Chapter 8 Delusional Rabbit
DELUSIONAL RABBIT
Apollo was glad to see the gown go. He’d not been wearing an actual corset, of course, but for some reason the sight of his waist pinched in had made it feel as if he couldn’t breathe.
He’d been glamoured before. His grandfather had enjoyed tweaking his appearance on occasion—giving him a longer nose and a receding hair line.
The old man had not been amusing, and Apollo often wondered, at the very end, when he felt the talent slipping from his body with his final breath, if he’d known it would go to Diana and not to Apollo.
It hadn’t been a conscious choice, that much Apollo knew for certain. There was no choice in inheriting. It followed the male line without fault.
Except for Apollo.
The coach wheels crunched over the gravel spread across the Alconbury inn yard, and even though the sun had long since begun to dip in the sky, Apollo still wore his tinted spectacles, which he’d donned at the sun’s zenith.
The only thing to hide behind in his current situation.
Miss Grant—Sybil he must call her since he was to be her brother—did…
something to him. Something he couldn’t name and didn’t like.
He’d not meant to tell her about Stone and spying.
The words had simply left his tongue of their own accord.
She made him feel… desperate. Like damp back alleys and shaking hands, like blurry vision and buzzing sound, like a potion bottle in one hand and an opium pipe in the other.
Lost desperate.
Hurt desperate.
I’d rather not be alive desperate.
He’d conquered all that months ago, clawed himself out of the pit.
And a thimble of a woman with golden hair had kicked him back down into it. Even with the green glass between him and the world, he felt raw, revealed. He couldn’t look at her, so he looked out the window instead. He’d have to be more careful around her.
What did it matter she knew about Stone, anyway?
It had gotten him what he wanted, and he could still spy for the man.
If fact, he’d put himself in a perfect position to do so.
Telling her earned her trust, earned him a spot in this coach without fuss.
When he didn’t need the one, he could break the other.
The coach shook and the door opened. The driver had accepted their story, but he still eyed Apollo with a suspicion so sharp it felt like a knife peeling his skin away inch by meticulous inch.
Apollo ignored him, descended, and helped Sybil down, settling her hand in the crook of his arm. “Come along, sister.”
“That was rather commanding of you,” she whispered. “How did you know Hesperus is just like that?”
“He’s a Grant. Which means he likely possesses the not inconsiderable urge to be a hero for everyone in skirts.”
She sighed. “Brothers are a trial. I hope you prove less burdensome.”
“I plan to be more so.” He patted her hand.
The innkeeper was a short, slender man with a short, slender wife, and they were happy to welcome anyone with deep pockets. They followed a maid up the stairs to the only single rooms left at the inn, on the very top floor.
At the end of the hallway, a fire burned bright, and on either side were several closed doors. Sybil let Apollo care for everything—paying the innkeeper, tipping the maid, getting the keys, arranging to have meals sent to their separate rooms.
“You are a princess, aren’t you?” Apollo mumbled, opening the door to his room as she opened hers.
“What do you mean by that?”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “I simply would never have expected you to cede all the decision-making to me, the paying for things, the superior position in this relationship.”
“There’s a proper way of doing things. Women always hang back while men make the arrangements.”
“Hang back. Hm. Like you did with Temple?”
She turned all the way around, abandoning her door with the key inside the lock, unturned. “What do you mean by that?” Her hands hit her hips.
When a woman’s hands hit her hips, someone was in trouble. Usually a man. In this case Apollo. Clearly. Might as well jump all the way into the fire. “That you knew what your brother would do, knew you didn’t want it, yet let him do it anyway.”
“I tried not to. You told him where I was.” One large step and swinging skirts brought her closer. And put him in imminent danger.
“That was hiding. The easy way out.” He stepped into his room. “Damned dark in here.”
An orb light flashed on, revealing Sybil holding the small sphere up high, washing the room in gentle light.
“There’s a candle and tinderbox,” he said, making for the table where they sat discarded.
“But there’s no fireplace.”
He stopped, slowly looking around. “Damn.”
“Precisely. Maybe my room has one.”
He followed her across the hall, and her orb revealed the truth there, too.
“No fireplace,” they said together.
“We can’t practice in the hallway,” Apollo said. But that seemed to be the main source of heating that floor.
“And these are the only two private rooms left.”
“I don’t want to share with some Gerald from Lincolnhowhamptonshire.”
