Chapter 25 The Midas Touch #2
“Sybil…” Apollo’s hand crept to her wrist, manacled it. “How did you…?”
“You did it.” Stone stared at them from across the room. “Gold.” The one word like an obsession. Slowly he came toward her, and she backed into the strength of Apollo’s side.
“Bloody hell, you’ve done it,” Stone breathed.
She put a hand on the device again, intending to turn it back, to somehow convince him he’d seen wrong because what she’d done was not what he’d asked her to do. The device hadn’t turned anything to gold.
She had.
But touching the gold ring was like touching a miracle. She’d done this. And it was new. Entirely new, not a bit of steel left in it.
And not a bit of setting liquid either.
Stone was almost on her, both hands reaching out for the transmutation device.
She grasped it and threw it into the hungry fire.
First, silence like death.
Then, the crackling break of metal in the flames.
Finally, a wail like madness itself, and Stone lunged for her.
Apollo shoved her behind him, and when Stone hit, he hit Apollo instead, the weight of his hammer into his skull.
Apollo dropped, and Sybil dropped to his side. “Apollo. Apollo!”
Stone yanked her up by the arm, and something in her shoulder popped. She cried out, and he dragged her toward the fire.
“You are going to make me another one,” Stone said.
No, she wasn’t. She slammed her fist into his face with her good arm, the other tingling toward numbness.
Stone howled, and she grabbed the closest thing she could find—a long limb of iron, cold and waiting to be shaped. She swung it at him.
He dropped as soon as it hit his head, and she ran to Apollo, kneeling beside him, patting his cheeks.
“Wake up. Oh, wake up!” His head was bleeding, and his blood was warm on her fingertips.
She grabbed him beneath his armpits—though one arm was all but useless—and put all her weight into pulling him toward the floating chambers.
He was so heavy. One step barely moved them an inch.
“Please, Apollo. Please wake up.” Another laborious step, another few inches.
“Leave me.” The words escaped on a groan. Apollo’s head rolled from side to side.
“Absolutely not.”
“Run while you can, Sybil.”
“No!”
Across the room, Stone was rousing, stumbling to his feet.
She pulled harder, her pulse banging like a symphony of drums. “Get up. Get on your feet and come with me. You say”—she grunted, pulling and pulling—“that I can do whatever I want, and you’ll take care of the rest, well this is what I want, Apollo.
Listen carefully. Get off your arse and escape with me! ”
He chuckled, a faint sort of sound that gave her hope, and then another groan as he rolled out of her hold and onto his hands and knees.
“Yes! That’s it.” She helped him to his feet, and he leaned hard into her. Together, they lurched toward the floating chambers.
“If you ever wondered,” he said, voice strained, almost rusty, “what it feels like to be brained with a hammer—”
“Tell me later. After it’s healed.” They stepped into the floating chamber together.
Free. So close to freedom. They’d made it, and Stone would never be able to turn lead to gold.
He’d never be able to… because maybe he couldn’t.
All these years of training, and he’d never figured it out.
Neither had Temple or her father. But she had.
She almost laughed as she pulled the floating chamber lever and it began to rise.
Chambers above and beside them were working their way down slowly. What time was it?
“The apprentices,” Apollo whispered, sinking to the floor, his feet flirting with the edge of the chamber. “Only a few left”—he winced, touched his temple—“but they’re early ris—”
The word turned into a startled cry as a hand reached over the edge of the chamber and grasped his ankle.
Stone.
Apollo tried to kick himself free, but Stone held on too tightly. Then he yanked, and Apollo slid right off the edge and into darkness.
Sybil screamed, slamming the lever in the other direction, and the chamber screeched to a stop before clinking downward.
Stone and Apollo were tangled in a heap on the forge floor, and when she was low enough, Sybil jumped, landing beside them.
Stone scrambled to his feet before she caught her breath and slung her to the floor, pinning her down with one booted foot. It crushed the air out of her lungs. She felt a rib crack and cried out. Air was gone, light going too. Her nails broke clawing against Stone’s boot.
“A-Apollo,” she managed to choke out.
But he lay lifeless.
“Ap—”
Stone crushed his boot into her chest harder, twisted.
She reached for Apollo. He was near. And if they were going to die it might as well be together. Her fingers brushed his, and instead of the chill of death, they were so very warm, so very full of life as he always was.
“Show me how you do it?” Stone demanded. “Show me.” More weight, more pressure, less air.
Her fingers brushed Apollo’s fingers again.
And he glowed.
As he did in the conservatory, his skin made of pure light. His eyelids fluttered opened. He saw her first—eyes soft and adoring. Then he saw the boot on her chest. The glow swept across his skin like a sunrise, and he struggled to his feet.
“Get your damned foot off her,” Apollo growled.
The fire in his voice fueled her, and she clutched at Stone’s boot again, dragging in small breath after breath, taking what air she could get.
Apollo crept closer to Stone, his glow growing hotter. She could feel the full force of it now, anything that touched it would turn to ash. Not her, though. It crept soothing tendrils of warmth to her. Be brave, they said.
Brave?
She was fucking irritated.
She did not want a boot-shaped bruise on her body or a Stone-shaped wound in her life. She did not want to run. She could turn lead into gold. She could turn steel into gold. She could turn anything into gold. She felt the power of it tingling in her fingertips.
Apollo’s gaze dipped to her, and she felt rather than heard their message: Steel yourself against the heat, love, as I know you can, and we’ll take this madman down together.
She steeled her skin, her bones, her hair. She called up her own inner heat as Apollo glowed brighter than the sun.
“One last chance, Stone.” Apollo flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders, as if preparing for a boxing match. “Release her.”
Stone laughed.
And put the heel of his boot on Sybil’s mouth. Pressed.
And a sun exploded from Apollo’s chest, raged toward Stone like a fireball.
Sybil welcomed it, embraced it, played with it.
Stone didn’t have time to scream.
Though Sybil would never know what silenced him.
Apollo’s fire?
Or Sybil’s gold.
One had stolen the air from his lungs.
The other had stolen the voice from his tongue.
The fire flared higher for one breath—a glittering white orb—and then it flickered out.
Sybil heard a thump, a groan, and she wriggled to get to Apollo, but something heavy and immobile on her mouth pinned her in place.
A golden statue of a man.
She tried to move it, but it was too heavy.
“Sybil.” Hands were on her. “Sybil, are you hurt? Fuck.” Apollo’s hands, and they moved from her body to the statue, to Stone, and shoved it backward. Before it hit the floor with a crash, she was flinging herself into Apollo’s arms.
So warm, so wonderful, she wanted to crawl into his chest and cry.
“You’re well?” he said. Then he said it over and over again, as if he could not convince himself it was true.
They clung to each other as the clangs from the shaft grew more intense.
“God, Sybil.” He dug his fingers into the hair at her nape and pulled back until their noses were only inches from one another. “God, Sybil.”
He didn’t have to say anything else. She felt the relief in those two words in her very bones.
The chambers clicked closer in the shaft.
“The apprentices,” she said.
“It’s about to be chaos.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
His gaze went far, over her shoulder and to the toppled golden man. “We’d better come up with a story, because they’re coming. And the more important question is… What did you do?”