Chapter 22 A Queen’s Command
A QUEEN’S COMMAND
One Week Later
The carriage rocked over smooth London streets, and Sybil could think of only one word.
Fucking.
The word had been with her when Temple had greeted her at the door of Foggy Hill House, and it had followed her like a stray dog all the way to London. It woke her in the mornings and put her to bed at night. It was a ghost haunting her.
No. She was haunting it, excavating every angle of it to better understand her final conversation with Apollo.
God, she felt so hollow.
“Sybil, are you nervous?” Diana’s hand landed on Sybil’s knee, light as a butterfly, gloved like a transcendent.
“Oh no. Not at all.”
“But you’re digging a hole in your chest.”
Sybil looked down. She had her fingers pressed into the space between and just above her breasts, digging, circling.
“I suppose I am nervous,” she admitted. “I’ve never met the queen before.”
“Just remember how young she is. Barely nineteen. A girl.”
“That helps.”
“But the most powerful young girl you’ve ever met.”
“That does not help.”
“And Temple will be there.” Another pat to Sybil’s knee before retreating across the carriage. “She simply wishes to ask you about the device.”
Sybil nodded, her jaw aching. “In truth, it’s not the queen that’s making me nervous.
” She needed to say something because it rather felt like everything that had happened since her abduction had not happened at all.
And she needed to make some part of it real.
“I have been wondering about”—she swallowed—“about your cousin. Apollo.” She wanted to close her eyes and savor the feel of his name on her tongue. She wanted to forget it entirely.
Diana’s brows drew together. “Apollo? What do you wish to know about him?”
“He… he rescued me. From the dungeon. And that rather goes against everything I knew about him before. And… Never mind. It does not matter.”
“No. It’s fine. I do not mind speaking about him.
” Diana looked out the window, the rest of her body almost perfectly still.
“I suppose I should be terrified of him. I should condemn him and never wish to see him again. But… In my mind there are two Apollos. The one I grew up with and the one after our grandfather died. The boy I grew up with was haughty, thought himself above everyone, but he was not cruel. I knew who he was, and he knew his place in the world, as heirs to grand titles do. He always had a joke for me.” Her head tilted.
“Once, when we were around the queen’s age, a friend of our grandfather’s kissed me.
I did not wish for it and ran and hid. Apollo slipped some sort of stinky plant into the pockets of all his clothes, and the man couldn’t leave his room because he smelled like rotting onions.
He sent all his clothes to be washed, but as soon as they were clean and folded in his trunk, Apollo doused them with the plant again.
” She laughed. “Temple would have punched the man in the nose and threatened even greater bodily harm, but that’s not Apollo’s way. ”
No, it wasn’t. “He helped me.” In more ways than Sybil could ever tell Diana.
“And he put his apprenticeship at risk by telling Temple about Stone. He possesses a heart. But I rather think he wishes he didn’t.
” Diana turned to Sybil with a small smile.
“I think, actually, there is a third Apollo. The confident future marquess is no more. The distraught and slightly mad man who lost everything is gone, too. There is… someone else now.”
A man willing to work to get everything he wanted. A man who cared and hid it well. A man who couldn’t see a future for himself.
Sybil pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. If she pressed hard enough there she might not fall apart.
He’d been right. She told herself that every half hour or so.
He’d been so very right. Outside of Foggy Hill House there was no future for them.
Not together. She shouldn’t want a future with him.
She didn’t! He’d taken her device to Stone, knowing she was against that course of action, knowing what Stone was bound to do with it.
Diana was wrong. There was not a new Apollo.
There had only ever been one—power hungry, mercenary, and selfish.
The carriage stopped, and the door opened. Temple smiled at them from the ground and held out a hand. He helped Diana down first, setting a kiss atop her head, and then he helped Sybil.
Buckingham Palace was much bigger than she’d imagined.
Much more imposing. And a young girl ruled over it all.
Did she ever trip going up the stairs, still getting used to her woman’s body?
Maybe she had to make herself stop thinking of fashion plates during parliamentarian discourse.
Or maybe, like Sybil, she could never stop scribbling designs in notebooks and thinking about her first kiss.
Temple threaded one arm through Diana’s arm, and the other through Sybil’s and led them to the queen’s apartments with a guarded escort.
Everywhere grand—marble and gold, heaven-high ceilings, and gigantic chandeliers, everything polished to a blinding shine.
