Page 50 of Hearts of Stone

Adam?

It’d been some time since Master Ashley had deigned to bring us here before the other heads of families, but I had thought I knew everyone. I’d seen their great-grandparents grow from children to adults, marry and then have their own children, the process going down through the generations, so I’d assumed I was familiar with every single member of the sprawling witch families that ruled the city. My head whipped around, nostrils flaring as I pulled in a breath, ready to take in this newcomer’s scent, when I saw a face so familiar and yet so painful to look upon.

It couldn’t be.

“Wulf…?” I muttered to myself.

I blinked and blinked again, thinking the man I saw before me was a figment of my imagination, born from guilt and a misplaced sense of duty, but there he remained.

I stepped forward, unable to stop myself as the much younger man turned away from the group he was talking to and smiled back at David.

This was not this…Adam.

It couldn’t be. I knew that angular face, that heavy brow, that long hair, though my brain did register that his hair was now auburn and shone like hot coals, his skin that tanned beige that young human men seemed to like so much, not grey like mine. This stranger, this human man, this warlock, looked exactly like one of my stone brothers, Wulfstan.

A brother I hadn’t been able to stand before for almost a hundred years. He noted my attention, his smile faltering for just a second, something the others in the room caught as well. I felt their power swell, making the air feel thick, electrical, like that just before a storm. The threat was clear, that each one of these white-haired men would act against me if I did not pull my wings in. I forced myself to go still and silent as my stone form, every muscle locking down tight. My purpose was to keep Jade safe first, everything else was irrelevant. But as this Adam stepped closer, I smelled the stink of magic on him. Spicy, strong enough to make my nose itch, so that I was forced to rub at it as he drew closer to my mate.

“I’ll be around to collect the Scotch on the weekend,” Adam told Savoy, but he wasn’t looking at the other man, his focus was on Jade. “I’m Adam Stuart.” When he offered her his hand, I so desperately wanted her not to take it, but she shook it anyway.

“Jade Barlow,” she replied. Her voice was all politeness, but when they touched something happened. She jerked her hand back, frowning as she stared at her palm, then took a step backwards.

“Jade Whiteley now!” Savoy said, shouldering his way forward bluffly. In his enthusiasm, he didn’t see her slight wince. The three of us did, however, and we moved closer inresponse. Savoy frowned slightly, before turning his back on us and offering her his arm. “Now, come, come. We weren’t sure whether you’d be joining us tonight or not, so I’m afraid all we can offer in terms of refreshments is whisky and a cigar.”

“I’ll take the whisky,” Jade said. Her voice was quietly confident and I felt a swell of pride at her composure.

“Oh! Yes, well—” Savoy spluttered. Every single head of family in the room was a man and she was the only woman. The women of the family had their own club further down the road, one I had rarely visited.

“I’ll get it,” Adam said smoothly. “Single or a double, Jade?”

“That depends.” She took in the long boardroom table, installed here when the building was finished at the beginning of the previous century. Her eyes ran over the thick carpet, the paintings of former heads of family on the walls, and I wondered if she saw what I saw: the commemoration of a long history of old white men making decisions for everyone else. “I think I need an explanation of what this is, of why I’m here, before I can make a decision like that.”

Seeing Wulf smile… no, Adam, was a strange thing, for the last time I had seen my stone brother, his mouth had been twisted in a scream of pain. I shook my head to dislodge that memory. I couldn’t help the guardian of Z Ward, but I could help Jade.

“Jade, this is a council where the heads of all the prominent witch families meet,” I started to explain. The heads of the old blood witch families was what I really wanted to say. In over two hundred years of colonisation and immigration, practitioners from all over the world had landed in Adelaide. They might have found many doors opened for them here, but not in Whiteley House.

“Gargoyle…” That word was delivered with all of the suppressed menace only one of the First Families could deliver.This was their place, their turf, and they were not unlike guard dogs in their protectiveness of it. Savoy’s expression quickly shifted into a more genial one as he looked down at Jade. “Your servant is correct. We are the families that made Adelaide.” He stepped back and then gestured to the other men hanging back in the room. “Ours was a planned colony, one formed by design, not through disorder and chaos, and we shaped it very deliberately.”

Did she see the tightness in his smile, the unnatural glitter in his eyes?

“Shaped it to become a strong member of the Commonwealth, one where progressive ideas might flourish.” His lips quirked up at the corners, as though he expected his listeners to find what he was about to say as amusing as he did. “As long as they are the right ones, of course. Many of our kind were burned, hounded, driven out of Europe, but we created a place here wherewepossess the power to determine who comes and who stays. Wherewerule.”

He moved, then, to the head of the table, and the other heads of families took their designated places around it. Gerald Draper looked up at Jade and nodded to the seat beside him, indicating where she was to sit.

But she didn’t take it.

She strode over to the end of the table, taking out the furthest chair, and when she sat down, somehow it became the head. All eyes were on her as she clasped her hands together and rested her chin upon them. Those same eyes narrowed as we drew closer, coming to stand a step behind her. Only Mellors was smiling, now.

No, make that Mellors and the mysterious Adam Stuart.

Bringing two glasses of Scotch with him, Adam took the chair Draper had indicated, sitting down as though he was relaxing on a couch in his own home, with his legs sprawling out underthe table. He seemed highly amused by everything that was taking place, swirling his whisky in one hand before sending the other glass skidding across the tabletop towards Jade. I moved forward, ready to intercept it, but she caught hold of it easily, nodding her thanks before taking a sip from it.

“This is Whiteley House, right?” she said, looking around the room afresh. “And I’m the heir to the Whiteley fortune?”

“Well, yes—” David replied, shooting the others a dark look as they began to mutter.

“Like the place literally has my last name on it, or the one I’m supposed to take.” She made a show of tapping her fingers on her chin. “So what does that make you? The court to my queen?”

“I’m sorry?” Savoy ground out, his tone making it clear he was anything but; that rather he would make sure she was sorry.

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