Ingrid watched Luc with her face half buried in Gabby’s hair. His wings dragged like wrinkled elephant ears. The sight of his struggling, wounded body lanced through her. He stopped a good yard away.
He wasn’t her gargoyle, not officially. Yet once again he’d come for her. Gabby must have sensed Ingrid’s distraction because she let go, stepped aside, and followed Ingrid’s gaze.
Ingrid staggered forward. Luc opened his arms to her and she fell into them. His scaled obsidian plates were hot and unforgiving, and it felt like embracing a sun-warmed boulder, but she didn’t care. Luc was alive.
“I want to be yours again.” She whispered the wish into his chest.
Luc loosened his arms and Ingrid wondered if she’d been wrong to wish it aloud. She peered up at him. Felt the prickling of Gabby’s eyes on her back. Vander’s glare. Luc stared down the short slope of his doggish nose. It was a barely pronounced muzzle that left his face more human than monster. He was still hideous, though. Ingrid was too honest to say he wasn’t.
Luc ran his rough-knuckled hand down the curve of her cheek, his deadly talons tucked safely into his palm.
“Ingrid,” Vander barked. “You and Gabby have to leave. Go through the arcades.”
Luc withdrew his hand and everything around her slid back into focus. “But Papa,” she said, turning to Vander. “He’s still inside.”
Luc shot a curl of steam from his nostrils and made a gravelly noise in the bottom of his throat. His form began to degenerate then, much more slowly than usual. His wings crackled and snapped as they pleated into his back.
Gabby whirled away from Luc, and Ingrid did the same, though she pinked in the cheeks thinking about his last shift. How she’d watched without shame.
“Nolan is inside, too. We can’t leave him,” Gabby said.
Vander picked up his crossbow. “I’m not leaving him.”
“Your father isn’t in the building,” Luc rasped from where he stood, behind Ingrid. Pain laced each word. “He and Grayson are close, but … I don’t know. Something is wrong. Ingrid, the Seer is right. You and Gabby have to go.”
Luc was staying, though she didn’t understand why. Gabby took Ingrid’s arm and led her toward the arcades. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Luc, returned to true form, and Vander. They were waiting, watching. They wouldn’t move until she and Gabby had successfully gone.
Ingrid’s feet slipped over the grass, slick with icy night dew, as they approached the stone arches and the thick columns that ran the length of the arcades.
A shadow peeled off from one wide column. Ingrid dragged Gabby to a halt.
“Dimitrie?” Ingrid whispered. Her breath hung as a cloud before her.
The gangly boy came toward them. Gabby jerked her hand from Ingrid’s grasp and withdrew a dagger from her cape, but Ingrid held up her arm.
“Stop. He won’t hurt us. He can’t. He’s—” Ingrid paused, knowing the words would be bitter. “He’s my gargoyle.”
“He isn’t mine,” Gabby retorted, dagger still poised. “Back off.”
Ingrid turned around. Luc and Vander had already started toward them, Vander with his crossbow raised and Luc stretching his wings as far as they could go. From this distance, Ingrid noticed a hole in each wing. Her stomach rolled—and then her pulse fluttered. Because coming up behind Luc and Vander was another Dimitrie.
Just as Ingrid saw it, Luc froze. He turned and saw the other Dimitrie in his human form.
One of them was the mimic.
The Dimitrie closer to Ingrid lunged for her. Gabby planted her foot in Ingrid’s side and shoved her down, slicing at Dimitrie’s reaching arm with her dagger. He vanished, and Gabby stumbled through the space where he had just been standing.
“It’s the mimic, Gabby!” Ingrid shouted as it reappeared a few feet away.
Gabby swiftly sheathed the dagger and withdrew her sword. She swung, but the mimic ducked out of the blade’s path, laughing. Playing.
Ingrid got to her feet and saw Vander running toward them—and Luc half running, half flying away. He skimmed over the lawn, his wings a swell of ink, toward the real Dimitrie. The smaller gargoyle simply waited, his twiggy arms lifted at his sides, palms turned out in a gesture of supplication. He looked so young, like a boy lifting his face to a summer rain.
Luc smashed into him. His wings blocked out everything but their legs as they plowed into the ground.
“Luc, now!” Vander screamed.
And then Ingrid knew. She knew what Luc was going to do.