The Stone Demon

Ten





Xan waited in one of the back rooms of Maker’s workshop. The old guy had insisted he hide while he got Paige Underwood to go away. She’d apparently come to collect Maker for a meeting—a meeting he said he couldn’t attend until later. Xan hadn’t exactly wanted to be sneaking around back here, but at the same time … who was he to argue? He didn’t give a crap about Donna’s aunt. Not after everything she’d done to the girl he cared about.

His thoughts were all over the place, contemplating the future … and the potential consequences of his choices. Is this what it was like for Donna, during the days leading up to the procedure that added the magical iron to her flesh and bones?

But no. Donna’s experience was entirely different than his. She’d been a child, near death, in danger of losing her hands even if she did survive. She probably didn’t even remember much of her time with Maker—not in the beginning, at least. And “choice” hadn’t exactly come into it.

“You can come back in now, young man,” Maker called.

Xan saw that the old alchemist was fussing with schematic drawings spread out across a huge table. He was muttering to himself and rubbing gnarled fingers across two-day-old stubble on his chin. Xan tried to push back the doubt that was gnawing at him like a pack of hungry rats. Could this man really do the kind of magic Donna spoke of with such reverence? Was it even possible? Xan had seen a lot of things in his life so far, things that had left him full of pain, nightmares, and shadowy memories of events that might or might not have really happened. Torture. Cruelty. But this? A human who could make metal come alive?

Despite his reservations, he knew he had to try. His world had been empty for so long. And although he was grateful for Donna’s friendship—more than friendship, he hoped—the breathtaking, soul-deep yearning he lived with every day refused to ease up, even when it made him act in ways that cost him Donna’s trust. Xan had tried to stop wanting, but he wasn’t sure it would ever be possible.

How can you give up the very thing that keeps you alive?

In Xan’s case, the dream that he might one day fly.

Sometimes, especially during the summer, he would lie on the grass and stare hard enough at the sky that the sun’s afterimage was still imprinted on his vision hours later. Sometimes he thought the sun might blind him, but he didn’t let that stop him. He couldn’t seem to stop gazing at that blue expanse of freedom, beautiful and cruel in its perfection.

He’d been born to have wings. It sounded like pure fantasy, admitting it to himself, but his scars and fractured memories offered a kind of proof that he found hard to toss aside.

Maker was rapping his knuckles on the counter and brandishing some very ordinary-looking measuring tape. “Are you ready? I need to check my calculations.”

“Again?”

“We can’t afford any mistakes, lad.” The old man’s voice was gruff but not unkind. “We need the prototype to be right. It’ll be ready soon enough.”

Xan’s throat tightened. It had been years since he’d revealed his scars to anyone—and now he’d been regularly showing the second person in as many months. Revealing that part of himself to Donna, when they’d met, had seemed surprisingly natural. But showing evidence of his fey heritage to Maker still filled him with dread. He used to be so careful about sharing anything this personal. So potentially devastating. Yet Xan felt that there had never been any other choice. His scars … the murmur of power that still ran through his veins—weak, yes, but still there … always having to back away from people because they couldn’t possibly understand.

And then he’d met Donna, and his inbuilt sense of self-preservation just … melted away. Or maybe he’d just gotten tired of all the secrecy.

Maybe, just maybe, he believed that this man could really help him.

Taking a deep breath that caught in his throat, Xan turned his back and pulled off his coat before he could change his mind.

Stripping off his sweater and shirt, he stood waiting for Maker’s assessment. There was a long moment of silence. To Xan, it seemed to stretch out into minutes, even hours. His spine tingled and there was a slow, painful pulse beating at the base of his skull. Something cold touched his back, and he realized that Maker was taking the measurements. The plastic coating of the tape was smooth across his shoulder blades.

The cold contact stopped and Xan listened as the alchemist shuffled away. He cautiously turned his head. “Are you done?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Maker replied. “Don’t stand there half-naked. You’ll catch your death in here.” He continued to mumble under this breath, but Xan could make out enough of it to understand the basics—something about “young people today” and “hopeless.”

Xan bit his lip to keep from smiling, but at least he felt a little better. He was immensely relieved to be able to cover up again as he gratefully pulled his clothes back on. If Maker could really help him—if this wasn’t all some sort of elaborate plan against him, considering his faery heritage and the group the old man was a member of—he would be willing to keep his mouth shut for as long as it took. Maker had warned him that there would be consequences, but he hadn’t exactly gone into specifics. Not yet. Xan had told him they could discuss the small print later; he’d only wanted to move forward as quickly as possible, before anything could happen to get in the way.

Xan sat quietly and watched the old alchemist’s gnarled fingers dance across metal that shone with pure iron. He thought about costs, and whether the price could be too high. How much was he willing to go through in order to fly again—to regain his birthright?

How much pain could one man take? As he asked himself that question, Xan was no longer afraid. He knew all about pain.