by Page Morgan
She must have seen Vander disappear through the hedgerow gap. She touched Ingrid’s arm. “He understands. He’s hurt, but he understands. He’s a reverend, for goodness’ sake.”
Ingrid smiled and quickly wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. The black lace glove scratched at the tender skin. She turned toward Gabby and was pleased once more to notice that her sister had not pinned on one of her veiled hats. She was still reluctant about holding her head high and meeting a stranger’s gaze, but she was determined, and Ingrid was proud of her.
“Do you think the pain will ever go away?” Ingrid asked after a moment.
She trusted her sister would know that she was speaking not of Vander, but of Grayson. Gabby did.
“No,” she answered. “But if we feel the pain together, we can share it. We have each other, Ingrid. And we have people who love us.”
When had her little sister become so wise? Ingrid held out her hand. Gabby took it.
“Would you understand if I said I had somewhere to go right now?” Ingrid asked.
Gabby squeezed her fingers. “I’ve covered for you before. I believe I could do it again.” She smiled and Ingrid tugged her into an embrace.
“You’ll crease my dress!” Gabby complained, laughing and swatting her away. “I’ll fetch Marco.”
They had a proper driver now, and Marco had been relegated to strict butler duties once more. But for this particular outing, only a gargoyle would suit.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The fire breathed low in the grate, casting weak light around the front room of Lennier’s apartment. Luc’s apartment. He had to get used to calling it that. A change in furniture might help. He’d hung up drapes, at least, to block the guttering light of the fire from the many tourists who had taken to wandering inside common grounds. Luc had also given the order for the Dispossessed to come on foot rather than by air, and to stay in their human skins as often as possible. To the ignorant humans, now awakened to the existence of otherworldly monsters, demons and gargoyles were one and the same. Vincent’s campaign against the Dusters in plain sight hadn’t helped things.
Lengthwise on the sofa—he might keep it, he thought; the thing was comfortable—Luc paged through one of the books that Chelle, the Alliance tomboy, had delivered to his door the week before. He had felt the presence of a human and had gone to meet whoever it was, to drive them off his private property. When he’d seen Chelle in the ramshackle ballroom carrying a crate of books as heavy as she was, Luc hadn’t known what to say. The girl had stopped in her tracks, conveying only a glimmer of anxiety, before demanding to know why Luc had not yet offered to carry the bloody crate for her.
They were Alliance texts: personal journals, scholarly volumes, and histories, and there were many more back in the Alliance library at Hôtel Bastian. In his rooms, Luc had dropped the crate on the sofa and turned to Chelle, who he knew despised gargoyles. Without being asked, she had launched into an explanation.
“Grayson believed there were good gargoyles. He believed in you,” she’d said. And then she’d asked for his help. Since Luc was eternal and was not responsible for any humans at the moment, perhaps he would be willing to change things between the Dispossessed and the Alliance.
“If we’re going to work together, we should know more about one another, correct?” she’d asked.
Luc had taken the books. He still didn’t know what to make of Chelle, or whether her reception would extend to Euro-Alliance headquarters in Rome, but he liked the idea of having a purpose beyond protecting.
He angled the book’s pages toward the fire, though his night vision helped him make out the ancient typeface. It seemed that at one point, the Alliance had even used a secret language as a means of communication. Luc enjoyed the idea of learning it—and then teaching it to the Alliance once more. How satisfying would that be?
He felt the chime of another gargoyle’s presence at the base of his skull and closed the text. He sighed and sat up, setting the volume atop one of the several towers of books scattered throughout the front room.
He approached the door and opened it to find his visitor on the other side of the threshold, her hand poised to knock. Ingrid dropped her hand and her lips bowed into a bashful grin.
“Marco brought me,” she explained, and at that moment, Luc sensed the Wolf’s departure as well.
“He’ll be back later,” she said, still standing in the corridor. Luc came to his senses and moved aside. She stepped into the front room and stared around at the towers of books.