“Me neither.”
“Well,” he said, ruffling his fingers through his hair. “What do we do now?”
She sank to the mattress. Before she could answer, footsteps echoed in the hallway, and then a maid appeared at the door.
“Oh, that one of them glowy moons I’ve heard about?
” She peered through the dim light to Sybil’s orb, still clutched in her hand.
“We don’t have ’em out here yet, but the candles are just as good.
” She bustled to the table and used a brimstone stick to light the candle.
“It’s been dipped in a special potion. Lasts longer.
I heard those things need to sit in the light a bit to work.
These candles don’t. There’s more of ’em about the room.
” She called out the open door. “You can come in, Molly!” Then she smiled at Apollo.
“Will you be taking your meal with your sister?”
He waited for Sybil to answer, and when she didn’t, he said that he was. From her perch on the bed, Sybil merely nodded.
When the bowls of stew were set on the table on either side of the candle, and the maids had retreated for the evening, Sybil and Apollo sat in facing chairs.
The candle-flickering light between them felt heavier than before.
They ate in silence, the only sounds the tap of spoons on wooden bowls, the sip of wine from goblets.
“This is not a setback,” she said finally, pushing her bowl away and tapping at her lips with a serviette. “We have all the time in the world.”
“Or until your brother figures out how to… neutralize the threat to you.”
“Do you mean that as a euphemism for kill Stone?”
“You know your brother so well.” He draped one arm over the back of the chair. “The truth is we don’t know how long we have. It depends on how smart Stone is—”
“Not very.”
“—and how smart Temple is.”
“Much more so.”
“You’re making me panic, princess. All this nefarious work might be for nothing. Perhaps we should start as soon as possible.”
They glanced toward the closed door. The only good fire was in the hallway.
Sybil sighed. “We will still practice. Starting small is better anyway. Do you remember what I did at Lady Guinevere’s? When I was holding my cupped hands over a lit candle?”
“Yes.” She’d been golden in the flickering light.
“You should practice that. With the candle in your room.”
Your room. A not-so-subtle hint for him to leave. “You were making the flame bigger, higher.”
“Yes. That is your assignment tonight. Do not demand that it burn higher. Play with it. Think of it as a friendly game. Coax it and—”
“Seduce it?” he said with a little grin.
The flush that rushed across her cheeks and the small sliver of her exposed chest and shoulders was immediate. Apollo felt it creep across his skin, too. Ridiculous. He didn’t blush. Mad. Absurd.
“Now me,” she said, looking at her hands. “What is my assignment?”
He tipped the chair onto its back two legs and studied the ceiling. “Do you know your innate metal?”
Her lips twisted to the side, and a thundercloud seemed to gather round her head.
“I take that as a no.”
“My brothers grew up with metal bits in their pockets! They were encouraged to carry them about, but me? My gowns didn’t even possess pockets at first. One day Temple and Hesperus and Helios simply knew they were iron and silver and…
I have no idea. I’ve tried to figure it out, but none of them…
seem right. Or they all seem right or”—she gave a little growl—“oh, I don’t know. ”
A sensitive subject, then. He picked his way across the minefield carefully. “Have you any metal with you? Raw?”
“Of course.” Her gaze flicked to her traveling satchel. “Copper and iron and silver and some lead.”
“Good.” He reached into his pocket and handed over his gold. “Here, try this too.”
“That’s yours.”
He shrugged. “I have never felt particularly connected to it. Perhaps you will.” He let the front legs of his chair drop back to the ground then he stood.
“Wait!” She stood too. “I don’t know what you want me to do with the metals.”
“I think we need to discover what your innate metal is first. But we can’t do that without a real forge.”
“I know there’s a test… but I do not know what it is like. No one talks about it. Do you remember your test?”
He nodded. “I cheated. You’re supposed to stick your hand into the fire, a real fire, but Stone knew I couldn’t do it. He had me dip my arms into some sort of liquid first. It protected me, and I just grabbed the first rock I found.”
“You don’t even know if gold is your metal, then!”
He shrugged. “Might as well be. That’s what I want, after all. Gold. Money. Power. Do you have pockets now, princess?”
“Yes.”
“Fill them up. Keep the metals close. Live with them. Sleep with them. And when we can access a proper forge, I’ll test you. You won’t cheat, I’m sure.”