Page 47 of Married to the Devil

“A little birdie told me that your aunt upset you,” he says.

She glares at him even as she accepts the items. “No thanks to you.”

“My apologies, I was distracted this morning. I should have warned you.”

The anger that had plagued her after the meeting returns now, threatening to whip her into a fury.

“I have something to help cheer you up.” Stoneheart makes an odd sound between a purr and a hum, as if to distract her from the dark emotions. From a pocket in his kilt, he withdraws a jagged dark shape, capturing one of Stella’s hands and placing his gift in it.

I blink to make sense of the object. “You got her a rock?”

Stella looks down at the rock in her palm with surprise. The light catches one of the faces of the stone and flashes blue. She gasps with delight and drops her granola bar. “A labradorite!”

His gaze meets mine full of amusement while her attention is devoted to the stone. “It’s for charm making.”

A thoughtful gift from a gargoyle who has treated her thoughtlessly in the past. It’s another puzzle I should avoid.

Stoneheart waits until Stella has touched each edge of the rock. When she looks up at him, it’s with a touched expression that’s edged with confusion as if sensing the same puzzle I am.

“Forgive me, wife,” he says. “I have been focused elsewhere. I should have told you about your aunt.”

Her gaze drops back to her gift. Her anger seemingly a bad memory when she shakes her head. “It wasn’t even just that.”

“Oh?” he asks.

Stella rolls the rock between her palms and even more tension leaves her shoulders.

“Thank you for this,” she says like she wants to drop the subject.

I should go, but I don’t move. Instead, allow myself to watch the stilted intimacy in front of me.

The workaholic and the witch. There’s an apprehension between them that I’ve tried not to dissect. It’s not that they love each other. If it were that, it would be so much easier to keep my distance. It’s more that they circle each other like tigers who don’t know if the person opposite of them will fulfill their desires or lash out.

Stella has plenty of reasons to suspect Stoneheart of hurting her. He’s hard and driven. But why does Stoneheart seem just as leery of her?

Stella isn’t in a hurry to answer Stoneheart’s inquiry about what’s bothering her, but I have information to share.

“Ariel seems to think that because of the history of this territory, your current actions aren’t going to win the people over,” I say.

Stoneheart sits back, making the arm of the couch creak threateningly. “That topic does keep coming up. Lorenzo apparently was an even worst leader than we’d been able to gather.”

“I’ve actually done some research on that front,” I say. It had taken a while to pull together the details. “His ascension to the role of territory leader was a bloody one that most don’t talk about.”

Both of them stare at me now. I continue, “Frank is the second eldest Leonid sibling. They had a sister who was set to inherit the role. The same week their parents died in a boating accident, she, her mate, and their son were killed in a suspicious home invasion.”

Stella pales.

I continue, “Lorenzo claimed the position.”

“Wouldn’t Frank have been next?” Stella asks.

“It appears that he decided not to challenge his brother,” I say. “They could have arranged it all with the understanding that Lorenzo would be the one to take up the mantle.”

“This should have been common knowledge. How did they keep what happened from spreading to the other territories?” Stoneheart grits out.

I shrug. “They kept rumors of what had happened from spreading by force. Lorenzo married your mother, Stella, the next year. The Elderflowers were an influential witch family before the deal was made, and even they hadn’t known what had happened.”

“How did you get this information?” Stoneheart asks.

---