“It’s become rather”—Sybil squished it between fingers and thumb—“puttylike.”
“Hm.”He tried not to make a single-syllable sound so utterly despondent.And failed.
She patted his shoulder.“It was an excellent idea.But I do not think juggling is the answer.Let us try again.”
And they did.Again and again they tried as the sky darkened to navy and navy became diamond-dotted black.Soon, gold would seep in at the edges of the world.
No gold in the forge, though.Only the dull impervious stubbornness of lead.
Sybil’s eyes were red rimmed from exhaustion.His must be too.His stomach growled, and his muscles screamed, and his mind was as much a putty now as the lead had been when the morning had still been dark as soil rich enough for healthy plant roots.
He tried to pull Sybil toward the door, one hand around her wrist, the other splayed across her ribs.A gentle tug.“You need sleep.We’ll try again later.”
“One more time.”She made for the fire instead of the exit.She needed sleep then food, and if she didn’t care for herself above some foolish device, some goddamned fairy tale, he was going to toss her over his shoulder.
But… Sybil wanted this.
“One more time,” he said with a sigh.
She heated the ring and set it back on the worktable.They’d taken notes all night, and so he knew they’d already tried every conceivable way to make the lead go round the tubing, to coax it into being something it wasn’t.What more was there to try?
Sybil picked up a chunk of lead.She closed it between her prayer-shaped palms and sent up a plea to the heavens, the name Hestia silent on her lips.She cupped her hands around the lead and made a little opening, her hands like the bubbles around the ring.She whispered into the bubble, little soothing words he could not quite make out, her hands warming with her own inner heat.Then she put the lead into the orange-hot prototype and seemed to search the heavens for an answer to what to do next, what method to try.
They’d tried them all.
And she must have come to the same conclusion because she closed her eyes, her lovely face tight with barely restrained sorrow and defeat, and she collapsed against the table, her arms and chest and cheek pressed against the already scorched and dented wood, her lips and face close to the prototype that would likely never work as she wanted it to.
Apollo laid a hand on her back.“Try again later.You’ll figure it out.”
Her back rose with a massive inhalation.He felt as if that breath entered him through his palm and inflated his chest, too, as if she were the bellows and he the fire.Her exhale was just as massive, and it drained him, hollowed him out as her body sank toward the table.
The prototype glowed, shook, then the little bubble where the lifeless lead lay pulsed.
Sybil snapped upright and back a step, right into his chest.“Did you see that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared to look.”
“I’m not.”He snapped up the ring and shook it, opening down, until the lead dropped onto the table.
Not lead.
Gold.
They stared at it, the pink-and-yellow sky seeping through the windows and across the table.
When Sybil reached out a hand, it was shaking, but still she managed to take the gold between her hands and turn it in the glowing light.“It looks real.”Her words a whisper.
He took the gold from her, turned up the heat of his body and melted it in his palm.“Itisreal.Look—gold all the way through.”He closed his hand on the golden puddle, opened it and dropped a sphere into Sybil’s palm.“You did it.”
“I did it.I did it!”She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.And through her kiss, he learned the taste of joy.Hot like sunlight, sweet like a summer berry, perfect like a happy Sybil.
He kissed her back.
Then he did more, laying her on the worktable and undoing her completely.Gone clothes and barriers.Gone doubts and fear.They were gods who had uncovered secrets.The world lay like a golden sphere in their palms.And the energy from that night’s exertions still powered along his veins.He was hard as steel and bigger than usual, and he felt like a brute stripping his Sybil bare in the colorful pools of the sunrise.But she was larger, too, shaped by the fire, the gold.A transformation.
Look at how she reached for him and touched him, how she shared her light so eagerly.Nothing but pleasure in rushing pinks across her skin as he marked her breasts and inner thighs with the coarse stubble on his jaw and cheeks.Nothing but greed in her blue eyes as she traced his muscle and stroked his cock.
