Chapter 6 Three Choices #3
“Aloe. A plant with healing properties. Particularly effective against burns. It’s likely a key component of that salve.”
“That feels lovely,” she said. Then she bit her lip. “Are you warming your fingers on purpose?”
Good God he was.
He grasped her other hand, pulled her closer, and applied the liquid to that palm. He traced the lines of her palm, the length of her fingers.
“Mm… Chester? I’m well now.” She tugged her hands.
He kept them. “Hm?”
“I’m well now.” She tugged them harder, and when he released her, she grabbed the candle and tinder again. “I’ve an idea.”
“Tell me.” But he was still thinking of her hands. Small yet capable, strong yet elegant. “Tell me about this idea.”
She turned to the candle. “Bring up your heat image, then hold your hand over the flame, the gold disk on your palm. Use your hand as a burner. Your imagination will bring forth your internal heat, but the candle flame will keep it steady, a makeshift forge.”
“You may be asking too much of me.” But he fumbled in his pocket for the gold disc, which he placed in his palm and held high above the flame, closing his eyes.
The image he sought appeared with no effort. It had been there just before she’d burned her palms—Sybil Grant in the sunlight, her hair bright strands of molten gold.
“Now lower your hand,” she whispered.
He did. Lower. And lower. And—
He stopped. The smallest tickle danced against the back of his hand as the woman in his mind danced in the sun. Naked. The heat consumed his hand now.
“It’s working,” she said, excitement climbing her whisper louder. “Shape the gold. Any shape. Keep the heat. Work with it.”
Any shape….
Woman. Naked. Dancing.
He opened his eyes, found hers on him. Blue flames danced there, and blue flames danced between them. The candle was melting quickly beneath the conflagration bursting from its wick.
He was doing it.
The fire was everywhere now—up his arm and down his spine, pooling in his groin and tingling down his legs. He was hot and hard as metal, and the heart of the heat was four hands tangled around a lump of gold.
He leaned toward the flames, toward her. His lips, slightly parted, tasted smoke. He wanted to taste her lips, also slightly parted and berry pink.
A cry, a scream.
They jolted apart.
The fire between them died a quick death.
The one above them blazed, feeding on the drying plants, and smoke streamed around them, clouding up the air.
“Water!” screamed a woman from the doorway.
Two men appeared carrying buckets, and Apollo rushed an arm around Miss Grant’s waist, crashed her to him, his hand cradling her head against his chest as water rained down on them from emptying buckets.
With a sizzle, the drying plants stopped burning. Miss Grant coughed against his chest, and he held his sleeve over his nose. Thick smoke made it hard to breathe.
Lady Guinevere stood in the doorway, murder in the set of her lips, in the fists on her hips. A bird, a large raven circled around the room, squawking.
“What is happening in here?” she demanded.
“Practice?” Miss Grant offered, pushing out of his embrace.
Oh God, that made him want to laugh, but you didn’t laugh in the face of an infuriated lady.
“This is not a forge!” Lady Guinevere shouted. She inhaled deeply, didn’t even cough through the smoke, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sybil. I do like you, but I thank Flora you are leaving tomorrow. Now clean this up.” She slammed the door.
After the walls stopped vibrating, Miss Grant groaned. “We almost burned her shop down.”
“We’ll practice outside next time. In the alley?”
“There will be no next time.” She clasped her hands behind her back.
“You’re… leaving?” The potion mistress had said that, hadn’t she. “Where? Why?”
“Wherever my brother deems safest. I told you that would happen.” She reached up and began to pull down charred plants and twine.
Leaving. If she was leaving, lessons were over. The only power he’d acquire would be hollow, a position gained by giving new information to Stone. Or to Temple.
“What did you shape?”
“What? Oh.” He opened his hand, and there on his palm, the disk of gold had elongated into something resembling a blob. Or, if you looked closely enough—the wavy silhouette of a naked woman. He closed his palm as quickly as he’d opened it.
She wrinkled her nose. “What were you trying for?”
“I was thinking about the sun… mostly.”
She offered a weak smile then returned to cleaning. He helped her. And when the room was clean, he opened the door. The steady chatter of customers and shopgirls rose like a song on the air.
“Don’t throw the burnt ones away,” he said before slipping onto the balcony. “They may look ruined, but they’re still useful. Ash is good for complexion. Burnt camelia excellent for warding off former lovers.”
“That does sound useful. Considering my former lover…”
He made it down the stairs and toward the door, stopping briefly in a corner to steal the aloe. “Don’t worry darling,” he mumbled to it, “I know your worth.”
His own worth… questionable. He was useless except for poking about and spying and being otherwise nefarious. He looked at his hand. Unscorched. Ha. He’d done it. And a slip of a woman had helped him do it. He’d not felt useless under Miss Grant’s instruction.
Temple wanted him to spy on Stone.
Stone wanted him to spy on Temple.
Apollo had always been a selfish bastard.
He knew exactly what he wanted.
And she was leaving tomorrow.