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Apollo scanned me from head to toe and huffed out a contemptuous little laugh. “Sure you’ll be, darling. Sure you’ll be.”

3

nepheli

The Dragonfly Forest was as enchanting and peculiar as the stories foretold. There was no sign of the bandits and monsters Apollo had spoken of, but there was still an indescribable, almost transcendent energy shuffling through the air.

The strangeness both exhilarated and frightened me. I must have dreamt a thousand dreams and read a thousand books about places like this one, but dreams and stories were only as vibrant and grand as one’s imagination, and everything here was so much more magical and animated than anything I could have ever dared to imagine.

Mushroom rings sprouted from an unusual, almost cloud-like type of moss, while flowers slid from one color to another in a repetitive, consistent pattern, as though they were the markings of some mysterious, unseen creature. Golden specks floated in the air, and tiny, glinting dragonflies with wings the shape of actual, miniature dragons meddled in between the shrubs and the tall, leafy trees. The trees themselves looked almost sentient, the lenticels of their barks resembling some old spirit’s eyes. Microscopic pixie houses dangled like bird nests from the lower boughs, and day flowers sunbathed on the underbrush, their yellowish petals shrinking and expanding like a pair of anxious lungs. From somewhere between the brambles, I could hear echoes of curious small voices and merry, jingling laughter. And, there, only a few feet away from where we had landed, hanging amid a huddle of saplings, lay my trusty old parasol.

Swiftly, I went to grab it, a silly kind of relief overtaking me.

Apollo groaned. “Just leave it here. We have a long way to go, and we both know that I’m the one who’s going to end up carrying it.”

I glared at him over my shoulder, my fist tightening around the handle’s curve. “No, you will not.”

He noticed my viselike grip and smiled wittily. “Oh, I see now. You’re going to fight monsters with your pink umbrella, aren’t you, Little Butterfly?”

“It is not pink. It’s magenta,” I gritted out. “And it’s a parasol, not an umbrella, you uncultured brute.”

I began plucking the leaves that had gotten stuck into the lacy fabric when a dragonfly came and settled at the pointy tip. Its membranous, dragon-like wings were a stunning shade of green with sparkly, lilac veins, glinting like a layer of dew under the sun. “Hello, little friend—”

“Careful!” Apollo shouted, lunging at me. He knocked the parasol out of my grip and pulled me back to his chest, banding his arms around mine.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed, squirming in his embrace. He kept me trapped against his body for another frantic, heart-throbbing moment, his hot breath teasing along the curve of my neck. Only when the dragonfly stretched its wings and flew away did Apollo relax his hold.

I whirled on him, furious. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m going to say this once,” he bristled. “Don’t ever,evertry to touch a dragonfly again.”

Dread twisted my insides. “Why not?”

“Because you’ll get dragonfly fever and die. Painfully. Very, very painfully.”

My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe I almost diedtwicein a single day. I couldn’t believehedidn’t let me touch it just to get rid of me.

“Come on,” he urged, striding away, “we don’t want nightfall to catch up with us.”

I bent down to grab my parasol before scrambling after him.“Where are we going?”

“There is an inn about—” he considered, examining our surroundings with thinned eyes as if he could discern some sort of difference that I was blind to, “twenty-two miles from here. We’ll rest there for tonight.”

I gaped at him. “You want me to walk twenty-two miles before nightfall?”

He veered to face me, cool and sharp like a blade. “You want to go home, darling?”

“Yes.”

“You want to go home with all of your body parts intact?”

I gritted my teeth. “Preferably.”

“Then do as I say and don’t make me repeat myself.”

I had never, not once, met someone who needed to get slapped in the face more than this man. I knew it was probably wiser to stay on his good side, considering I needed him to get me home and that he had the appropriate build to kill me with his bare hands, but, oh, was it fun to fantasize about.

I breathed through my nose. “But the Shop—”