasn’t a sickness, but a blessing.

“Nepheli?” Apollo insisted, his tone a perfect dichotomy between calm and urgency. “What did the fairies tell you?”

I averted my eyes, busying myself with dusting the dirt and moss off my skirts. “Nothing.”

“You were so scared,” he pressed. “I don’t understand. I’ve crossed Fairyland many times, but nothing like this has ever happened before. They’ve tried to tempt me, but that’s all. They only ever promise sweet nothings to me.”

“Of course, you idiot!” I exploded, my blood quickening with anger. “You’refearless. You don’t have a heart to feel scared, truly scared. Of course, their only option is to toy with your desires.”

His throat bobbed. His eyes softened. “I should have realized—”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my favorite man in the whole wide Realm,” someone drawled in a low, husky voice, and we both spun to our left.

A little cobblestone bridge arched over a viridescent pond, and at one of its low, ornamental pillars, a stunning fairy sat. Her skin was the color of a sunset, her hair was the pink of freshly kissed lips, and her eyes were catlike, yellow, and curious. A pair of veiny, translucent wings flapped rapidly behind her back, so big and wide they filtered the sun, breaking the light apart in countless crystal-hued strips.

She crossed her long legs, and the high slit of her gauzy dress parted tantalizingly as she cocked her head to the side with a coy little smile on her lips. “Apollo,sweetheart,” she said wittily, fully aware of the irony of calling a man without a heartsweetheart, “what great offering have you brought me this time?”

11

Nepheli

Offering? Why wasIan offering?

Very carefully, I turned to face Apollo. He was, as always, on the edge between nonchalance and flirtation, one brow raised, the corner of his mouth slightly tugged up, and his eyes narrowed into two slits of grey skies. “She’s not the offering, Trix, and you know it,” he said to the fairy, almost endearingly. He smoothed back his cape and hauled out of his pocket a large, gleaming ruby.

I gasped in simultaneous relief and astonishment.

Who carried uncut jewels in their pockets while traveling across the world?

But then I remembered him saying that he’d crossed Fairyland before, so he’d been anticipating this.