Prologue
1923, Somewhere in Europe
DRAGAN FIACHNA barely felt the hard shudders and jolts as the stone statue which had been his prison for uncounted millennia was removed from the rat-infested basement of a once-splendid European palace. He closed his eyes against the stabbing sunlight while five burly men labored under his weight, cursing as they stumbled their way up the dirt ramp and through the double doors, where coal had been delivered in better times. He couldn’t have said how many years he’d stood in that basement, or even where he’d been before that. For once, his magic had served him well, granting him the grace to lose himself in his own mind, replaying great wars fought and won, the laughter of long-dead friends who’d stood with him on those ancient battlefields. Anything was better than the helpless torment of the sorcerer’s curse, which had left him trapped for all eternity. He’d spent decades, centuries maybe, wondering why he was still sane. And then even longer wondering if he truly was. In the end, he’d decided it was part of the curse, the same one that fed language into his brain, gifting him with the ability to understand every word spoken in his presence. Another piece of torture, that. Understanding everything, learning of events happening in the world, while he stood trapped, unable to convey the truth of his existence, or to beg for release.
He’d finally welcomed his banishment to this filthy basement. Better to stand in silence, dreaming of times past, than to be surrounded by people who didn’t know he existed.
But now, he was being moved—a thing to be bought and sold, dragged up into the light, loaded onto a sturdy wooden wagon. He heard a horse’s soft blow of protest when his stone prison crashed into the wagon bed, the groan of the wood beneath him. The daylight no longer seemed so glaring, as clouds turned the sky gray above his motionless form. He heard a man’s voice snapping orders. Impatient, arrogant. A spark of memory drew him to that voice, but only for an instant. The reasons for his relocation, the identity of the arrogant man. . . . None of it mattered.
Not until the day his curse was broken and he walked free. And then the sorcerer would pay.
Chapter One
Present day, The Finger Lakes, New York
MAEVE LAY ON HER bed, trying to read. She’d already given up on the continuing role-playing online game she was involved in, unable to achieve the focus necessary to do her team any good. But her attempt at reading a book was faring no better. Her mind was fixed on one thing only, and that was the winged warrior in the first-floor statuary. Not a real warrior, she reminded herself for the one hundredth time. He was one of the bigger statues. One who was unusually soulful and somehow charismatic—if stone could be called such. But nonetheless, he was very much a statue, and she needed to remember that.
She’d spent the better part of her morning sitting next to him, having a conversation as if he could respond, or hell, even hear a word she said. She’d just felt so . . . bad about the way her boss, Mr. Sotiris, treated him. If he wasn’t tossing insults, he was yelling, even arguing with the damn statue.
Of course, she wasn’t exactly innocent when it came to treating the warrior’s statue like a real person. She’d been talking to him ever since she’d discovered the stunning, stone man in Mr. Sotiris’s statuary room. Though at least she’d never expected him to respond, not like her boss seemed to. She’d seen him stop in his pacing to stare up at the statue’s beautiful face, as if waiting for a response.
She’d spent more time than usual with the statue this morning, after Mr. Sotiris left. He’d been in one hell of a mood today, seeming as if he’d driven all this way for the sole purpose of yelling at the stone warrior. He’d been speaking a language she didn’t understand, or even recognize, but his tone had been clear. He’d spat out what sounded like curses, had sneered in a way that seemed as if he was tormenting the ancient enemy represented by the statue. And then, he’d finally left, thank God!
Once she was alone again, she’d found herself being drawn back to her warrior, with his stoic expression, his staunch grip on the big sword in his hands, and those wings. They were fantastic. Graceful in the way they arched over his head, and yet accented with big, deadly-looking talons at every joint. She’d sat there trying to comfort him, telling him he was a better man than Mr. Sotiris, patting the back of his beautifully muscled calf, and stroking his wing. Because, really, who could resist touching something that perfect?
“Maeve,” she said out loud now, because talking to herself was at least better than talking to stone. “You’ve been in this big, empty house too long.” Tossing the book onto her bed next to her phone, she flopped against the pile of pillows at her back to stare through open drapes at the sunny afternoon. She should be out there in the fresh air . . . getting burned to a crisp. Right.
Feeling restless, she got up and pulled the drapes. This close to the lake, there was nothing to remind her she wasn’t the only person for miles, not from this part of the house anyway. If she walked across the hall, she could catch glimpses of the town a few miles away. But it wasn’t summer yet, with tourists jamming the streets in their cars and filling the shops, so the town didn’t look any livelier than the still lake.
She gazed around her small suite—she called it a suite, though it was just a modest bedroom with a private bathroom attached. It had seemed more than enough when she’d taken this job three years ago. After her college years spent in dorm rooms and tiny apartments shared with too many roommates, it had seemed like luxury. But lately, she’d begun to feel . . . claustrophobic. It was stupid. She knew that. She had the whole damn house to herself, and it was big damn house.
“Fuck!” she cursed and slapped her hand on the bed, making the phone bounce. She’d become a damn cliché. The spinster cousin waiting for family to call, because there was surely no one else who was going to do it.
When the hell had that happened? She loved this job. Loved the weird artifacts and antiques and—well, who the hell knew what some of Sotiris’s treasure was? He’d hired her to catalogue his vast treasury of art and artifacts, a collection that was mysterious and magical and . . .
And an excuse for her to hide away from the world, she admitted. God, she was pathetic. There was no reason she couldn’t find a job at a museum or smaller art gallery in a big city somewhere. They wouldn’t pay as much as Mr. Sotiris’s job, but hell, if money was what she wanted, there was always her other graduate major, which was in much higher demand and far more profitable. She was one hell of a computer programmer, but she was even better when it came to cracking other programmers’ code. She’d had offers from every variety of government entity, from intelligence to law enforcement.
But there’d been only one offer that had used her antiquities major, only one that gave her an excuse to avoid friends who’d known long before she did about the other woman her worm of a boyfriend had been fucking for two months. Friends. Yeah, right.