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I slipped with more stealth than I knew I had in my body right in front of him. “You can’t fight it.”

His nostrils flared. “Can you please not feel bad about the soul-sucking demon?”

I’m not worried about the demon, you idiot brute!“It’s sleeping. We can sneak past it,” I argued. “You said it yourself. The manor’s location adds an hour to our journey, so we certainly can’t afford to waste precious daylight just because you want to swing your sword around.”

“It’s blocking our way,” Apollo growled.

“Give me that,” I muttered, stealing the sword from his hand.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he seethed.

I ignored him and pressed my back against the side of the entrance, then plunged the sword into the sunbeams that streaked over the wolf and into the cave. The shiny blade caught the sun, and as I angled it upward and left, the light bounced off the metal surface and onto the demon’s back.

“Are you trying to infuriate it?” Apollo snarled.

“I’m trying to make it shift its position,” I bit back, and sure enough, a low grunting sound escaped the creature. Sluggishly, it raised its head and looked around with half-opened eyes, its torn muzzle twitching. Then, with a strenuous push, it lifted its wounded body a few inches off the ground and crawled over the underbrush to a shadier spot.

I lowered the sword and veered around to shoot a triumphant grin at Apollo. “See?” I chirped, handing him back his weapon. “Violence isn’t always the answer.”

“It will attack us the moment we step outside,” Apollo decided. “Or it will follow us and—”

“Apollo,” I stopped him with a sigh. “It’s dying. It’ssuffering.”

“It’s a demon. It doesn’t have a heart to suffer,” he said, and there was something so raw and stripped-down in his voice that the words pierced right through me. How was it possible that he could sound like that, given his heartless state? His face looked harder than I’d ever seen it before, not hard like stone but hard like glass—the kind of hardness you could so easily shatter.

“That doesn’t mean we should be cruel to it,” I said, my voice patient.

Apollo looked away, working his jaw. “Fine. But have the blade I gave you in hand, don’t just throw it in your bag.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

We gathered the last of our things and ventured carefully out of the cave with breaths drawn and weapons at the ready.

The creature did not move, attack, or follow us after all. And Apollo seemed almost angry about it, convinced that something as heartless deserved nothing better than an unkind, inglorious end.

18

Nepheli

After a long but uneventful day’s journey, with only a small break to have Walder’s dinner for lunch under the generous shade of an elm tree, I was certain that the hardest part of this impromptu adventure was over.

Tonight, we were going to get some proper rest in a secure location, and tomorrow morning we would be in Thaloria. Apollo and I would say our goodbyes, and I would go home and finally sit down to make some serious decisions about my life.

I could have never imagined that in an enchanted forest occupied by evil fairies, demonic wolves, and heartless men, the greatest agony would befall me from something as small and insignificant as a dragonfly.

The little thing didn’t mean to hurt me. It had a broken wing and could not fly straight. It staggered through the air. I barely saw it coming. It simply crashed on me—bam—right on my collarbone.

The pain was sharp and instant, like getting stung by a bee. But more than the unexpected ache, it was the sudden, shocking rush of fear that made me cry out as the recollection of Apollo’s warning slammed into me as fast and hard as that injured dragonfly:Don’t ever, ever touch a dragonfly…You’ll get dragonfly fever and die.

Apollo heard my cry and veered. “What—”

I met his eyes, dazed and shocked. Then his gaze dropped to my clavicle, where the dragonfly had left a searing red mark. I watched him, immobile with horror, as he lunged forward and wrapped me in his arms just before the whole world fumed and tipped to its side. And then I couldn’t see anything at all. My eyes fell shut. My body slipped off my hold and tumbled into a pit of fire. A shockwave of heat rushed through me, brutal and delirious.

Distantly, I could hear Apollo screaming while shaking me violently—Nepheli! Nepheli! Nepheli!—but I could not respond. My tongue became a furious flame in my mouth. I was burning, bubbling, sizzling from the inside out so rapidly and intensely that I thought the star in my veins was the sun itself rising on the horizon of my body.

“Nepheli, please, please don’t close your eyes, darling. We’re almost there,” Apollo was panting with each word as he ran, ran, ran through the forest with me bundled in his arms, a breathing ball of fire. I frightened myself thinking I would burn his hands, blazing as I was, and I tried to push out of his embrace, but it was pointless. The flames, licking me from the inside, had turned my limps to ash. I was crumbling, piece by piece.

“Please, Nepheli, I beg of you. Open your eyes. Come on, darling, open your eyes for me.”