Page 9 of Fire in Stone

What was it? A waterfall, rushing into the hot pool of the bathing caves in his father’s castle? A creek trickling between the black stones on the side of the Bozyr Peak?

The sound reminded him of home. Though even with the haze in his head, he knew he was not in the Dakath Mountains. The sounds, the smells, and the sights of his home world lived only in his memories now. And in his dreams.

The noise of running water stopped. His vision cleared in time to see a young woman emerging from behind a worn curtain.

He didn’t recall seeing this girl before. But his memories lately were a chaotic collection of images without much order or meaning. She might be in it too, somewhere, buried deep among the many other forgotten faces.

Only how could he have forgotten a face like hers?

Holding a large, brick-red towel to her chest, she used the other end of it to dry her hair that was almost as bright as her towel. A rich shade of copper, her red hair reached down to her shoulder on the right side. On the left, it was shorn off completely, leaving on display the delicate shell of her ear with a couple of small stud earrings.

Why was the woman here?

And what was this place?

Red-and-yellow stripes of Ghata’s tents were all he’d seen lately. Ever since thebracks, Ghata’s men, had stolen him from his father’s castle in Dakath, Ghata had kept him as part of her menagerie. By using the smoke ofwomoraleaves, she forced him to remain in his stone form day and night.

He hadn’t shifted in years, staying unnaturally frozen in stone, a state that often felt like death. Mute and unmoving, he spent his days inside a tent, surrounded by dusty canvas walls. Sometimes people, dressed in bizarre clothing, would pass by, gawking at him to the sound of Ghata’s voice telling them about her menagerie of “magical beings not found on Earth.”

The walls in this room, however, weren’t made of canvas. And the woman who was here with him didn’t appear to have any clothes on at all. The towel she was pressing to her chest was the only thing that concealed her body from him.

The fascinating creature stopped in front of him abruptly. Her red hair looked even brighter up close, and its asymmetrical shape even more odd. A small silver ring glistened in her left nostril. Her appearance was rather unusual, even for this bizarre world populated by humans.

“You’re staring at me,” she said.

He wished he could look away. But in this form, he couldn’t. So, he just kept staring straight at her.

She had green eyes, he noted. Not the clear, bright color of an emerald, but the yellow green of the moss on a mountainside warmed by the sun at the end of summer.

The woman fluffed her hair with the towel to dry it.

“How are you so unbelievably handsome?” she murmured.

He smirked inside. Weren’t all fae conventionally beautiful? All his kind had symmetrical features and healthy bodies that kept their perfect shape for centuries. What made each person interesting were their differences, things that made them unique.

This girl looked like no one he’d ever seen before. She intrigued him. But who, by MotherSalamandra, was she?

He didn’t sense any magic in her, which meant she must be one of the creatures populating this world—a human.

What was she doing here with him, in this very uninviting room? With its peeling walls and the faded beige curtain in the corner?

He noticed more things about this place he wished he’d never seen—the narrow cot by the wall, the stained concrete floor, the pitiful sole source of light under the low ceiling. There were no windows here. No rugs on the floor or pictures on the walls to make it look cozy or lived in.

What an ugly place. Really, the only sight worth resting one’s eyes on was the young woman with warm green eyes and the weird hairstyle.

She stood in front of him, no longer drying her hair, just looking at him. Placing her knee on his thigh, she leaned closer. Her fingers trailed down the side of his face, then along his neck toward his chest. Warmth spread through his stone in the wake of her touch.

“So incredibly realistic,” she said under her breath. “Whoever made you must be a real genius.”

She reached the waistband of his pants, and he would’ve given a century of his life just to be able to feel more than what his stone form allowed.

Her gaze fell on his wings behind his shoulders.

“The sculptor made one mistake, though. You’re way too pretty for a gargoyle.”

Well, she was ignorant of basic facts. Gargoyles were fae, which made them perfect, at least as far as the looks went.

But maybe it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know that? Maybe her entire world was ignorant of that fact? That would explain why people had gawked at his wings when Ghata displayed him in her menagerie. They just didn’t know that winged people existed.

---