He’ll never find out.
He never meant to release her.
Sybil collapsed against the cold stone, giving in to the heat behind her eyes.Captured.Imprisoned.Forgotten.She’d die down here.
No.
With a growl, she scooped up the fairy orb and shoved to her feet.She wasn’t going to die.She’d kill Baxter before she even came close to that proposition.
She shone the light around her cell.A bed, a bucket, a narrow table running the length of the cell’s back wall.Limping down the barred walls of her cell, she tested the metal.All of it set.None of it open to interference from a knowledgeable alchemist.Not that she was one of those.While Temple could steal into unset metal and shape it to his whims.She did not know how.She needed a flame to shape metal.There was none here but for that inside the orb, and she couldn’t reach it, set as it was.
That certainly reduced her odds of escaping.
She wandered toward the table at the back.An ordinary notebook lay there, beaten and bruised as most alchemist’s notebooks were.She flipped to the first page, then the next and the next.The entire thing filled with sketches of half-finished devices.No, a single device from different angles over and over again.Some of the sketches explored alterations to the original designs, some pages were covered in scrawled notes she couldn’t decipher.
Behind her, a hinge, rusted with age and disuse, creaked.
She swung around, fear stealing her breath, and held her fairy orb high.
A man stood frozen in the doorway of the cell next to hers, his back to her, one foot lifted off the ground, and shoulders hunched forward.
A savior.
She rushed toward him, pain searing her ankle, and grasped at the bars closest to him.“Help me!Who are you?Oh,thank Godyou’re here.”
He uncurled very slowly, tugging down his sleeves, and setting the toe of his boot on the floor.He turned just as slowly, running his hand through his hair.And as the light fell across his face, her belly flipped.He was gorgeous, as he’d always been.His brown hair was darkened by the shadows, and his pale face was well-shaped.Cheekbones high as a transcendent’s confidence, jawline sharp as an alchemist’s blade, lips full and arrogant.He was healthier than she’d last seen him, shaved and broadened by the apprenticeship she’d heard he’d taken in Stone’s forge.Before he’d lost his title he’d possessed the lean grace of a cat.He retained his grace but had hardened about the edges, as if he’d excised every bit of his softness and replaced it with steel.
“You.”She shook the bars.She wanted to shake the damned enraging men around her.How many times would she have to utter that single word of horrified recognition?Too many.
Apollo Chester swept her an elegant bow.“That’s right,me.And you’reyou, and it’s been lovely seeing you again, but I’m afraid I’ve business elsewhere.”He stepped away from her cell.
“Oh, no you don’t!”She lunged at the bars, striking an arm through them.She caught the inner edge of his waistcoat and yanked him closer.
He met the metal caging her with a yelp.“Careful, sweetheart, you’ll mess my clean linen.”
She fisted her hand more tightly around the waistcoat.“You helped Stone bring me here.”
“Seems likely, I admit, but I have nothing to do with this villainy.”He pried her fingers open and stepped out of her reach.
“You’ve come to gloat, then,” she growled.
“About what?”He appeared genuinely curious, head tilting to the side as he smoothed the wrinkles she’d made in his clothing.
“Your teacher’s treatment of me.”
“I barely know who you are, sweetheart.I’m not about to waste a good gloat on you.”
Barely know who you are.The man would not have hesitated tokillher last summer.“You held a knife to my neck.Do you threaten the lives of so many maidens you lose track?”
“Not as many as you’d think.”He leaned a shoulder against the bars of her cell, crossing his ankles as a lock of hair fell over one eye.“Though I do think I place the incident now.You’re Temple Grant’s little sister, yes?God, that was ages ago.Don’t take what happened personally.Why are you looking up?”
She continued staring at the ceiling.“When a devil speaks the Lord’s name, one fears retribution.A good smiting.One hopes at least.”
He barked a laugh.“Funny little chit, aren’t you?That comment earlier about Stone being dim as an un-flamed fairy orb.”He mimicked wiping a tear from his eyes.“Biting.You’re much preferable to my dour cousin.”
A terribly idiotic spark of hope flared in her chest.Diana.He was related to Sybil’s sister-in-law.Sybil grasped the bars, her face inches from his shoulder as she peered up at him.He smelled of forge fire and something spicy.“Will you help me?You helped Temple rescue Diana from the Tower.”
He inspected his fingernails, tugged at his sleeve cuffs.“I didn’t come here to help you.I’m afraid curiosity drove this particular cat.Saw some brutes drag you down here and followed.Hid when Stone showed up.”He nodded at the cell he’d exited.
