"You need to wake up now. Your people are in trouble."
I’d heard the voice of the witch before. She’d told my many times-great nephew that I still lived, still existed in this shell of stone. I hadn’t minded. He seemed a good sort, that Lawrence. Not like that blighted offspring of the other branch of my family, Harold Ironkeys. How had he kept my surname and Lawrence not?
Harold had ignored me, even laughed at me when passing by. Lawrence had sometimes come talk to me, and the stories he told me of him and his Fae princess had quickened my blood, made my heart beat again, first with painful, plodding beats and now with readiness. I’d come alive again, slowly, from my heart outward. Now I waited and rested under a thin layer of stone, moss, and the constant mist from the river.
The time
