Chapter 24 A Soul
A SOUL
Stuck. Sybil had been stuck inside her room for more than twenty-four hours because that nodcock of a man wouldn’t leave her doorway.
She could leave, but he followed her about like a lost puppy, bearing a giant knife he didn’t seem to know what to do with.
Better to stay behind this closed door, him just beyond it, than to exchange any sort of conversation.
Outside her window, the sky had shifted to black hours ago.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten anything since noon.
She’d have to leave again, and he’d follow, and there would be more awkward conversation.
But she hadn’t heard him rustle about in a while, hadn’t heard any frustrating mutterings she couldn’t quite make out.
Pressing her ear against the door, she called out, “Are you gone yet?”
“No.”
She sighed, an irritated sound that scratched her throat.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“No!”
He sighed, less irritated, more… grudgingly accepting.
“I don’t need your protection.”
“What was that again?”
“I. Do. Not. Need. Your. Protection,” she yelled.
“Ah, right. I don’t care, princess.”
She growled, suppressing the urge to stomp a foot.
Or open the door and break something over his head.
She calmed herself by going through all the reasons she’d given him throughout the day for leaving her alone.
He needed to keep an eye on Stone. He was the only one who could drug him properly.
Her brother would be furious. People would ask questions about their connection to one another.
None of them had worked. He’d found a cause and rooted himself in it. If only that cause wasn’t her.
She didn’t want to be reminded of how handsome he was, of how warm his skin was when nestled against hers. She didn’t want to sleep with the sound of his breathing, that space between her legs rioting against good sense by pulsing hard and aching for the relief only he could give.
She was angry at him, and she would remain so. Because the reasons she was enraged would never change. And that… oh, that swept her anger away in a torrent of sorrow.
“Is Temple paying you to do this?” she asked, needing something to help her cling to the rage.
“God, no. Don’t tell him I’m here.”
Of course not. His comfort and position and clear path toward status at all costs.
She rested her back against the door and slid down until she sat, her skirts billowing around her bent legs.
“Princess?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “I wish it were different.”
She placed her palm on the door. Different how? She felt hungry suddenly, ravenous for—
“With the queen,” he said. “She shouldn’t have given your brother the project. It’s yours.”
Oh. That. “I never expected anything like that. Temple is considering making me his apprentice.”
“It’s not enough. You should get credit for your discovery.” A pause, then, “Will you make it for him? The ring?”
“No. I suppose I won’t.”
“You vixen. You’ll run him on a merry chase, then, give him hope but never fruition.”
She chuckled. “It is rather evil. Perhaps I should tell him everything.”
“It doesn’t matter. Won’t work for him.”
“It does work. You know it does.” He’d seen it as clearly as she had.
“It’s you, Sybil. I don’t know why, but it has to be. Only you saw that glimmer of gold in that plain lump of lead. Only you made it bloom.”
She stood and flung open the door. He fell backward, landing with a thud and grimace.
“How dare you!” She kept her voice low, but each word felt like a visceral scream.
Rubbing the back of his head, he sat up and stared at her. “How dare I do what? See you? Admire you? L-like you?”
“Yes! All that.”
He jumped to his feet and kicked the door closed, but she couldn’t face him, so she stalked across the small room to the window.
“You hate me,” he said, “I understand that, but—”
“No.” She dug her nails into the wood of the windowsill. She wished she hated him. “I’m enraged with you.”
“I know.”
“You do not know. I’m enraged because you see me better than you see yourself!” The words seemed to hang in the air. She’d not known they’d sat at the bottom of her anger, hot coals giving it life and power.
“What does that even mean?”
She turned around, feeling calmer than before.
And sadder. “It means you are enough. As you are. You are…” She stepped toward him, one tiny shuffle of a step that wanted to tumble into ten more—the number of steps, surely, that would take her across the room and into his arms. “You are breathtaking just are you are. Right now. No title. No money. No influence to speak of.”
His lips twitched. A sneer flashed across them, but it would not stay, and the curve that ultimately claimed his mouth was crooked and awkward and untrue. “I do cut a rather dashing figure but looks fade. Power does not.”
“Looks? Bah. I’ve seen more handsome men.”
“No, you have not.”
“And they do not have your wit. Or your resilience. They do not have your worried heart or your adaptability. You make things grow. You whisper endearments to plants—”
“Don’t tell anyone that.”
