The Stone Demon (31 page)

Donna thanked the gods for boring alchemical texts, good friends, and being born different. All that reading while shelving for Miranda had been worthwhile in the end, as she’d slowly pieced together her plan to thwart Demian. She hadn’t known that there was a plan to build—not even when the British Museum was reduced to rubble and Demian faced down the other three races at that charade of a masquerade. Things had seemed hopeless—which was what Demian had intended.

Robert—who had relished both his role in the battle and coordinating communications in the aftermath—had told Donna that the Philosopher’s Stone was now being looked after by the Order of the Lion. It seemed appropriate that the most secret of all the secret Orders was safeguarding the most powerful artifact in the world. A new elixir could now be created, but nobody was rushing to complete the process. Maybe they never would. Rachel and the other alchemists had agreed on one thing: alchemy belonged to the past. The future involved new directions, and a whole new purpose. They just had to figure out where they fit in the modern world, and immortality wasn’t something that humanity was ready for.

Taking a deep breath, Donna glanced at Xan. He’d de-cided to return to his birth father’s home. It had been a …
surprise
when he’d first told her about it. Donna had hugged him and nodded enthusiastically, but inside, her heart had broken just a little.

She leaned toward him now, with a sigh, and kissed his warm cheek. He moved to her side of their little nook and wrapped his arms around her, holding on tight.

They spoke about it again, up there on the roof: Xan’s intention to spend some quality time in Faerie at Queen Isolde’s personal invitation. Cathal was the queen’s new first knight and would be needed there for the foreseeable future. Donna couldn’t help feeling that they were saying goodbye forever, although she hoped that wasn’t true. Forever was a long time.

“I’ll visit,” he said.

“I know.”

“Probably not a good idea if
you
try to visit me.”

Donna shook her head, a wry smile on her face to match his. “Probably not.”

They sat quietly for another few minutes.

Donna snuggled in closer and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Do you think you’ll come back here? To live permanently, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like … I’ve only just found myself. Where I’m from. Who I really am. I need to explore it—at least for a while. Beyond that? I honestly can’t say. Not yet. I promise you though, Donna, you’ll be the first to know. I won’t keep any more secrets.”

She nodded, trying not to focus on the sadness that stopped her from speaking. At least he was being honest.

“You won’t miss me,” he said, in a tone of voice that said he clearly hoped she would. “You’ll be too busy traveling the world with Sharma.”

“Oh, just shut up and kiss me,” she told him.

Xan grinned and his green eyes flashed. “Your wish is my—”

Donna pressed her lips to his as the sun finally broke through the clouds.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

“So,” she said as she pulled back, flushed and breathless.

“So.” Xan’s expression was difficult to read, but there was the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Do you come here often?”

“Not often.” She swallowed—why did saying goodbye have to be so difficult? “The guy who lives here is kind of a private person. He doesn’t let people in easy, you know?”

“Yeah, I know the type. I know someone just like that, actually.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “A beautiful girl. A beautiful young woman, I should say.” His gaze met hers, and she was surprised to see the shimmer of tears. “She changed my life.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “This guy? The one I told you about? He changed mine, too.”

“Really? Coincidence, do you think?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Then … what?”

“Magic,” she whispered, right before kissing him again. “I believe in that.”

THE END

APPENDIX I

Extract from:

A History of the
Dragon Alchemists

Edited by
Quentin P. Frost

Maker’s Story

Once upon a time, there was a man who was born a god. He wasn’t the most powerful god, nor was he the most well-liked, but he worked hard and did his duty and didn’t upset the order of things.

At least, not in the beginning.

Let’s call this god … Hephaestus. This may or may not be his true name, you understand, because as with all gods he had many titles. The Smith of Olympus. God of the Forge. Maker of Wonders. But Hephaestus will do for now, because he was good with his hands. He made things. He made many wonderful, magical things, and his skills were in great demand. He could have been rich, with all the commissions he was given, but he didn’t charge for his work because he loved it so much. Gods—even those who had forsaken their godly homes—didn’t need money.

Hephaestus wanted to be left alone on his island to build and make and invent. That’s all he had ever wanted. Solitude was important to him. People irritated him, even when he was a young man, and he wondered how they lived together in such close proximity. Sometimes, his fellow gods would come to visit him and ask for something or other to be made, and he was always glad when they left. Sometimes humans would petition him for help with a project, and he never minded blowing the breath of invention into their work—so long as they put in adequate effort, too. So long as they put their heart into the thing. There was no point in their asking for his help if they expected miracles, or if they weren’t willing to sacrifice something of themselves.

One day, a god and goddess came to his island together, but they weren’t alone. They brought their children with them: two beautiful boys, who looked like the sun and moon. One shone brightly, with hair the color of pure sunlight; the other was dark, with hair like the wings of Hephaestus’ pet ravens.

He looked at the children, and something in his heart broke open. He had never been lonely before, but now he thought about family and how he would probably live a very long time by himself. These were strange, unfamiliar feelings. They unsettled him and caused him to question many things about his existence.

As he worked on the small job the family had brought for him, Hephaestus stole glances at the boys’ mother, the young goddess. She was beautiful and elegant, with smooth dark hair and skin the color of fresh honey.

After the family left, the two boys happy with the clockwork birds that Hephaestus had given them, he went into his workshop and locked the doors. He didn’t come out for a very long time.

Twelve years passed.

Many people came and went in that time. Gods visited the island in hopes that he would invent something for their home or offer consultation on the latest technology. Human beings paid homage to him and burnt offerings, in hopes that he would create a new weapon for their latest war. But Hephaestus was getting old, and he was tired and wished they would all go away and leave him in peace. He was busy making something the likes of which he had never before attempted.

