She still stood on the edge of the roof, her eyes wide and her shoulders stiff.Oh, she was sizzling, still angry as a swarm of bees.Her pulse raced.
No idea how he knew it, but he did.
As soon as she’d set eyes on him, her pulse had kicked up, and it ran so quickly now, a series of thumps in the ring around his finger—thumpthumpthumpthumpthump—he was afraid it would propel her backward, off the roof.
He crept toward her carefully and extended a hand as if to a panicked beast.“Why don’t you come away from the edge now?”
“Why don’t I throw you off it?”
God, how he’d missed her.
She moved away from the roof edge.But not toward Apollo.And it felt like a loss.His arms aching and empty.She took her own path, wandering beneath the ivy-wrapped wooden frame that covered half the roof.She flicked a leaf here, stopped to smell a flower there, looking for all the world as if she didn’t care he was here.
Perhaps she didn’t.
“Why are you here?Eavesdropping,” Sybil said in the sort of tone that made Apollo cautious.And aroused.Odd combination.
“I didn’t intend to eavesdrop, but once afforded the opportunity, I couldn’t resist.”
“Naturally.”
Apollo took Sybil’s old place at the edge of the roof, looking out over the square.Below, horses and people and carriages—all like little dolls—trotted about as if the world weren’t changing every second around them.Everything they knew to be true transmuting, like lead to gold, into something new.
“Why are you here?”she asked again.
Because he needed to see her.He turned to do just that, and the sight of her almost made him forget how to breathe.“St-Stone has the device, but he can’t work it.It’s driving him mad.I’m beginning to think lead is not at all salubrious for human interaction.The more he plays with the stuff, the more he seems to lose himself.”
Sybil bit her thumbnail.
Apollo drew his knuckles up and down his jaw.The rough bristles reminded him he’d not slept in… two, three days?“I left him drugged and unconscious at his forge, one of the few remaining apprentices cleaning up the mess he’d made.”He searched Sybil for signs of madness.She’d played with lead and gold often during their time together.But she seemed the same as always.“I think… Sybil, I think you’re the only one who can work the device.”
“That’s absurd.”She batted a branch away.
“Is it?I’ve tried to use it.Before I handed it over to Stone.I can’t.”
“Still poor and powerless, then?”She flung the door open and disappeared inside.
He followed, and the door slammed behind him as he stormed after her.“Yes, poor, but maybe not powerless.The madder Stone becomes, the more I seem to be the one in charge?Absolute nonsense.”
“Indeed.”She lifted her skirts to fly down a flight of stairs.
“But I’m the only one who doesn’t mind drugging the addled man into sleep, and drugged is the only way we can keep Stone from killing the apprentices.Or himself.”He rubbed his shoulder as he descended behind her.“Getting hit with a flying hammer hurts, in case you’ve ever wondered.”
“It should have hit you more center, and a bit higher.”A few landings down, she stormed into a corridor of doors.
Again, he followed, speeding up to walk by her side.“He is coming for you again.He knows you’re important.”
She threw open a door and tried to shut him out, but he wedged himself between the door and the frame.
“Go away,” she demanded.
“Not yet.”He wiggled into her room and closed them inside.
And found them so very close together.He could reach out and touch her, could barely keep himself from doing so.Tempting beyond measure to cup her neck and spear his fingers into the hair at her nape, to take more than a memory of that silk, the slope of her neck, the warmth of her skin.His hand trembled.He clasped it into a fist and inhaled—a mistake because the air smelt like Sybil.She was around him now, in him, making him.
Did she feel it?The simmering heat between them?They wouldn’t set a tub of water boiling right now.They’d evaporate it instantaneously.
“Steal it back,” she whispered.“Take the prototype while Stone is drugged and bring it back to me.”
