Chapter 23 Like Falling #2
At the end of the path, he saw her. She stood near the edge of the roof, and Apollo swallowed down the sudden urge to yank her backward.
Sunlight pooled around her as it had in Yorkshire in the glass chamber.
All manner of light loved her—the flicker of flames, the jumping candlelight, the sun’s rays. And Apollo… Apollo… he too…
Realization felt like falling, as if he’d taken a running leap and flung himself into the thin air Sybil stared into.
It didn’t buoy him, though. He plummeted, through light and darkness, through sun and rain, through the very earth.
And there in the airless quiet, he saw the source of his fucking heart.
Knew the truth of that second heart that seemed to beat inside his own pulse.
No seems.
Did.
Sybil.
Each beat pumping blood, keeping him alive.
Sybil.
When Temple stepped into view, Apollo almost muttered the curse out loud as he pulled the door closed. Mostly. He left enough open to see brother and sister through the crack. Oh, and the brother’s wife. Diana there, too. He should leave.
But their voices were carrying to him across wind and verdant waves.
“The queen…” Temple’s lips moved, but from this distance, Apollo heard only every other word. “You must, Sybil…” A few more words missed.
Apollo slipped into the garden, a few steps down the path. A large potted palm offered a convenient hiding place. Eavesdropping was nefarious, but… so was he.
“Return to Yorkshire,” Temple said, louder, a command. “You must!”
“Absolutely not.” Sybil stood firm, chin lifted.
She marched right up to her brother, then laid her hands on his shoulders.
“Brother. Thank you. I know you worry. I know you love me. But I’m done running.
It’s my notes you’ll be working with. Make me your apprentice.
You owe me that much at least. If you deny me, I’ll simply find someone who’s brave enough to bring a woman into a forge. ”
“Brave enough—” Temple hissed. He took a steadying breath. “We’re not talking about this right now, Sybil.” He ran his hands through his hair, jaw ticking.
“There’s Stone to consider.” Diana glanced toward Apollo’s hiding spot, head tilted. “Apollo says he’s gone quite mad.”
“Apollo…” Temple seemed to calm down, nodding. “You’ve spoken with him recently? I thought he’d run off on some sort of pleasure trip to the Continent.”
“He’s returned.” Diana spoke softly. “Came to see me, to let me know about Stone.”
“Can we trust him?” Temple asked.
“You’re the one who tasked him with spying on Stone to begin with.”
“You did?” Sybil sounded small, and Apollo couldn’t read the glance she slanted up at her brother. “When?” Something deadly there.
“Before we sent you to Yorkshire the first time,” Temple said, “and then he ran off to who knows where instead of doing what he promised. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in an opium stupor for weeks.”
“No.” Diana considered the sky. “He was not. When I saw him, he looked perfectly healthy. Better than he has looked in quite some time, but also… I do worry about him.”
Temple snorted.
“Apollo doesn’t matter,” Sybil said. “Tell me about Stone.”
Apollo doesn’t matter.
Apollo doesn’t matter.
The truth of his useless life.
God, he didn’t want to hear another well-deserved, knife-tipped word. He turned toward the door. He lost most of their conversation as he picked his way carefully down the path, back toward the door.
“I’m done with this conversation,” Sybil said. “I should like to be alone.”
“Very well.” That Diana. “We’ll return tomorrow to talk some more.”
“I love you, Sybil.” Temple could say those words. Apollo could…
Apollo felt so heavy. So raw. He held his hands over his ears like a recalcitrant child refusing to hear his nurse’s warnings.
And in the muffled silence, Apollo did hear something—footsteps hurrying toward him.
No time to slip through the door. He darted behind a large pot and ducked down low as the steps came closer, as they passed him, as the door shut with a heavy clink.
He scrubbed his hands down his face. If they thought him useless, what would they think if they found him crouched behind a potted plant.
He stood. He still needed to find Sybil. Or he could simply go to Temple, tell him more about Stone, make him send Sybil back to Yorkshire.
“Apollo?” The shocked tenor of Sybil’s voice caught him like a winter wind, froze him solid. “What are you… How long have you been…”
He met her gaze, allowed himself to drown in those blue eyes. “I do often leave people without the proper words.”
She still stood on the edge of the roof, her eyes wide and her shoulders stiff. Oh, she was sizzling, still angry as a swarm of bees. Her pulse raced.
No idea how he knew it, but he did.
As soon as she’d set eyes on him, her pulse had kicked up, and it ran so quickly now, a series of thumps in the ring around his finger—thumpthumpthumpthumpthump—he was afraid it would propel her backward, off the roof.
He crept toward her carefully and extended a hand as if to a panicked beast. “Why don’t you come away from the edge now?”
“Why don’t I throw you off it?”
God, how he’d missed her.
She moved away from the roof edge. But not toward Apollo.
And it felt like a loss. His arms aching and empty.
She took her own path, wandering beneath the ivy-wrapped wooden frame that covered half the roof.
She flicked a leaf here, stopped to smell a flower there, looking for all the world as if she didn’t care he was here.
Perhaps she didn’t.
