A voice cleared behind him.Not Sybil.He would have felt her coming for him.Somehow.He slipped his hand into his pocket.His lump of gold was there, shaped by her hand into a little spiral.An earthworm, she’d said, because he liked to play in the dirt.
He huffed a laugh, pulling it out of his pocket.A golden worm.A slimy thing that worked its way through the darkness of soil.Fitting.
“Good morning, Mrs.Collins,” he said.
“Good morning, sir.”
“I’m leaving shortly.”He turned, slipping the gold back into his pocket.“I’m not returning.”
She nodded, not a hint of surprise across her lined face.“That’s for the best, Mr.Chester.”
His brows shot up.“You knew?”
“’Course I knew.You look much like your father.A little like your mother about the eyes.And there’s all the carousing you’ve been doing with the lass.”
“You knew that, too, then.”
She snorted.“Not a subtle bone between your eight limbs and four eyes.Two brains but neither capable of hiding very well.”
“Have you told the marchioness?”
“I should have.But this house is more yours than hers.”
He laughed, and it felt so sharp, so loud, he feared the glass surrounding them would break.“None of it is mine.”
She nodded, looking out the window.“Your grandfather won this house in a game of cards.Won me, too, I suppose, since I came with it.I never met him.His wife came here shortly after he won it, when I was still young.She stayed here till she died.”
“You knew my grandmother?”
Mrs.Collins nodded.“She used to spend an awful lot of time in this room.She used to glow.Like you do.”
“I don’t… People don’t?—”
“They do sometimes.With enough warmth and love.Your grandmother was a gardener.Of many kinds of things.Things would grow for her with nothing more than a smile, a tender touch.”
This was maudlin.Unnecessary.Apollo snapped up the device, stuffed it into his satchel, and made for the door but paused right on the threshold.“Thank you.For keeping me—us—secret.”
“The new marchioness is a good woman.She came here right after all the excitement in London last year, visiting all her properties with that alchemist husband of hers.She’s a good sort.But it’s… not right, taking away your title, your magic.You were born to carry it.”
“I… I do not think I was.”He crept out of the house and into the sticky morning.
He was saddling a horse when the gold in his pocket began to burn.
“Shit.”He reached into his pocket and tried to pull it out, dropped it.Too hot.The rings of the spiraled worm were melting, separating.He knelt to pick it up when he heard her footsteps.
Sybil was coming for him.
Forget the gold.No time.He whipped the buckles tight, put a foot in the stirrup, and?—
“Apollo?”
Both feet off the ground, one leg set to sling over the horse’s back—caught.
He could finish mounting and sprint out that door without a word, without a single look back.He was a coward, after all.A worm.
His boot made no sound as it returned to the dusty stable floor.He licked his lips, wanting to look at her, knowing he shouldn’t look at her.
She stood framed by the stable doors, wearing nothing but her shift and wrapper, her long golden hair tumbling down her back in soft waves that frizzed in the sticky air.The sun rose behind her, stretching yellow and pink tendrils low across the horizon.
