Chapter 25 The Midas Touch
THE MIDAS TOUCH
They didn’t take her to the dungeon this time.
The men took her to the forge, their hands closed with bruising force around her upper arms. They’d not drugged her this time, either.
They’d not had to, and she was awake and thinking fast as the floating chamber took them farther and farther beneath the British Museum.
As it descended, the air grew thick and hot around them.
She had to convince Stone it was impossible. She could… she could fake turning lead to gold, use a bit of bronze instead and act confused when he told her it wasn’t gold, tell him that was all she’d ever been able to do. He must be mistaken about the device. It couldn’t make gold after all.
God, she was mad, wasn’t she? And hopeless.
He’d never fall for it. Something else, then.
But no more time. The smallest sliver of warm air opened up near her feet, rushing up Sybil’s skirts.
That crack widened, and the forge came into view.
It had been wrecked. Materials lay everywhere, tables and chairs overturned, the fire blazing out of control, licking tendrils up past its confines and toward the ceiling.
The worktable was bigger than any she’d ever seen, and Stone stood near it, his back to them.
And on the table, close enough for Stone to grab—her prototype, its steel shining, almost reflective.
When the floating chamber hit the floor, he turned around, and even from a distance she saw madness shining in his eyes.
“Leave us,” he barked.
The guards shoved her out of the floating chamber and into the forge, then she heard the rattle of its ascent, and she was left alone. With Stone.
“Come here.” Only his lips moved, his body unnaturally still.
Sybil approached carefully, picking her way across the mess. She knew what it felt like to have her foot sliced open by half-formed metal, and Apollo wasn’t here to help her. She stopped at the worktable on the other side of the prototype, as far from it, from him, as she could get.
He slid the ring toward her, and she caught it. The steel was familiar in her hands, seemed shaped perfectly for them. Because her hands had shaped it.
“Where is the flaw?” he demanded.
She swallowed. “The flaw is in the concept. It is not possible to transmu—”
“Liar! When Chester brought the thing here there were traces of gold inside. You are a liar, Miss Grant. But now you will tell me the truth. Where is the flaw and how do I fix it?”
Behind her, the fire raged, flames dancing across the ceiling. Stone fed them with his anger. He’d taught the flames of his forge well how to respond to his need. He was a tyrant, the fire his servant, paid only in fuel to feed the darkest coal of both entities’ hearts.
But the fire inside Sybil was so very different from this one. It didn’t want to consume, to dominate. It wanted to play.
Play.
That single word reanimated memories of Foggy Hill House.
They were sweet like honey and cooling like fog.
Soft like a summer wind. Play. That’s what she and Apollo did so well together.
Delighting in beauty and wonder and in each other, in discover, too.
Of what could be found in the earth and in the body and in the soul.
Apollo feared he had no soul.
He did. She could feel it, still, leaping alongside her own in her chest.
She nodded. “I’ll tell you. I’ll show you. Lead please.”
Stone grinned, a jagged, unreal thing as erratic as the fire.
He reached for a small earthenware bowl nearby and dug his fingers into it.
He shoved the contents at Sybil, and she took them—little pebbles of lead like bullets.
She placed them on the table and took one, folded it in her palms with a prayer.
Hestia, guide me.
“First,” she said, “I must heat it.”
“Fine.” He strode for the fire.
“No. With my own heat.”
He snatched the device. “You think I haven’t tried my inner heat yet?” He laughed.
“My own heat. Not yours.”
“You don’t have heat, woman.”
“I do, and if you want to learn how to do this, you’ll have to believe me.”
He tossed the device back down on that table. “You’re delaying the inevitable. But what the hell. This should be amusing.”
She positioned the ring just so and dropped the lead pellet inside the open chamber.
Then she placed her palms on either side of it, closed her eyes, and called her heat.
It came so easily now, and with all her memories of Apollo so very close, it came with an intensity she’d never before experienced.
The gold band on her finger began to heat, too.
She could boil an entire lake if Apollo were to toss her into one. But this heat was not the hungry kind.
Like her and Apollo, it wanted to play.
“What’s that?” Stone mumbled.
Sybil did not open her eyes, despite his echoing footsteps growing fainter. He was moving away. She could… what? Destroy the device somehow? Then what? He would destroy her.
“Someone’s coming.” he said.
