“Apollo!What’s wrong?”She reached across the delicate wrought iron table, between the tea things, but could not quite reach him.
He shifted his jaw side to side.“The damned fog hasn’t lifted for more than two hours straight.My babies will die if this keeps up.”
“Your plants will not die.Just go stand near them for a minute or two, and they’ll be ecstatic.”
His cheeks pulled in as his chest rose, and he seemed to stall there, frozen.She’d not thought he could go farther away from her.But he had.
“Are you thinking about Stone?About London?”Since their success in the forge, the specter of the future had hung over them.They could return now.
But now… she didn’t want to.
He stood and wandered so far from the table, she could see only the dark outline of his body in the fog.His voice drifted to her, flinty, cold, sharp.“You won’t tell Stone, though, will you?”
“I’m still thinking about what to do.”She twisted her fingers together in her lap.She wanted to defeat Stone at his own game.She didn’t want to return to London, but she wanted the choice, to return eventually because it was safe for her to do so.But this device… it could change so much.And if the wrong person possessed it…
Stone was the wrong person.Unequivocally.
“You are being naïve, Sybil,” Apollo said.“If you do not give the device to Stone, he’ll come for you again.”
“I know.”
“You’ll never be safe.”
“I am.”
“You’re not!”He appeared out of the fog, eyes wild, muscles rigid.
Sybil stood to meet him, grasped his wrists.“I am safe right now.No need to worry.”
Did he worry about her?His twitching jaw and racing pulse suggested he felt… something for her.
Her own pulse kicked up its pace, and she released his wrists.She could not look at him.“For now, I am safe.And when we return to London, Temple?—”
“Damn Temple.He thinks he can control everyone around him, but he can’t control Stone.Stone owns the Guild, owns every damned invention housed in the ground beneath the museum.He has hundreds, thousands of alchemists ready to do as he says.He has an army.What does your brother have?A wife, a little queen who’s no more than a girl with a transcendenttalentthat’s little more than a party trick.”
Sybil’s pulse took another upward tick, anger urging it higher.Another sip of her beer couldn’t cool her, so she rose.“I’ll meet with Mrs.Morrison another time.”And she swept for the door.
He didn’t let her have more than two feet of distance between them.As she stepped out into the street, he was right behind her, curving over her, hissing in her ear.
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am.That is why I’m taking my time, considering every possibility.We could just pretend we know nothing about the device, or that we never got it working.”
“He won’t believe that, even if everyone else does.You’ll be trapped in the dungeon as soon as you set foot in London.I can’t spend every waking hour keeping you alive and free.”
“I did not ask you to.”
“Sybil.”Her name softer than she’d ever heard it before, and his hand on her neck even softer than that.So much in that small embrace.
Or there was nothing in it at all.For him.
When he dropped a small kiss, warmed by his exhalation on the curve of her neck, she almost cried.
“Ah!There you two are!”
They heard Mrs.Collins through the fog before they saw her, and they jumped apart.When the housekeeper finally appeared, she held a letter aloft like a sword, then held it out to Sybil.
“It’s for you.You’ll be wanting to pen a reply, no doubt, so I’ll leave you to it.”Mrs.Collins wouldn’t quite look either of them in the eye as she darted back inside.
