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“Please,” Isa implored. “Please tell me the truth for once. Tell me you’re not using this girl to break the curse. I know what Walder told you. Love breaks all curses. But damn it, Apollo! Making someone fall in love with you just to break your curse is too cruel. Even for you.”

Making someone fall in love with you just to break your curse—

I jolted sideways and bumped into the marble pedestal to my left. The porcelain vase atop it staggered and shattered on the ground in countless smithereens. The book under my arm followed as my hands flew up to my mouth in shock.

“What was that?” Apollo’s gasp came from inside the room.

For a second, I stood perfectly still, on the edge of confusion, watching their long shadows slip in and out of the light.

Then fear hit me—hard and fast, like a slammed door.

Then adrenaline.

And then, I ran.

I ran as if my life depended on it. I ran as if I were trying to escape the clutches of a terrible dream where the whole world was upside down and everything my eyes saw was nothing but a cruel illusion. As if by running until every little mechanism of my body strained and throbbed and ached I could snap myself into a less horrid reality.

Please let it be a dream. Please let me wake up now.

Tears welled up in my eyes, spinning everything around me into a haunted dream space, the manor’s darker, more sinister twin closing in on me with its towering walls and its daunting endlessness. But I could not stop. I could only hear my heart ripping from my chest as violently as my boots were stomping on the granite. I could not think of slowing down or where I was going to go. All I could think was,of course. Of course, this was why Walder kept pushing Apollo and me together. Of course, this was why Agathe was trying to convince me to stay in the North. And like an idiot, I’d believed all of their talk about friendship and belonging and reaching out. Gods, how they must have laughed at me. Silly, ignorant,desperateNepheli.

Was Apollo pushing me away at Walder’s just another trick? And his confession last night? Was it premeditated too? Another manipulation? The cursed prince who wanted to keep me at a safe distance but couldn’t resist telling me how he really felt?

Oh, how tragically romantic.

And I’d fallen for it like a fool.

Cold air whipped into my lungs, and as I blinked the tears away, I realized that I’d already left the manor behind. The star inside me pulsed like a second heart, fueling me with such force that it became impossible for me to stop running. Even as my limbs burned and my lungs collapsed and my heart bruised inside my ribcage, I could not resist my descent into the yawning mouth of the forest.

A fog, thick like cotton, swept over my path. The ground beneath my boots cracked and crumbled like dry land. The wind lashing past me smelled of loam and rot. The brambles, sharp like talons, reached for my ankles and scraped at my calves. Above, the trees outstretched, shot out into the sky, the clouds rolling out bruised, black and blue and purple, the stars peering in between like the gleaming eyes of a celestial beast.

I could have sworn I heard murmurs and saw things—deadly, horrid things—glinting amid the thorny shrubs. But I was more scared of the monster I had left behind to turn back around.

What if the fairies had been right? What if Apollo was planning to do something awful to me? There were certain magical practices that required the sacrifice to be willing in order for them to work. What if this was the case? What if there was some kind of ritual and Apollo was planning on making me love him before ravaging my idiot’s heart?

If I were a heartless monster, I would choose someone like me too. Someone easy to manipulate. Someone who was friendless and inexperienced. Someone no one would look for, at least not in time.

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.

I ran faster and faster until I was only instinct and fury interrupted by cleaving sobs.

And then—“Nepheli! Wait! Stop!”

My foot caught on an uprooted tree, and I tripped and fell forward on my hands and knees. A tremendous gasp tore off my chest as I fought for breath, the act so painful that fresh tears swelled in my eyes.

“Nepheli!” Apollo shouted. His hands, large and firm, seized me around the waist and pulled me up to my feet. “Darling, are you hurt? Did you scrape your knees?”

“Don’t touch me!” I choked out, staggering around. “Don’t you ever touch me again!”

I wiped my tear-stained face on the sleeve of my dress, trembling from fear and exhaustion, and the permeating cold.

In the blue-black blade of the night, Apollo looked like a god. A dark one. A cruel one. The kind that ate hearts and bled his victims’ heartbreak. The kind that was as rotten on the inside as devastatingly beautiful was on the outside. His face was part darkness and part moonlight, and his eyes were harsh and wild, almost inhuman. He had never looked so much like him—the Prince of Broken Hearts.

“Did you plan it?” I demanded, a sound etched between anger and despair pushing at the back of my throat. “Did you bring those creatures into my Shop just so you could have an excuse to drag me into your kingdom and make me fall in love with you? After all, everyone here knows you. You had to seek a woman from another part of the Realm.”

Apollo kept perfectly still as the wind rampaged through his hair and the moonlight cut his face in two. “If I wanted you in love with me, then why push you away at Walder’s? Why not seize the opportunity?” he argued. “Come on, Nepheli, you’re smarter than this.”

“Oh, now I’m smart?” I snarled. “I thought I was just another silly little girl.”