“Do I want to know?” she asked.
Luc closed the door. “I’ll explain later. Is something wrong?”
He hadn’t expected Ingrid tonight. She’d only come to common grounds once—the day of her brother’s funeral. Luc hadn’t wanted to leave her at the rectory, and so he’d chanced bringing her here. He’d been ready to challenge any gargoyle that dared speak out against him. None had. The few Dispossessed lounging around the courtyard fountain when Luc and Ingrid had arrived had merely glanced from human to gargoyle and bowed their heads, as if in acceptance.
Luc still wasn’t completely convinced, though. It would be a long while before he would be easy with Ingrid at common grounds.
“Nothing is wrong. I just needed to see you,” she said, her hand running along the tops of a few stacks of books as she walked toward the sofa.
“Isn’t your mother’s gallery opening happening right now?” he asked.
Ingrid paused at one stack and lifted the top book. She then crouched and tilted her head to read the spines. “These are Alliance books.”
She stood and faced him before pulling off her lace gloves and opening the book she’d snatched up.
“Are you working with the Alliance? How did you get these?”
Luc said nothing, only watched the sparkle of excitement in her aubergine eyes. He had a vision then, of the two of them on the sofa, each of them reading through the stacks of books, working with the Alliance in their own way. Together. He liked it, and when Ingrid looked up from the book she’d been scanning, she saw his grin.
“What?” she asked. Then, “You haven’t answered me.”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Why not now?” she pressed.
“Because right now I want to know why you’ve left the gallery opening. If your mother finds out, she’ll have even more of a reason to hate me.”
Lord and Lady Brickton had looked the other way when Luc visited the rectory in the days following Grayson’s death, but that was over now. He couldn’t imagine that Lord or Lady Brickton would seriously entertain the idea of a gargoyle’s coming to call on their daughter.
Ingrid closed the book and set it down, shaking her head. “Oh, she doesn’t need any more of a reason to dislike you. Finding you in my room, unclothed, was quite enough.”
Luc crossed his arms and walked through the path of books toward Ingrid. “Well, at least I’m clothed. For the moment.”
He liked flirting with her and seeing her flush. He liked the mystery of trying to figure out what she was thinking and feeling.
When he’d held her on her bed those days after the Champs de Mars, he’d kissed her temple, her forehead; he’d been there to comfort her. Now, with Ingrid standing before him, her misery fading, he felt the draw of her. She held his gaze, her blush rising another moment before she looked away, toward the curtained windows.
“How is your wing?” she asked.
He’d been coalescing every few days, just to see how things were progressing. The bones had grown some, along with new membrane, but the truth was, regenerating an entire wing hurt like hell.
“It will be a while,” he answered. There was no point in telling her that his back ached constantly, or that coalescing felt like breaking and then setting a bone.
Ingrid perched herself on the edge of the sofa. “What do the other Dispossessed think?”
Luc neared the fire and, though he knew it would prove dangero
us, lowered himself to sit beside her.
“About my wing?”
“No.” She stared into the fire and worried the lace cuff of her dress. “What do they think about me? About us?”
Things had been peaceful the past few weeks as Paris recovered from the Harvest, but Luc—and apparently Ingrid as well—was far too realistic to believe things would always stay this calm.
Perhaps it was being elder, or that his turning down Irindi’s invitation to enter Heaven had spread like all gossip did amongst the gargoyles, but Luc didn’t sense any immediate danger from the Dispossessed.
“Don’t worry about them,” he told her, allowing his knee to brush against hers. “We’ll take this day by day. And you’ll be protected, Ingrid. You have Marco and the Alliance. You have me.”
Her knee pressed against his more ardently. “You suggested a few weeks ago … you said something about my being your human again. You asked me to go with you to common grounds.”
Luc leaned back and rested his head against the sofa’s plush cushions. He remembered that overzealous proposition. “I still want that. But it’s too soon. It will be some time before I trust the rest of the Dispossessed enough to have you here.”
