Chapter 24 A Soul #2
Sybil coughed. “We should go back.”
“And climb out the window?” Too far down, not a handhold in sight. He’d checked it out earlier in the day when Sybil had tried to lose him by going out the back door. At least the stairs were clear of fire, and Sybil clung tightly to his neck as they descended deeper into the smoke.
And right into a wall of flames.
The potion shop was a raging inferno. Across the room and near the front, the guards, half-dressed and glassy eyed, tried to douse flames with the liquid inside large decanters.
Potion? It seemed to slice through the flames more quickly than water would, leaving a purple wavering in its wake.
But it wasn’t enough. Anytime a flame sizzled out in a purple cloud of smoke, another leapt to life.
“The back door,” Apollo said. He made for it, only to lunge backward as a series of shelves bolted to the wall gave way. Potion bottles crashed against the ground, glass breaking.
Glass exploding.
Sybil screamed.
He danced her out of the way, shielding her with his body, his ears ringing.
The path to the back door blocked now. No way to the front.
Trapped.
Like hell they were. He couldn’t have Sybil, but this fucking fire wouldn’t have her either.
His heat welled up with almost no effort.
It was like striking a match and watching light flare to life at the core of himself.
It brightened every bit of him. It felt like…
a light flickering on after a long time in the dark, or like looking into a mirror for the first time in a decade.
Ah—there he was. Not the Marquess of Fordham.
Not a failed transcendent. Not soulless.
He was Apollo Chester, and heat was in his blood. Not the measly heat of a human fire, the whole goddamn blazing, life-giving warmth of the sun itself. Just like Sybil had said.
He exhaled and blew the flames away. He inhaled and stole the fire’s heat, using it to steel his skin and hair and vulnerable flesh against the devouring beast. He slipped a bit of his heat into Sybil. And there was no wall between them, no pushback, as if he were entering her like a thief.
Not a thief. He belonged there, by her, with her, in her.
With a wave of one hand, he swept the fire out of the way. With a heavy breath, he tamed the flames swallowing the nearest exit. With his soul, he kept Sybil safe as he walked through a wall of fire, walked through a smoldering doorway, and out into the smoky night air.
Chaos in the back alley, and he kept marching down the street until they were a safe distance away. Only then did he set Sybil on her feet.
He kissed the top of her head and moved back toward the building.
“No!” She grabbed at him, caught his hand. She was tugging at him, wrapping her arms around his waist, setting her dear, thick-skulled head on his chest. “Apollo, what are you doing?”
“I can stop it. I’ll be back.” He took a deep breath of mostly clear air before stepping inside the inferno once more, his name on Sybil’s lips ripping through the sky and echoing in his ears.
The fire licked at him, tasting him, but he brushed it aside, found the center of the blaze—hot and mindless, it would sweep up everything in its path.
No, it wouldn’t. He stepped right into it. He played with it for a moment because it was sniffing at his skin, recognizing a fellow creature.
“Naughty beast,” he whispered before opening his mouth and inhaling the flames.
He gathered them up, wove them like straw into golden strands he twisted into a ball. He made them harmless, a candle’s tiny, flickering flame.
Then they were gone.
And he was standing in a hollowed-out pile of ash. Melted bottles made clumps on the floor, and potion vapors sizzled in the air. The charred beams creaked above him. Time to bolt.
He rushed out into the alley, found Sybil hovering in the shadows, hidden.
But she saw him at the same time, his name on her lips as her bare feet danced against the old cobblestones.
He went to her, gathered her up as she flung her body at him, clutched him close.
He didn’t want to let her go. Smoke clung thick to her, and he wanted to plop her in a bath and scrub the smell from her skin, from his skin too, then make love to her until they smelled like each other.
“You’re safe, you’re safe!” She wiggled and kicked until he released her, then she checked every limb and inch of skin he possessed. “You’re entirely unscathed! What happened. No, tell me later. Right now…” Her gaze flickered to the end of the alley. “The men who abducted me… they’re here.”
“What?”
There, at the back of the crowd in the alley, a group of three men, and behind them, a carriage with an open door.
