“Oh good!” she says. “I’ve been reading about this mushroom that needs to be harvested from a Nordic forest.”
“You want to go mushroom hunting together?” I ask, trying to temper her excitement. I don’t want this to be multiple days of trekking through the woods because she’s on the hunt for something she can’t live without.
I owe her a favor, but I do have my limits.
“Yes!” she exclaims, showing me an illustration of what looks to me to be an average looking mushroom. “I’m pretty sure that this one will help in the next attempt.”
“What next attempt?” I ask, but I should know better. If she’s on the tear for a specific thing, she’ll talk my ear off about it before we go, and I have places to be. Apologies to make.
“The attempt to break the curse on your gargoyle, of course!”
The bottom falls out of my stomach at the mention of Stoneheart. Dread and alarm buzzes in my ears.
“What curse?” I ask carefully.
Her shoulders drop, and her look of shock only adds to my foreboding.
“You don’t know?”
51
STELLA
“We won.”My voice wavers, and I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. The night went later than I expected, and I assumed I’d be able to sleep without seeing my husband.
But I was wrong. I’m drawn here like standing too close to a stinging bonfire. It hurts, but the burn is better than the cold alternative.
“You wouldn’t be surprised at all,” I continue with a shrug. I’m not all that surprised either. I feel the difference in the territory since my attempted abduction and the downfall of our enemies. The fae lord who backed Frank and Leo still needs to be dealt with, but that’s a distant problem in a whole other realm, and the harpies’ ally might already have it in hand.
“I don’t think they even needed an heir,” I muse, but smile when my disturbance gives a pulse to remind me that it’s still here. Still ready to take on the world when the time comes. “I think they just needed to face their demons rather than live in fear. They had to feel a part of something.”
The charms probably helped…and me.
They see me as a leader. There may be the passing poetic whisper about me turning into some mourning ghost over myhealing husband, but when it came down to it, they want to be led by me. Every meeting with a business owner or concerned citizen over the past week, every moment of care I gave to them, paid off.
It’s everything we wanted, and it feels hollow.
“I just wish you were here to see it.” I clear my throat and shiver. The blanket isn’t that thick, and I’m only in a sleeping slip under it. My bare feet have long since become numb. I should go in soon, but the same drive to see him stops me from leaving.
I take in the changes made around us.
Mom dropped by and prettied up the space. A couple of winter flowerpots and the string of fairy lights add a cozy element that nearly touches the shadow in my heart. There’s even a space heater that I was too stubborn to turn on, but now I sigh in defeat and click the button.
The makeover is a silent acknowledgment of what everyone knows.
I’ll be visiting this statue for the foreseeable future.
We may not be giving up, but I’m realistic enough to know that this may take longer than anyone wants to admit.
Perhaps I will become a ghostly visage up here alone.
“Stella.”
I suck in a breath and spin at the sound of his voice, so familiar even though I haven’t heard it in weeks. The tears welling in my eyes fall without permission.
Ben.
“You should have called me.” The stricken expression on his face stabs at my own wounded heart.