Ingrid shifted to face him, the curves of her bodice and the tempting lines of her bare neck a distraction.
“When I reach my majority, if I haven’t yet married, I can do what I wish with my inheritance.” She clutched a fistful of her black moiré skirt. “I want to buy Hôtel du Maurier.”
He held still. Watched the jump of her pulse in her neck.
“You said Irindi disapproved of your preference for me, but if I’m your only human charge—”
Luc sat forward. “When?”
If she bought this wreck of a home, she would have every right to be here. His territory. Her property. It would give Luc one more layer of security against any gargoyles who objected.
Ingrid’s shoulders softened and her posture rounded. “When I’m twenty-one.”
She was seventeen now. Christ. Four years. Luc reached for her hand and cupped it against his cheek. He then kissed the center of her palm. What was four years? “I can wait.”
Ingrid closed her eyes and sank against his chest. “I can still be your human, though? Like this?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “Always.”
He knew what she was thinking. That she would get old. That he would not.
“Day by day, Ingrid,” he murmured in her ear.
She moved closer to him and tucked her legs up, over his lap.
“Will you tell me now what happened with Irindi?” Her breath fanned over his collarbone and against his neck. He’d thought about that meeting in Constantine’s library numerous times, but he had not once regretted his decision.
“Marco and Gaston couldn’t stand, but you could,” she pointed out while drawing a scrolling line with her fingertip along his neck.
He had given up heaven. And by choosing him over Vander or some other human, Ingrid was giving up a part of life Luc couldn’t give her—marriage, children. A family.
Luc didn’t want to lie to her. So he told her the truth about saving Vander’s newly ordained skin and being forgiven, and then turning down his welcome into heaven. When he finished explaining, Ingrid was sitting up, ramrod straight, her mouth agape. Marco had glared at him with disappointment; Gaston with incredulity. Ingrid’s expression was a mixture of both.
“Why? Why would you say no? Luc …” She grasped for words. “You … you can’t want to stay a gargoyle.”
“My decision didn’t have anything to do with being a gargoyle. I couldn’t leave, not with Axia out there, coming for you and the other Dusters. Not with the Dispossessed having just declared me their elder. Staying was the right thing to do.” He circled her wrist with his hand. “I spent over three hundred years just existing. Not living. Not until I met you. Nothing can tempt me away from you now, Ingrid. Not even heaven.”
She eased back and settled her legs over his lap once again. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. Luc heard the catch in her throat. “You gave up what every gargoyle must dream of.”
He let his hand glide over her knee, down the slope of her thigh. “I only know what I dream of.” Luc hitched Ingrid’s hip toward him but abstained from exploring farther. He liked sitting here with her, and coalescing would bring that to an end.
A saturating light brought it to an end anyway. Irindi’s white-hot glow engulfed the front room, sucking Luc from his relaxed position on the sofa and flipping Ingrid from his lap. His knees and hands slammed onto the floor in front of the fireplace, razing two piles of Alliance texts. Ingrid uttered a short scream as she toppled onto the floor next him.
“I’m sorry—it’s Irindi,” he groaned to her.
There was no reason for the angel of heavenly law to visit him, nothing to punish. And yet here she was, her voice blowing through the room. The tremor sent a teetering pile of books into a collapse.
“Luc Rousseau,” she bellowed. He waited for it: You have erred. However, Irindi surprised him. “The Order wishes to understand why you have chosen to remain dispossessed from God’s kingdom.”
Irindi’s radiance rolled off her in relentless waves, buffeting him as he practically kissed the floor.
Ingrid’s hand touched his back. “What’s happening? What is she saying?”
The tension in his throat made it difficult to speak. When he did, it wasn’t to answer Ingrid. When an angel was in the room, you paid attention to the angel.
“I’m not finished here yet,” he rasped.
“God determines when you are finished.” Irindi’s voice flogged his eardrums and rattled his teeth.
