“No.”He began to climb the stairs.
She hurried after him.“Diana has more than enough money to provide for you, too.”
“Absolutely not.”At the top of the stairs, he kept going down the street.
“Apollo!”
The foot he’d taken his next step with hovered over the ground.He wet his lips, swallowed to wet his throat.Finally he put the foot down and looked over his shoulder at her.
His mother stood on the Grosvenor Square mansion’s doorstep.Candlelight from inside flooded out of sparkling clean windows behind her, casting her face in shadow.
“You do not have to punish yourself,” she said.
“Punishment?You think that’s what this is about?Look around you.Nothing here belongs to me.And no matter what I do, it never will.I’m not wasting my time mourning what I can’t have.I’m not living on borrowed money and pity.”
“It’s your birthright as much as hers.”In the gathering night, his mother’s voice seemed small, a fragile thing.
“My birthright…” He’d been raised to think it so, been raised to know exactly who he was and what his future would look like.Wait till the death of his grandfather, inherit the money, the lands, the magic.Join the House of Lords, manage his estates, marry, sire an heir, then help that pudgy baby boy do the exact same as he had done in the exact same order.His life had been preordained.
Now his future stretched before him like an endless black void—empty and unknowable.
“You can always visit me, Mother.If you’re brave enough.”He slipped his glasses back on, tipped his hat, and continued down the street.
By the time he reached his lodgings, night had swallowed London.
The staircase to his room was narrow, steep, and crooked, and the door at the end of the hallway at the top of those stairs was too.He used his key to let himself in.Too dark to see the sparse furnishings.He reached into his pocket and pulled out his fairy orb, set it aglow.
A bed, a window, a table.One fucking chair.No curtains.No rug.He flung off his greatcoat and collapsed onto the bed.It creaked beneath his weight, the springs begging for a quick death.
Like he’d once done.He scrubbed his palms down his face then turned on his side to sleep.
Oh God, you’re dimmer than an unflamed fairy light.
He chuckled.Miss Sybil Grant was a spitfire.Exactly the kind of woman he’d always had a soft spot for.Too bad she was rotting in a dungeon.
Do you care about nothing?No one?You are selfish…
He growled and covered his ears as if doing so would block out the echo of her voice in his mind.“Your brother will find you, princess.Leave me alone.”
Pathetic.
“I’m not going after you.”He needed his beauty sleep.
Do not leave!You can’t leave me here!
He groaned, rolling onto his back.After a long sigh, forceful enough to blow down the thin walls around him, he slammed his boots to the ground.
He really wasn’t the right man to play at knight in shining armor.
But Miss Grant’s brother was a favorite of the queen.And she might prove a useful pawn against Stone.
“Damn you, princess.I’m coming.”
5
CALL THE HEAT
The dark was closing in.Sybil’s fairy orb lit only the rusty bed where she lay.She couldn’t even see her feet stretched out at the end of it.It was summer above ground, but here it was damp and cold, and her body no longer had enough heat to flame the light.She shivered.Baxter would have to return sooner or later.Hopefully he’d bring another orb, flamed by fire or sun.And food.
