Heart of Stone. C.E. Murphy
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Praise for
C.E. MURPHY
and her books
The Negotiator
Hands of Flame “Fast-paced action and a twisty-turny plot make for a good read…Fans of the series will be sad to leave Margrit’s world behind, at least for the time being.” —RT Book Reviews
House of Cards “Violent confrontations add action on top of tense intrigue in this involving, even thrilling, middle book in a divertingly different contemporary fantasy romance series.” —LOCUS
“The second title in Murphy’s Negotiator series is every bit as interesting and fun as the first. Margrit is a fascinatingly complex heroine who doesn’t shy away from making difficult choices.”
—RT Book Reviews
Heart of Stone “[An] exciting series opener…Margrit makes for a deeply compelling heroine as she struggles to sort out the sudden upheaval in her professional and romantic lives.” —Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating new series…as usual, Murphy delivers interesting worldbuilding and magical systems, believable and sympathetic characters and a compelling story told at a breakneck pace.”
—RT Book Reviews
Author’s Note
Over the past couple of years I’ve had a lot of people comment on my discipline, a mysterious thing that they see as being more self-evident than I do. In most ways, writing is a job like any other: you have deadlines for projects and people get cranky if you don’t turn them in on time. It’s true that if you’re writing without a contract or a publisher (which I was when I wrote the first draft of Heart of Stone), it does take a lot of discipline. It also takes a lot of dreaming, because when you’re writing on spec and hoping for that first sale, the only thing that keeps you going is faith and determination and the willingness to sit down in the chair and apply fingers to keyboard.
This book is the result of more butt-in-chair, fingers-to-keyboard work than I want to think about, and a massive chunk of it was done during an international move. I’m utterly astonished at how that kind of thing focuses the ol’ mind: it’s really easy to be a writer and discover you’ve whiled away your day, effectively creating a situation where you don’t have time to work. (Notice how people with nine-to-five jobs very, very rarely find themselves with a day where they just don’t have time to go to work? I certainly never did.) It would have been extremely easy to not have time to work in the midst of moving across the world. In my case, I have found out I can work through just about anything, if I really have to, and I suppose that’s what people mean when they say they admire my discipline.
Me, I believe pretty much anyone can do the same thing, if they want to. I’d like to think some of that comes through in my stories—not much is actually impossible, if we not only dream, but do. The book you’re holding is the result of both dreaming and doing. I hope you enjoy it!
Catie
HEART OF STONE
C.E. MURPHY
For my Dad, Thomas Allen Murphy,
who likes this one best so far.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Normally it doesn’t take an army for me to write a book. This one, though, required a rather absurd amount of feedback. To wit:
My agent, Jennifer Jackson, made me do a major rewrite on the manuscript, then said, “This is much better! Now cut another thirty pages from the first hundred and we’ll really have something here!” You were right. Thank you.
My editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, made me push the book in ways I wouldn’t have on my own, ways that gave the story more depth and richness than I’d ever imagined it to have. Thank you, too. It would be okay if neither of you ever made me work that hard again….
The art department has once more outdone itself, giving me yet another cover I’m thrilled to have my work judged by. Glowing thanks are due to art director Kathleen Oudit and to artist Chris McGrath. You guys help build careers, and I cannot thank you enough.
Dor and Lisa helped me with New York details, so anything I got wrong is either their fault (!) or I made it up wholesale to fit the world.:)
Tara, Mary Anne and Janne gave me feedback on the third draft, by which time I could no longer see the book for the words, so their comments were invaluable. I believe Silkie and Jai, my usual suspects, read every draft without their enthusiasm flagging, and Trent read it at least three times. Their fortitude astounds me. Rob, Deborah, Lisa (again!), Lydia and Morgan listened to me whine interminably about revisions. Rob, in particular, offered some critical brainstorming sessions that did huge amounts to help me develop the mythology of this world; so, too, did Sarah.
Thank you all.
And all I can say to Ted is that I literally could not have written this book without you. I’ll give you a copy with the bits you helped with highlighted, and you’ll see how true that is. Thank you so much, hon. I love you.
ONE
SHE RAN, LONG strides that ate the pavement despite her diminutive height. Her hair, full of corkscrew curls, was pulled back from her face, bunches jouncing as her feet impacted the asphalt surface. The words feminine and female, less interchangeable than they might seem, both described her well. Feminine, as he understood it, suggested a sort of delicacy, though not without strength. Female encompassed power as blunt and raw as sex. Watching her, neither descriptor would suffice without the other.
Lithe and athletic, she ran nearly every night, usually not long after sundown. Tonight she was late; midnight was barely an hour off, closer by far than the late-January sunset. He watched from his arboreal refuge, hunched high above the concrete paths, protective and possessive of the slender woman taking her exercise in a dangerous city.
There were safer places to run, safer times; he thought she must know that. The park was notorious for nighttime crime, but she threw away caution for something greater. For defiance against an ordered world, and perhaps for the thrill of knowing the danger she put herself in. There was confidence in her action, too; her size very likely precluded fighting off attackers, but the muscles that powered her run would help her outpace any enemy that might approach. It was a gambit, and he liked her for it. It reminded him of other women he’d known, sometimes braver than wise, always willing to risk themselves for others. Such demonstrations made him remember there was life outside the confines he’d created for himself.
So he watched from high in the treetops, protecting her whether she knew it or not. Choosing to make her safe despite the independent streak that sent her running after dark, without taking away her illusion of bold solitude. She would never see him, he reasoned. Her people were predators, and they’d come from the trees. In the primitive part of the mind that spoke of caution, they were the danger that came from above.
Humans never looked up.
He shook himself as she took a corner, careening out of sight. Then he leaped gracefully over the treetops, following.
Air burned in her lungs, every breath of cold searing deep and threatening to make her cough with its dryness. Each footfall on the asphalt was the jolt of a syllable through her body: Ir. Ir. Ir. Ra. Shun. Al. There were slick patches on