Finally, he was done. His latest masterpiece was complete, and Hephaestus opened the door to his workshop once again. Everybody—both gods and mankind—breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to place their orders. Twelve years is a long time when there are worlds to rule and wars to be won.

The gods looked down upon the little island and raised their eyebrows. They looked at one another with barely concealed surprise, because Hephaestus was no longer alone. He had built twelve beautiful maidens, all with limbs of silver and gold. They shone beneath the sun as they danced and sang.

Now, whenever anybody came to the island to beseech Hephaestus for his skills, they were treated to the warm hospitality of his twelve metal maidens. Incredibly, they each had their own individual attributes—all distinct from one another. They lived on the island with the retired god and seemed happy.

But one of his creations was different. She became restless, and her personality changed and developed over time. She seemed more human than her sisters and liked to go for long walks with her maker. Hephaestus, for his part, began to fall in love for the first time in his long life. When he had built the maidens—each one created and shaped over the course of a year—he was simply trying something new. Those first pangs of loneliness had left him curious, and he wondered if it was possible for him to make his own companions. A family. He remembered the goddess with the two sons, and each of his twelve maidens was built in her image. Each subsequent attempt came ever closer to the original, until his twelfth and final creation was a perfect replica. Except for the limbs, which were of course made of silver and gold.

Her name was Twelve, and she was beautiful and kind and he loved her.

Hephaestus turned to the gods for help. He had helped them many times, and he felt certain that his own plea would not be ignored. He begged them to make Twelve human so that he could ask her to marry him. The gods were angry. They didn’t want to lose their maker to something as trivial as love. They liked him better when he was living quietly on his island, making things they wanted and needed. This new turn of events was too unexpected. It was too chaotic. Too human.

They refused his request.

Years passed, and some of the maidens began to show signs of slowing down. Hephaestus tried to fix them, but nothing he did seemed to make any difference. One by one, the beautiful automatons froze until there were eleven shining statues scattered across his island.

Only Twelve remained, but even she was having more difficulty getting around. Her knees hurt and her arms were stiff. No matter how much oil he poured on her joints it didn’t seem to help—at least, not for very long. Twelve never complained, although it was clear she was suffering. She wondered if this was what it was like to grow old, but Hephaestus couldn’t tell her because he himself was immortal. Just because he had chosen to live separate from the gods, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still one of them. One day, he watched his beautiful Twelve struggle to cut a pear in half—her fingers couldn’t grip the knife properly—and his heart shattered.

He went to the home of the gods and asked for their help. Unfortunately, he made his petition to the god whose wife had served as the template for the twelve metal maidens. This god was angry, and the only reply that Hephaestus received that day was to be lifted off his feet and physically thrown back down to the island.

It was a long way to fall, even for an immortal, and the impact was enough to break his legs. Twelve nursed him back to health, but Hephaestus never walked entirely unaided again. He had to use a cane, on rare good days, or a specially created chair on wheels. After his recovery, after he saw how tired Twelve still was, Hephaestus made a decision. Things couldn’t go on like this.

He returned to the home of the gods and threw himself on their mercy.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll do anything you ask. I will pay any price. You have already crippled me, and still I return to you and beg for the life of the woman I love. Please don’t take her from me. Make her human, that’s all I ask. Just a human lifespan so that she may live and know what it is like to feel the sun on her face.”

The gods decided to punish Hephaestus. They were cruel and selfish, and some of them were fed up with watching him live his hermit’s life on the island. They agreed to grant his wish and make Twelve human, but the cost was high: they would only do so if Hephaestus gave up his own immortality and became mortal with her. The gods were sure he would never agree to such terms.

They were wrong. Hephaestus thanked them and agreed to become mortal, so that he and Twelve could live out their days together on his beautiful island. He was happy.

The gods were furious and decided to trick him.

Yes, they transformed Twelve from a struggling silver and gold automaton into a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her. But they didn’t really make Hephaestus mortal. They took away his godhood, meaning he could never again commune with those powers, but they left his immortality intact. A powerful glamour was cast on him, so that he seemed to grow young again and could age alongside his new wife, but in fact he hadn’t changed at all. Underneath the gods’ magic, he was still the same old Hephaestus.

As soon as Twelve died—of natural causes, of old age, in her loving husband’s arms—the glamour broke and he was once more old and alone and immortal. The gods cast him out of his island and hid it somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean, behind an invisible shield so that nobody could ever find it again.

Hephaestus limped into the human world alone, grieving, and wondered how he would live the rest of his very long life. He changed his name to Maker and tried to blend in. He made things for people again. He remembered Twelve and the happy years they had spent together, and it was those memories that kept him going during the darkest days. There were many dark days.

It was at that time—at one of his lowest points—that he happened upon a morally ambiguous and yet immortal magus who had need of his ancient skills.

But that is another story.

Acknowledgments

This novel simply wouldn’t exist without the major contribution of four people: My agent, Miriam Kriss, who helped me weather some particularly tough times throughout the writing of this book—thank you, thank you! My editor at Flux, Brian Farrey-Latz, who was consistently kind and patient while I was struggling (no matter how much he might have been cursing me behind the scenes!), and who took a severely flawed and unfinished first draft and helped me to make it about a million times better. Thanks so much, Brian. My production editor, Sandy Sullivan, who took the manuscript to the next level and asked all the questions that needed to be asked. And my cover artist, Lisa Novak, who yet again delivered such a beautiful cover in the Iron Witch trilogy. We’re three for three, Lisa! Thanks also to everyone else at Flux in the U.S., and at Random House in the U.K. and Australia, for your continued support. I appreciate it more than I can say.