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.
25
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.
“Myown heat.Not yours.”