The fire in Apollo flared high. He was going to burn them into nothing.
“Wait!” Sybil grabbed his wrist. “Don’t go. Don’t go. I have to go.”
“You?” He growled. “You will stay right here.”
“No, no! Listen.” She bobbed up on tiptoe and cradled his face in both hands. “Please listen. I have to let them catch me. I have to let Stone think he’s in charge. And then, from the inside—”
“Inside of a fucking dungeon, Sybil. One created to keep alchemists from escaping.”
She grinned. “We escaped once. We could do it again. You’ll come for me. If I don’t escape first.”
His hands were on her waist without his permission, and he pulled her roughly against him. Anyone could see. He didn’t care.
“But I won’t need to escape. I’ll convince him to let me into the forge. And once there, I’ll figure something out. I’ll trick him somehow, convince him—”
“He’s mad!”
“He’ll keep coming after me. If I do not go. And I refuse to live my life running. I won’t let him set fire to everything I love.”
“He set the fire.” Realization like a bucket of refuse poured right on top of his head. “Stone did it. To get you to come out.”
“That’s what I think. Why else would his men be waiting so conveniently nearby?”
“How did they know where you are?”
“That doesn’t matter. But I have to go with them and prove to them I can’t do it. Then he’ll leave me alone.”
“It’ll be better if I kill him.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You severely underestimate me.”
She kissed him, hard and somehow also soft, and the kiss shot another realization through him. He’d always had a soul, and she’d branded it long ago. Truths he’d never have seen on his own seemed so obvious with her smiling at him.
She kissed him, then she ran, out of his arms, through the crowd and into the grasping hands of the three giants Stone had hired to capture her.
He ran haltingly, then he stopped entirely.
Sybil wanted this. Perhaps… needed this. And if he had any other purpose in the world, it was to get Sybil everything she wanted.
Like a nightmare watching her climb into the hack, watching it roll away, like the flames he’d consumed were burning him up from the inside.
He pushed trembling hands through his hair.
He couldn’t help himself. He trotted after the carriage as it trundled around the corner and into Finsbury Square. It slipped through the crowd like a knife through butter, and Apollo watched it disappear.
“Bran!” Another anguished cry from another weary soul rising up. “Where’s Bran!”
Apollo pushed through the crowd toward the front of the shop. The ivy that usually twisted and writhed in the spotless windows was gone, the windows smeared with heavy black streaks. The usually cheerful yellow door was open, blackened.
And Lady Guinevere strained at the dozens of arms that held her to get through it.
“Bran!” she cried. “Bran! Let me go! He’s still inside!”
But the guards refused. They held her tight, their faces stone masks, their eyes deep pools of pain.
A crash from inside. Beams must have fallen.
Lady Guinevere hit her knees. Her body heaved as if crying, but her face was dry, her gaze blank.
“Me,” she said, so coldly, “why couldn’t it have been me?”
She had lost her knight in shining armor.
And Apollo… he might have just lost his princess.
Why couldn’t it have been me?
It should have been him. In the dungeon, in danger, in…
Fuck. It could be him.
Apollo ran all the way to Bloomsbury Square, and he slammed his fist on the door until it was prickling with needles, then numb, but finally the door swung open.
“What the hell is happening?” Temple demanded, dressed in only a banyan.
His feet were huge. Never mind. Didn’t matter. “It’s Sybil. Stone has her.”
Temple’s jaw hardened, his fists becoming hammers. “I’m going out, Diana!” he bellowed as he stormed up the stairs. “Let me dress.”
“No!” Apollo stepped into the foyer. “We’re not storming the castle. Sybil has a plan. I have a plan, too, but I need your help. Your influence, not your muscle.”
Diana appeared at the stop of the staircase in a loosely tied dressing gown, hair a disaster around her shoulders. “What’s going on.”
“It’s Sybil,” Apollo said. “Tell your dragon of a husband to calm down.”
Temple paused halfway up the stairs. “If my sister’s in a dungeon, I’m not taking days or weeks to charm someone into freeing her! I know you care nothing for her, but I—”
“I love her!” Apollo slammed the front door, and it shook the walls. “Sybil is your sister, but she is my soul.”
