Even so, she’d intended to stay with Sotiris for no more than a year. Just enough to get her head on straight, and get over the breakup. But one year had become two, and then three. . . . Maybe it was time to leave before four rolled around when she wasn’t looking.
Except if she left . . . she’d be abandoning her stone warrior. Without her, he’d be all alone in this sterile house, with no one but Mr. Sotiris for company, if you could call her boss’s visits company. The creep—and he was creepy—never did anything but taunt her warrior, as if the stone statue could somehow hear the insults. Hell, maybe he did. She’d listened more than once when Mr. Sotiris spoke to the statue as he would someone he hated.
But, even so, what purpose did it serve? Maybe it was a form of catharsis for Mr. Sotiris. The statue couldn’t care either way.
But then, she’d done the same thing, more or less. Her warrior had become her substitute friend, someone she could care about with no risk. What was it about the statue that made it natural for her to form an emotional connection to him? It sure as hell wasn’t the same thing that drove Mr. Sotiris’s rage. She felt nothing but compassion for the stone warrior, for the sadness the artist had so perfectly reflected in his gaze.
She stared thoughtfully out the window a moment longer, then chided herself impatiently. She shouldn’t be mooning over even the most beautiful statue. She had to decide whether she should stay in this house all alone for another year. And it was a decision too big to make based on her feelings for a hunk of stone.
As if in answer to her thoughts, she heard a huge crack, as if something heavy hit the marble floor downstairs, then echoed up through the stairwell to her third-floor room.
Heart pounding, she grabbed her phone and called up the house’s security app. It was still armed, with no motion anywhere, inside or out. She tiptoed into the hallway, never having been one to cower under the blankets, no matter how much of a hermit she’d become lately. Starting for the stairs, she paused, considering. She had a gun in her bedside drawer. One didn’t grow up in the Tennessee hills without learning to hunt, and that meant being able to shoot. Of course, she’d used rifles back then. Her current weapon of choice was more practical for personal defense, especially given her rather petite build—a compact Glock G48, 9mm, with a ten-round magazine. Some users might have preferred a higher capacity mag, but she was more interested in keeping the weight down, so she could handle the weapon easily. Besides, if it took more than ten rounds to take down a threat, she was probably shit out of luck anyway.
Now, she stood outside her room, undecided. Should she bring the gun? Her grandfather’s voice was saying, “hell, yeah,” while her mother’s practical voice was telling her that if there was an intruder, she’d be better off to hide and call the police. Maeve didn’t object to the hiding option. She had no testosterone driving her to defend her castle, especially since it wasn’t her castle. Besides, even if she did call, the police response wouldn’t exactly be prompt. It would take a while for her request for assistance to make its way to the sheriff, especially this time of year. He could be having lunch with his two kids, or a quick romp in the bedroom with his new wife, or any number of other important duties. She was definitely alone in this isolated house, warrior statues notwithstanding. So she decided to go with Grandpa’s advice.
Going back into her room, she pulled the gun from her bedside drawer and inserted a fresh mag, then continued toward the stairs, sticking to the wall as she descended, knowing there’d be far fewer creaks to give her away.
DRAGAN FOUGHT FOR balance as the stone that had been his prison for uncounted centuries began to crack and fall away. His body had felt nothing in all that time. No pain, no hunger, no thirst. His torment had been of the mind and soul. But now that the curse no longer held him in stasis, his wings—deployed for flight at the moment the curse had struck—disappeared into his body. Agony shot through his back, not from the bloody wounds created by the magical nature of their existence—he’d lived with that pain for most of his life—but from the weight of wings held motionless far longer than his body was ever designed to tolerate.
But while his muscles screamed their torment, his mind soared with this sudden freedom. Fully alert, he dropped to a defensive crouch, eyes flaring in the near darkness as his gaze took in every detail of his surroundings. He spun in a circle, mapping what should have been a familiar room after the decades he’d been trapped here. But he hadn’t been moved in all that time. Not since he’d been transported over foaming seas and endless roads, to finally arrive in this place, to discover he’d become a collector’s piece for the very sorcerer who’d condemned him to this nightmare existence.
Seeing no immediate danger, he gave himself a moment to recover, time for blood to flow hot in his veins once more, to warm muscles and ease the pain. But only that. One moment, no more.
He rose to his feet slowly, testing his balance, gratified when muscle and sinew responded as it should, his body still that of the goddess- blessed warrior he’d been born. Goddess-blessed, he thought cynically. Most of his own people would have said monstrous, despite all he’d done for them. It was their fear, their hatred, which had driven him to Nicodemus, and ultimately to this tormented existence. He shook his head, small bits of rock and dust flying from his long hair to patter on the stone floor. None of this was Nico’s fault. It was Sotiris who’d crafted the curse, Sotiris who’d seduced someone into betraying all of them in a way that made them vulnerable to his curse. Without such a betrayal, Sotiris would never have succeeded in breaking through Nico’s protections as they went into battle.
Unfortunately, the traitor was, in all likelihood, long dead and beyond retribution. Sotiris, on the other hand, was here, in this time and space and within his grasp.
But not yet. Dragan knew his body. Strong as it remained, he needed more time to restore both body and mind, and to learn of the world outside this room. Time to plan. And if the fates granted him the boon he was so obviously owed, then there would also be time to discover Nico’s fate, and that of his three warrior brothers who’d stood with him on that fateful battlefield.
A heavy piece of his stone prison crashed to the marble floor as he stepped down from the low pedestal. He ignored it, his gaze focused on the plain wooden door through which the lovely woman came and went on her visits to him. She could have no idea what she’d done for him. That she’d been the one to finally, finally, break the endless spell of his captivity. It was her fingers on his wing, her insistence that he was the one she felt safe with, while Sotiris was the monster. He knew the words of his curse, knew the damn thing had been crafted to make his freedom very nearly impossible. Sotiris had made sure of it. So, while the woman had come to him almost daily, chatting as if with an old friend, he’d held out no hope that she’d be the one to deliver his freedom, the one to meet the curse’s very precise demands.