Apollo rode south, the sun hot on his left, a banshee cry burned into his ears, and he tried not to think about what he’d broken behind him.
Tried.
And failed.
22
A QUEEN’S COMMAND
One Week Later
The carriage rocked over smooth London streets, and Sybil could think of only one word.
Fucking.
The word had been with her when Temple had greeted her at the door of Foggy Hill House, and it had followed her like a stray dog all the way to London.It woke her in the mornings and put her to bed at night.It was a ghost haunting her.
No.She was haunting it, excavating every angle of it to better understand her final conversation with Apollo.
God, she felt so hollow.
“Sybil, are you nervous?”Diana’s hand landed on Sybil’s knee, light as a butterfly, gloved like a transcendent.
“Oh no.Not at all.”
“But you’re digging a hole in your chest.”
Sybil looked down.She had her fingers pressed into the space between and just above her breasts, digging, circling.
“I suppose I am nervous,” she admitted.“I’ve never met the queen before.”
“Just remember how young she is.Barely nineteen.A girl.”
“That helps.”
“But the most powerful young girl you’ve ever met.”
“That doesnothelp.”
“And Temple will be there.”Another pat to Sybil’s knee before retreating across the carriage.“She simply wishes to ask you about the device.”
Sybil nodded, her jaw aching.“In truth, it’s not the queen that’s making me nervous.”She needed to say something because it rather felt like everything that had happened since her abduction had not happened at all.And she needed to make some part of it real.“I have been wondering about”—she swallowed—“about your cousin.Apollo.”She wanted to close her eyes and savor the feel of his name on her tongue.She wanted to forget it entirely.
Diana’s brows drew together.“Apollo?What do you wish to know about him?”
“He… he rescued me.From the dungeon.And that rather goes against everything I knew about him before.And… Never mind.It does not matter.”
“No.It’s fine.I do not mind speaking about him.”Diana looked out the window, the rest of her body almost perfectly still.“I suppose I should be terrified of him.I should condemn him and never wish to see him again.But… In my mind there are two Apollos.The one I grew up with and the one after our grandfather died.The boy I grew up with was haughty, thought himself above everyone, but he was not cruel.I knew who he was, and he knew his place in the world, as heirs to grand titles do.He always had a joke for me.”Her head tilted.“Once, when we were around the queen’s age, a friend of our grandfather’s kissed me.I did not wish for it and ran and hid.Apollo slipped some sort of stinky plant into the pockets of all his clothes, and the man couldn’t leave his room because he smelled like rotting onions.He sent all his clothes to be washed, but as soon as they were clean and folded in his trunk, Apollo doused them with the plant again.”She laughed.“Temple would have punched the man in the nose and threatened even greater bodily harm, but that’s not Apollo’s way.”
No, it wasn’t.“He helped me.”In more ways than Sybil could ever tell Diana.“And he put his apprenticeship at risk by telling Temple about Stone.He possesses a heart.But I rather think he wishes he didn’t.”Diana turned to Sybil with a small smile.“I think, actually, there is a third Apollo.The confident future marquess is no more.The distraught and slightly mad man who lost everything is gone, too.There is… someone else now.”
A man willing to work to get everything he wanted.A man who cared and hid it well.A man who couldn’t see a future for himself.
Sybil pressed the heel of her hand against her eye.If she pressed hard enough there she might not fall apart.
He’d been right.She told herself that every half hour or so.He’d been so very right.Outside of Foggy Hill House there was no future for them.Not together.She shouldn’t want a future with him.She didn’t!He’d taken her device to Stone, knowing she was against that course of action, knowing what Stone was bound to do with it.Diana was wrong.There was not a new Apollo.There had only ever been one—power hungry, mercenary, and selfish.
The carriage stopped, and the door opened.Temple smiled at them from the ground and held out a hand.He helped Diana down first, setting a kiss atop her head, and then he helped Sybil.