This time she did open her eyes. He stood near the floating chambers, looking up one of the shafts.
Then she heard it—a rumble of voices.
Her heart leapt. People were good. A distraction for Stone, help for her. But he’d set the prototype; she felt the immovability of it. The metal would not let her reshape it, and if she threw it into the fire, it may take hours or days to melt.
The floating chamber hit the ground, and a man stepped off. His chin held at a cocky angle, and his lazy gait almost a sensual stroll. She knew it well. Knew all of him well, from the taut outlines of his well-built body to the silk of his thick, chocolate hair.
“Apollo,” she breathed. “No.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Stone demanded. “I sent everyone home.”
Apollo strolled closer, hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, shoulders slouched. He hadn’t seen Sybil yet.
Stone held a hammer above his head. “Not another step closer! You’ve been drugging me!”
Apollo shrugged. “Needs must.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets, bringing the pockets with him. “But I’m empty-handed right now. I’ve brought nothing but a proposition.”
Stone slammed the hammer onto the worktable. “You have nothing I want, Chester.”
“I know how to work the device.” The words were said with quiet calm, a contrast to the madman’s fire-wild inflections, and as Apollo spoke them, he finally looked at Sybil, his jaw hard, his eyes speaking volumes. Do not mess this up, Sybil Grant.
Her hands became fists, but she held her tongue. For now.
Stone wrapped his hand around the hammer handle. “I’m going to throw you in the fire, Chester. Stop wasting my time. If you knew how to do it, you would have by now.”
“You think so?” Apollo hummed. “Interesting game you’re willing to play. Go ahead, then. Throw me in the fire, and you’ll never learn how to work the device. Or be a smart lad and listen to my proposition.”
Stone’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”
“Exactly. I’ve been lying this entire time, keeping one piece of pertinent information from you.
It’s been a lark, really.” Apollo leaned carelessly against the worktable.
“Pretending I don’t know how to do it, watching you descend into stark raving madness.
But the time for play is done. If you’d left Miss Grant alone, we could have continued the game until you were fit for nothing but bedlam, but since you’ve dragged her down here again… ” He shrugged. “No more games.”
“Tell me what you know.” Stone’s hands tightened on the handle.
“Don’t tell him anything!” Sybil hissed.
Stone whirled on her, pointing the hammer in her direction. “I knew it! You know how to do it!” His smile was so wide, she saw every sharp tooth. “You”—he gestured with the hammer to Apollo—“over there with her. If you two have what I want, you’re going to give it to me now.”
Apollo bowed, all court grace and ease, and he joined her at the table. Their arms almost touched. Their fingers almost brushed.
“Infuriating man,” she hissed.
“Glad to see me, then, love?”
She was, oh she was. “You should not have come.”
Stone hovered behind them, watching. “Get to work!”
“I can’t with you watching so closely,” Apollo snapped. “Go swing a hammer elsewhere. I never did like voyeurs.”
Stone growled but backed off a few steps.
Apollo flicked his hand at him. “Go get the lead. It has to prepared. It’s an important step, and you should practice it.”
“How?”
“Soak five grams of lead in a gallon of water for a quarter of an hour. And five prayers to Vulcan as the lead soaks. Go.” Another hand wave.
And Stone scurried off to gather materials.
“Five prayers to Vulcan?” Sybil whispered.
“I could have told him to stand on his head, too. Should I?”
“No!”
He looked at the table, but the smile that softened his face was for her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I told you I would take care of this. Do you not trust me?”
“Of course I do. That doesn’t mean you have to do this alone. Listen, Sybil. I might never have another moment to say this. I love you. And if I don’t ever leave this forge, I’ll die happy knowing you’re safe.”
His heat flashed through her, gentle and loving and… familiar. As if he’d been loving her all this time, but she’d not been able to recognize it.
A flash near her other hand, where it rested against the device.
Stone cursed across the room.
And Apollo breathed her name, squeezed her hand.
But she could not look away from the prototype.
It had turned to gold.
She yanked her hand away from it, and as soon as her skin lost contact with the device, it flashed back into the highly polished steel. Had she just turned steel into gold?
She put her hands on the device again, thought of the kind of gold that was Apollo—brilliant from the inside out, the kind of valuable brightness that comes only after a lifetime in the dark.
There—
Steel giving way to gold.
Her heart thumped loud enough to bring the ceiling down around them.