“He sent me here to protect humans, and I …” Luc searched for a way to explain himself, fast. Irindi wouldn’t give him much of her time. “I understand now. I want to now.”
Ingrid stayed crouched at his side, quiet. He’d always despised being tossed down into a bow and held there. But he’d chosen this. So long as he could stay with Ingrid, he would continue to choose it. Her life would be short compared to the years he’d already known. Even if she were to live into old age, Ingrid’s years would be over in the blink of a gargoyle’s eye. He would take them and cherish them, and whatever came after, he’d deal with it.
“You would sacrifice your own salvation to pledge yourself to the protection of God’s children?” Irindi asked. Had her monotone voice allowed it, he was certain he would have heard in it the same incredulity that Ingrid, Marco, and Gaston had shown at his decision.
“I do,” Luc answered. “I’m sorry, but yes. I do.”
As if sensing the weight of the conversation, even hearing just one side of it, Ingrid leaned her forehead against his back. “I love you,” she whispered.
Luc closed his eyes and basked in those words. She hadn’t said them before now. He expected a perfunctory dismissal from Irindi, the loss of her light, and that would be welcome. He wanted to turn to Ingrid and tell her he loved her. He hadn’t. Not in some time.
“Then, Luc Rousseau,” Irindi said, “stand before me now.”
The room fell dark and cold. The pressure holding him to the floor vanished, along with the glaring light.
Like before, at Clos du Vie, Luc pushed himself to his feet. However, unlike before, there was no warm glow, no magnetic draw toward the angel forgiving him. There was only the wavering light in the hearth from a few logs and a mound of ash.
And a woman.
She stood directly in front of him, her hair a tumble of spun-gold ringlets. Her skin was flawless and pale, and she had a pair of wide, deep umber eyes that made Luc feel as if he were being swallowed whole. She wore a hooded, marine-blue robe. A robe nearly identical to the one Axia had always worn.
“Irindi,” Luc breathed.
Ingrid’s hand clutched his, her attention riveted to the robed woman as well. She could see her. Irindi was … well, she appeared … hum
an, though her face remained an emotionless mask.
“You have pleased God and the Order,” she said.
Luc lifted his free hand, the one not being crushed by Ingrid, and absently rubbed behind his ears. Her voice. It didn’t bellow or chime. It didn’t hurt to listen to her.
“I have?” he asked, feeling asinine.
“Surrender thyself, forgive thine enemy, and ye shall be cleansed and made anew.” Irindi—this human-looking version of her—said this as though it were scripture, but despite his centuries at the abbey, Luc had never so much as cracked open a Bible. He didn’t know what she meant.
“The angels of the Order are not without their gifts. I offer one to you. The opportunity to protect and guide God’s children here, among men—as a man.”
Luc wasn’t given the chance to comprehend, or breathe, before Irindi continued speaking.
“You shall embody all that is forgiveness. All that is God’s miracle.”
His stomach and heart dove in a mad rush, dipping and spinning. He didn’t understand what was happening or what Irindi was telling him.
“Until we meet again, Luc Rousseau.”
He blinked, and Irindi had gone. Ingrid gasped beside him, her body adhered to his side. He was shaking as he spun around, searching the corners of the front room for Irindi. Everything had suddenly been swamped in shadow.
His night vision wasn’t working.
“What just happened?” Ingrid whispered.
Luc was afraid to move. What had Irindi just done?
“Luc?” Ingrid pulled away, her lips parted in awe. “What did she mean … as a man?”
He stepped away from her, his heels treading on a couple of tumbled books. He stumbled but held out his hand to signal Ingrid to stay back. She stood still, and Luc felt a queasy churn in the pit of his stomach.
He hunted for the trigger inside his core, the one that had always given way to the command to coalesce. Whether he coalesced willfully or under compulsion, pulling that trigger, changing from man to monster, had become as natural as breathing.
It wasn’t there.
