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Gingerly, without exhaling a single breath, I turned around. “What?”

I thought he was going to apologize to me.

I thought he looked perfectly ashamed. Perfectly alone. Perfectly heartbroken.

Howsillyof me, indeed.

“Be ready at dawn or I’m leaving you behind,” was all he said, cool and collected, and extraordinarily heartless.

I clutched the doorknob in my trembling hand. “For someone who has seen so much of the world, you really are terribly small, ApolloStranger.”

16

Apollo

Apiece of advice: you should never, ever drink wine on a mostly empty stomach, and certainly not if said wine is afae thing.

But what was worse than the splitting headache, the churning stomach, and that gods-awful sweet tang that wouldn’t leave my mouth was that nothing about last night had been done drunkenly. No, I’d been plenty aware of my actions. And their consequences.

I began to understand the true power of words the first few months after the curse. It became the easiest thing in the world for me to hurt the people I loved without even realizing that I was doing it. A curt reply, a piece of unsympathetic advice, an absentminded murmur to a serious question, or simply saying nothing at all. Imagine being so powerful that even your absence could destroy someone—that was how obliterating words were.

And Nepheli needed to hear them. She needed to understand just how heartless I was before she started hoping for my friendship… or worse.

Tell me you’re terrified of hurting someone. Of becoming the heart-eating monster the papers love to write about. Tell me we can’t be friends because I have a heart and you don’t, and we both know what this means.

Of course, she’d seen right through the act. I didn’t expect anything less from Nepheli Curiosity. But the words hurt her nonetheless, and that was all that mattered. She needed to hate me. She needed not to stare up at me, wine-dazed and expectant, wondering about my mouth on hers.

I’d wanted to kiss her too. I’d wanted to do terrible, wicked, marvelous things to her, and gods help me, I’d been closer than ever to losing control.

She was so, so beautiful. The way she’d lain back on that bed with the slit of her dress billowing off her thighs, her pale skin flushed, and her wine-stained lips slightly parted was almost devastating to watch, knowing I couldn’t ever have her. But her beauty was also so much more than skin and shape. She was beautiful for the way she talked about the things that excited her. She was beautiful for wanting to give someone like me a chance. She was beautiful for the way she craved companionship but was too scared of not being good enough for it—ironic how it was always the best people who were worried about not being good enough.

And Nepheli was more than just good.

Nepheli was a star. She affected others like that. Instantly, in the second of a glance. You looked at her, and you felt her softness blazing down on you, filling you to the bone. Starlight.

I stood on the silent doorstep of the cottage five minutes before dawn, wishing she would not come. Walder could help her get home, or I could send someone to escort her once I reached Thaloria. She was a grown woman. She could manage on her own after that. It’d be better this way.

It was impossible, I knew, but something like guilt swept over me at the thought of leaving her at last night’s words, harsher now in the morning light and the brutal sobriety.

I stared at the rolling hills that surrounded the cottage, swimming in yellow-and-violet wildflowers, with a tireless litany playing through my head,Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come.

She came. Dressed in a blush-pink cotton dress, with her curls loose and a leather rucksack dangling from her back. I hoped she had taken that silver dress with her. Gods knew the image of her in that dress would haunt me for a long, long time. The generous curve of her breasts. The slope of her hips. Her soft thighs peering through the gauzy material. And those sparkly hairpins—how I’d imagined myself picking them off one by one until her silver curls unraveled and I could freely brush my hands through them.

Nepheli passed under the little archway of the door, cold and distant, and clearly exhausted, her under-eyes bearing the purple stains of a sleepless night. “I’m surprised you waited,” she clipped, cheeks flushed.

“Give me that,” I said as I went to take the bag from her.

She slipped away, hissing under her breath, “I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own bag.”

“Just hand it over, Nepheli.”

“Why?”

Your back will hurt.“You’ll slow us down.”

A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Fine,” she bit out, shoving the bag against my chest.

“Well, good morning,” Walder emerged at the door, still sleep-ruffled in his long blue robe.