“Why are you here? Eavesdropping,” Sybil said in the sort of tone that made Apollo cautious. And aroused. Odd combination.
“I didn’t intend to eavesdrop, but once afforded the opportunity, I couldn’t resist.”
“Naturally.”
Apollo took Sybil’s old place at the edge of the roof, looking out over the square.
Below, horses and people and carriages—all like little dolls—trotted about as if the world weren’t changing every second around them.
Everything they knew to be true transmuting, like lead to gold, into something new.
“Why are you here?” she asked again.
Because he needed to see her. He turned to do just that, and the sight of her almost made him forget how to breathe.
“St-Stone has the device, but he can’t work it.
It’s driving him mad. I’m beginning to think lead is not at all salubrious for human interaction.
The more he plays with the stuff, the more he seems to lose himself. ”
Sybil bit her thumbnail.
Apollo drew his knuckles up and down his jaw.
The rough bristles reminded him he’d not slept in…
two, three days? “I left him drugged and unconscious at his forge, one of the few remaining apprentices cleaning up the mess he’d made.
” He searched Sybil for signs of madness.
She’d played with lead and gold often during their time together.
But she seemed the same as always. “I think… Sybil, I think you’re the only one who can work the device. ”
“That’s absurd.” She batted a branch away.
“Is it? I’ve tried to use it. Before I handed it over to Stone. I can’t.”
“Still poor and powerless, then?” She flung the door open and disappeared inside.
He followed, and the door slammed behind him as he stormed after her. “Yes, poor, but maybe not powerless. The madder Stone becomes, the more I seem to be the one in charge? Absolute nonsense.”
“Indeed.” She lifted her skirts to fly down a flight of stairs.
“But I’m the only one who doesn’t mind drugging the addled man into sleep, and drugged is the only way we can keep Stone from killing the apprentices. Or himself.” He rubbed his shoulder as he descended behind her. “Getting hit with a flying hammer hurts, in case you’ve ever wondered.”
“It should have hit you more center, and a bit higher.” A few landings down, she stormed into a corridor of doors.
Again, he followed, speeding up to walk by her side. “He is coming for you again. He knows you’re important.”
She threw open a door and tried to shut him out, but he wedged himself between the door and the frame.
“Go away,” she demanded.
“Not yet.” He wiggled into her room and closed them inside.
And found them so very close together. He could reach out and touch her, could barely keep himself from doing so.
Tempting beyond measure to cup her neck and spear his fingers into the hair at her nape, to take more than a memory of that silk, the slope of her neck, the warmth of her skin.
His hand trembled. He clasped it into a fist and inhaled—a mistake because the air smelt like Sybil.
She was around him now, in him, making him.
Did she feel it? The simmering heat between them? They wouldn’t set a tub of water boiling right now. They’d evaporate it instantaneously.
“Steal it back,” she whispered. “Take the prototype while Stone is drugged and bring it back to me.”
“It wouldn’t help. He knows how to make one now.”
“Because of you.” She was looking past his shoulder, not at him.
“He’s coming for you. No matter what I do. At least he can’t work it.”
“What do you want me to do, Apollo? Go back to Yorkshire? That’s what Temple wants. But you know that, don’t you.”
He shook his head. “Do as you please. As always.” He lifted a hand, unable to suppress the need any longer.
His fingers trembled near her cheek, lightly brushed one wayward curl near her temple.
Her eyes closed, and her head tilted oh-so-slightly toward his hand.
Just a moment, a singular break. Before she opened her eyes and stepped away from him.
“Do exactly what gives you pleasure,” he said, letting his hand drop. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
He inhaled deeply before leaving her room held his breath, held the smell of her in his lungs as she slammed the door behind him. The lock thunked into place, and he yelped as a shadow came to life at the end of the corridor.
“You shouldn’t be up here,” Lady Guinevere’s guard said, picking at his fingernails with a rather large knife.
“You’ll have to remove me bodily. And I’d prefer you didn’t. There’s a man after her.”
“And you think to stand between them?”
“I will.” It was the only good thing he was capable of in this life.
The guard studied him for several silent seconds, twisting the point of it into the leather glove covering his palm. Finally, he nodded and snapped the knife through the air. It landed in the wall next to Apollo with whiplike precision that absolutely did not make Apollo piss his pants.
“Might need that,” the guard said, turning and lumbering back into the shadows.
Apollo pried the knife from the wall and leaned against the door. He slid down it until he was sitting, legs outstretched, ankles crossed. He tried to make himself comfortable.
Comfortable? Ha! A man who’d just realized he was in love with a woman he could never have would never be that.
Nothing had changed. Nothing belonged to him but his grandmother’s herb journal and his experiences, all of which were better when Sybil wasn’t enraged with him. Rightfully enraged.
Holding up the knife, he saw his reflection in the well-polished blade—warped, him but not him.
Was how he felt, too. He still wanted everything he’d always craved—money, power, influence. But different. Because he only wanted it so he could hand it all over to Sybil Grant on a golden plate. Everything he ever earned would be hers. He’d even give her his life. To keep her safe.