She could see her reflection everywhere, it seemed—a hundred narrow Sybils, hiding behind shuttered eyes.
She shook her head. “Where are we going?” she whispered to Temple. They were being led straight through the palace and out the back.
“The conservatory,” he said.
She saw it as soon as they stepped outside—huge stone columns and glinting glass. “It’s beautiful.”
“Designed by John Nash.” Temple slowed his pace, giving her more time to observe. “He’s an alchemist, though he won’t say so.”
Diana chuckled. “Another secret?”
He kissed her cheek.
Secrets. Sybil had her own collection of them.
Inside, the conservatory was lined with palms, and though the day outside was overcast, inside, it seemed as if the sun had made the glass walls and ceilings its home.
The conservatory at Foggy Hill had been similar. But then, the light had seemed to come from Apollo himself. And as they pushed past a particularly thick clump of palms, Sybil found the source of light here, too. Not the sun.
A young woman sitting at a small tea table, her hands folded in her lap. Her dark hair was braided on the sides and looped low, and her face was rosy and round. She was shorter than Sybil had imagined. Even sitting, Sybil could tell. Perhaps one short woman instantly recognized another.
Temple introduced them, and Sybil tried to stand tall under the queen’s scrutiny.
“Sit,” the queen commanded, but when Temple tried to join them, she shooed him away. “I’ve already spoken with you today. Ladies only for the moment.”
Temple bowed and left, and the teapot in the center of the table levitated upward, tilted, poured steaming tea into three cups.
“Well done, Your Majesty,” Diana said. “It is quite difficult to make an invisibility glamour hold like that during movement.”
The queen grinned. “I’m getting better. And I find my talent is stronger here in the conservatory. I think your ancestor’s notes are correct.”
“What notes?” Sybil asked. “What do they say?”
“Notebooks my cousin gave me. They say that transcendents are stronger in sunlight, that light is the source of their power.”
“But of course it’s not the source,” the queen said. “It is only like a… a… What did you call it, Fordham?”
“An oven to a loaf of bread. The light helps the talent to rise. Transcendent talent chooses those who are worthy, of course.” But she looked away, tugged on her ear bobble, as if she didn’t quite believe what she was saying.
It seemed to appease the queen, though, who nodded and sipped her tea.
Sybil stored the conversation away to return to later. Out of the queen’s earshot.
“Other than Lady Fordham,” Sybil said, choosing a topic more likely to please her audience, “I have never seen another woman with the talent to cast glamours. I knew you did, but seeing it… I’m terribly inspired, Your Majesty.”
The queen beamed.
“May I ask, Your Majesty,” Sybil ventured, “why you’ve brought me here?” It had been her summons that had sent Temple running off toward Yorkshire, that had ended Sybil and Apollo’s stolen interlude at Foggy Hill House.
“Your brother tells me you were abducted by the master of the alchemist guild, Mr. Stone. And he tells me you were abducted for the express purpose of recreating a device stolen from an alchemist grave.”
“That is correct, Your Majesty.” Sybil wrapped her hands around her cup, though its warmth was oppressive beneath the heated glass ceiling.
“Your brother also tells me you are an inventor of sorts. This teapot is of your design?” Queen Victoria flicked a hand toward the pot, which had settled back onto the middle of the table.
Sybil picked it up, inspected the metal bottom. “It is! But how did you get it? The only one in existence was made by my father. It was at Nickleby House the last I saw it.”
“Temple made it,” Diana said, “using your design and to show off your skills.”
Sybil rolled her lips between her teeth, unsure what to say.
“I am fascinated by the prospect of a woman inventor. One so valuable she’s at risk of being abducted. But that is not the only reason I’ve brought you here. Your sister-in-law tells me the device you were abducted to figure out is one of great mythological importance.”
Of course she had. Couldn’t keep secrets from the queen.
“Is it true?” the queen asked. “Is it possible? Have you turned lead to gold?” The polished monarch was gone. In her place, a nearly bouncing girl, all rushing red cheeks and scattering curls.
Couldn’t keep secrets from the queen.
But Sybil could. “I was unable to make a prototype of the device. The notes I stole from Mr. Stone are not enough to recreate it. There are many missing variables.” In fact, she’d burned all the prototypes before Temple’s arrival. But one remained. No doubt in Stone’s forge.