Page 71 of Fire in Stone

If Mother didn’t lock the doors, I was free to leave this gloomy place. Even if the doors were locked, I could still find a way to escape.

I shifted my legs under the blanket. Thanks to Ertee’s cold rags and Zenada’s magical touch, my freshly waxed skin felt much better. The ache in my bones and the pain in my muscles had eased, too, just like the pain from my injuries did. I could leave.

But where would I go?

I could take the path back to the river, find the portal, and go back to my world. My life back home might not be that great, but at least it was in the world I knew. I grew up in it, learning the rules of survival. Before Elex took me, I’d had a plan. Before Chris showed up with his gang at the creek and ruined it all.

Chris…

A nagging suspicion bugged me. How did thebracksand the Miller Brothers find me so easily at the train platform in Munich? No one knew who I was or what I looked like. Yet when one of them grabbed me, he seemed to be absolutely sure he got the right woman.

Chris also appeared at the creek in Georgia just minutes after Elex and I had made it there. And he came prepared. He knew we’d be there, even as he couldn’t have known I’d made it back to the country. I’d never told him where I was.

My phone. That was the only explanation I could come up with. I had it turned off for the night at the motel, but I’d turned it back on in the park the following morning to see the map of the creek.

Chris had my phone traced somehow. And instead of protecting me from the criminals, he’d been sending them after me. I’d always known I couldn’t trust him, but I hadn’t been suspicious enough. Chris would’ve never let me be free from him. He’d rather betray me and get me killed than let me go for good.

Did any of that matter now since I couldn’t return to the same time again?

But did I want to return? Did I want to at least try?

I turned to my side in the nest of warm blankets. My body might not be in much pain anymore, but I was exhausted. I doubted I would make it down the steep, rocky path in the dark without falling and hurting myself or, even worse, breaking my neck.

Snuggling deeper into my covers, I savored the little comfort it brought me.

The torchlight flickered, dying slowly. The dark shadows of the stone women stretched and slithered across the floor. The statue of MotherSalamandranow seemed to be one of them—simply another woman among her kind.

This was a different world, a bizarre dream I half-believed I’d wake up from in the morning. Only I feared this wasn’t a dream. This was my new reality. My old world was now gone.

Once again, I touched the ring on my finger. The ruby felt warm, pulsing with the magic it enclosed. Back in my world, its magical qualities didn’t add any value to the stone. In Nerifir, they proved significant.

Sliding my thumb over the carved precious stone, I let my thoughts drift to Elex.

“Listen to what your mind tells you, not your heart…”I’d said to him. And that was the advice I’d been trying hard to follow myself lately. But right now, my mind was tired. As I snuggled into my blankets, watching the torchlight die, my heart took charge.

And my heart missed Elex. My heart was worried sick about him.

What if he didn’t survive the river? After everything he’d gone through in my world, could he have been killed that senselessly, so close to coming home?

I couldn’t imagine Elex dead. He loved life so much. Even locked in stone for years, he’d kept his zest for life. I refused to believe he was gone. Logic told me that if I, so much weaker than a fae, survived, then he should’ve survived, too.

Something inside me warmed when I thought about him, like his heart touched mine, making me believe he was alive.

But where was he then? And why did he leave me all alone on that freezing riverbank?

Twenty

ELEX

With no windows in the dark basement, he couldn’t see the sun rise, but it woke him up, nevertheless.

A spark jolted him awake from the inside. His body softened, turning from stone to flesh. His blood flowed as his heart beat at full speed.

With full awareness came pain, making him wish he’d remain in his stone form for just a bit longer.

After they had locked him in chains in this windowless room in the basement of the Bozyr Peak last night, he’d torn a strip of whatever remained from his shirt and tied it above the wound on his thigh. This morning, the blood no longer dripped from the long, deep gash on his thigh. His body had started to heal.

His right arm, however, didn’t look good at all. He still couldn’t move it. His elbow swelled to almost twice its previous size. It cost him extra energy to keep the heat out of that area. But blood flooded to the wound, bringing fire to it and with it, the burning pain.

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