Apollo climbed the stairs slowly until he stood eye to eye with the other man.
For a moment, they simply stared at one another. Temple’s eyes flickered between rage and confusion. His mouth had become a harsh line.
“I’m not going to say another damned word about it,” Apollo said.
“You don’t have to worry about her returning my affection.
Or me doing anything about it. I know who I am, who she is.
And don’t ask any questions. I won’t answer them.
I just need you to trust that when I say I love her, it’s the truth.
The only truth that matters. Sybil needs us.
I’m prepared to give my life to save her.
And I need you to set aside your pride and your determination to control everyone and everything around you.
I’ll get her out of the dungeon, but you have to make sure she’s safe after that.
No hammer can do that. She needs a coup.
Get rid of Stone. That is the only real way to eliminate the danger to her for good.
Use your damned brain. If you have one.”
Temple growled, “I’ve been trying to! But what few alchemists will talk with me won’t believe anything I say about Stone.”
“You’re aiming too high. Talk to the apprentices.”
Diana placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “He’s right.”
An unexpected ally. “Stone has already burned down the potion shop.”
Diana gasped.
“I just came from there,” Apollo said. “I suspect Stone set fire to Lady Guinevere’s building to smoke Sybil out.”
“How did he know she was there?” Temple’s question was more an accusation.
“Had one of us followed, no doubt. She was safe inside the building. They needed to bring her outside.”
“Lady Guinevere…” Diana’s hand hovered over her mouth.
“Safe. But her personal guard is missing.”
“No,” she whispered, a mere breath of a word just before she fled up the stairs.
Temple followed her, which meant Apollo did too.
“Not a word from you, Temple,” she said, running into a room at the end of the hall. She poked her head out momentarily to add, “I’m going to Guinevere. She’s my friend.”
Temple disappeared into the same room as his wife.
And Apollo paced the hall outside.
Diana swept back into the hallway, barely dressed in boots and her wrapper.
She took a moment to close her eyes, then her wrapper disappeared, replaced by a plain gown and mantle.
He’d only seen her use the talent that should have been his once before, the night she’d called lightning from the sky.
Then he’d felt like he’d been struck by that deadly electricity, hollowed out, decimated.
But now he felt nothing. Not pain, not jealousy, not even wistful longing. He possessed one longing now—to see Sybil safe.
Diana crept toward him, her glamoured clothes moving stiffly as if she’d not spent enough time making them realistic or as if she’d not quite learned how to do that yet.
“When Sybil is safe,” she said, “I want to know. All about… everything.” She was smiling. Smiling! As she placed a palm on his chest over his heart.
It bruised. “How the hell can you forgive me, Diana? I would’ve killed you.”
She inhaled, exhaled, then said in the calmest voice he’d ever heard from her. “I hated you. For a very long time. I was terrified of you. You betrayed me.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know if I do forgive you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a chance to be better, to earn more than you would have deserved before.
Besides, I don’t believe in judging one man for another’s actions.
You’re not the same man, Apollo. We were both taught truths that have turned out to be lies.
I was told I was useless, that my own desires didn’t matter, that I was worthless to the talent, incapable of harboring it.
You were told from the moment of your birth that magic was your right, that you were the only one worthy of it. ”
“Lies…” Hadn’t Sybil been taught them, too? That she had no inner heat, that working a forge would damage her. But she could do so much more than any of them would ever guess.
“I think…” Diana sighed and looked up at the moon. “It’s easy to do harm when you believe lies.”
He didn’t believe them anymore.
He was Mary fucking Sullivan. Again.
“I do not plan on making it out of Stone’s forge. Not unless Temple acts quickly.” He ducked his head, but he couldn’t hide from this. “I’m sorry, Diana. You have all you deserve now. I’m happy for you.”
Her smile softened. “It feels terrible, doesn’t it? Being in love? Like life and death all at once. Over and over again.”
It felt like every glamour that had ever ruled his life had been ripped away, revealing not an ugly world worth hiding, but a miraculous one. The sin had been in hiding it.