Stoneheart Lion by Zoe Chant EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Zoe Chant
- Genre: Psychic Romance
- Publish Date: May 14, 2023
- Size: 2 MB
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Avail for Download
- Price: Free
GIO
IT WAS JUST PAST DAWN. The new-risen sun’s rosy gold light crept across
vineyards and citrus groves and ranks of olive trees, spreading long shadows
toward a rambling Italian villa and turning its pale stucco walls pink.
The villa’s grounds were beautifully landscaped, dotted with stone statues
made with exquisite care and skill. In the changing dawnlight, they almost
appeared to move.
And then one of them did.
It hadn’t been there a moment before.
The carved lion emerged from the villa’s stone-tiled patio with an obvious
struggle. The head and shoulders broke through first. The creature writhed
and thrashed and flung out a great paw that dug stone claws into the patio,
leaving parallel grooves as if the tiles were made of butter.
When the stone creature had emerged entirely from the ground, it looked
exhausted from the process. For a moment, it stood with its head lowered, a
great stone shape casting a long black shadow in the morning sun.
Then it shifted. This, too, was a struggle, the gray of its granite body
receding to human colors—blond hair streaked with silver, a brown jacket,
human hands clutching the patio tiles.
Gio threw his head back, his hair brushing his shoulders, and took a deep
breath of the morning air. His chest burned as if it was on fire, and his bones
ached, but he was himself again. He straightened up shakily.
As usual, traveling via stonewalking was an ordeal. But it had gotten him
here on the first try, which was more than he could have done a few months
ago.
The patio door was locked. Gio retrieved a key from the terra cotta
planter a few steps to the left. He unlocked the door and stepped into the cool,
quiet hallways of the house where he had lived all his life.
It was strange and sad to see the house like this, shut up and musty. It was
not completely abandoned; the local couple who served him as housekeeper
and gardener had volunteered to stay on as caretakers in his absence. They
had insisted, actually. Gio would have let them go with a generous pension,
but they had been adamant that they would take care of the house until he
came back.
He didn’t have the heart to tell them how unlikely that was.
Once, this house had been his home and his sanctuary. His father and
grandfather had been born here. Gio had imagined himself living out a long
and pleasant retirement, surrounded by his books and his vineyards. It made
him a little sad that over seventy years on this earth had not given him
someone to love and share his life, but that was his only true regret. His life
was fulfilling and full. He had his library and his correspondence with the
many intellectual friends he had made through a lifelong interest in history,
literature, and the occult.
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