“And you… you warm a room just by standing in it. You’re a sun, Apollo. Only you cannot see your own light. And as long as that’s true, you’ll continue to betray everyone around you. You’ll continue to betray yourself.”
In a flash, he marched her backward toward the window.
When the backs of her legs hit the sill, he kept coming, pressing his hands into the glass on either side of her, so close she felt the air of each word.
“You and Diana, you keep saying that. As if you see some hidden worth in me, some soul. But you’re both blind.
Do you not recognize the man who held a blade to your neck? ”
She licked her lips, dove into the deep wells of his eyes. “I think not. And who was he? Ah, yes. I remember an old Marquess did something like that. He was a scarecrow of a man, though. Didn’t look a thing like you. He looked like he’d been to hell and back. You look like heaven.”
“Stop.”
“The marquess… you’re not him, are you? Fordham?”
“No,” he spat.
“That’s what I thought. Well, the marquess, Fordham as you say, couldn’t wipe his own arse, I’m sure.
Had never been taught how to. He simply gadded about, everything having been given to him in the cradle.
He’d never worked a day in his life. Was more of a…
puppet for a title than a man. But you… I’ve seen the results of your work.
” She reached out and was close enough, just barely, to touch his outstretched forearm.
Oh, how she’d always salivated over that forearm. Still did.
Golden fire flared in his blue eyes.
“You’re not Fordham,” she said. “But who are you, then?”
She dragged her fingers down the length of his forearm, without touching, past his wrist, up the sinuous tendons of his hand, to the base of his fingers. Raw knuckles.
Golden ring.
She stroked the pad of her thumb over it, felt an answering vibration in her pocket, felt a flash of longing that almost brought her to her knees.
She clasped his hand, and when she tugged him toward the door, he followed, bent and beaten like an old tree in a tangled, forgotten garden.
She opened the door, and they stood in the low, square frame together, leaning toward one another as she outlined the hills and valleys of his knuckles with her thumb, avoiding the ring, running from the longing that was both her own and not her own.
A groan slipped from between his lips.
And she slipped out of the small embrace, nudging him into the hallway as she stepped back into the bedchamber and shut the door between them.
Almost.
His foot shot out, saving a narrow space between door and frame that she peeked through. He dropped his forehead against the opening, and darkness swallowed his face.
“I want to kiss you,” he whispered. “So damn bad, Sybil. I want to kiss you until you can’t remember your name, until I can’t remember mine.
I want—” He hissed, paused, and when he started again, his voice was so unsteady her heart nearly broke in two.
“I want to hold you. Just tonight. Please. One last time.”
One last time. Ah, yes. “We already had a last time, Apollo.” There went her heart anyway, breaking and breaking and breaking.
“Besides, I do not know the Marquess of Fordham. I do not wish to sleep in his arms. But if you happen to come across another fellow…” She whispered his name, so, so softly.
“If you meet that man, I should gladly let him in, and…” So difficult.
But she was being bold these days. Why not in this way, too?
“And not just for one last time, but… but forever.”
She closed the door, and he let her this time.
Pressing her ear to the door, she thought to hear the rough clip of his boots down the hall and into nothing.
But she heard the soft thunk of his head and back against the door, the shush of his slide to the floor, the muffled hit of his backside on the wooden floorboards.
Still trapped, then.
But worse off than before because now she knew.
The gold she slipped out of her pocket had been reshaped through constant, mindless rubbing throughout the day. No sheep now. A ring, smooth and small, and golden. It fit her perfectly.
She inhaled, intending to spend the breath on a good cry, but coughed instead.
In the hallway, Apollo coughed, too.
The air was thick, smoky.
She ran to the window and threw it open, but smoke fogged the air outside as well.
“Sybil!” Her door burst open, and Apollo rushed in. “There’s a fire.”
* * *
Smoke so thick not even a master alchemist could clear the air rolled into Sybil’s room from all directions.
“Apollo?” She hid her face in her arm, coughing. “What’s happening?”
“Out.” He had her in his arms, steering her toward the door. “Now.”
“My shoes!” She pulled against him.
“Now!” He swept her up and ran for the stairs, right into the smoke. But only a flight down, it was impossible to see. He had to slow down.