“I will protect them all, brother,” Marco said before descending the loft stairs.
The promise did little to comfort Luc. Ingrid would be lost to him. His home, taken away. And he had no one to blame but himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ingrid knew she would find him in the belfry.
It wasn’t instinct that brought her into the abbey just before dawn. It wasn’t the same sort of knowing that Luc had with his humans that led her up the narrow, winding steps to the bell tower, bathed in watery blue light. She wished to feel Luc the way he no doubt felt her again now that she was back in her room at the rectory. She longed to have that knowledge, to be able to experience everything he did and felt. But no. It was logic, pure and simple, that told her where Luc would be.
Vander had delivered her and her father to the rectory less than an hour earlier. After he had helped her to the ground and opened the carriage door, he’d found Brickton alone. Luc had already fled. Ingrid figured he would want to be alone, in a place where he could avoid Marco and any human who might try to find him.
Her father was not one of those humans.
He had already commenced packing his belongings. His harried instructions to his valet could be heard throughout the rectory, along with his declarations that he would never be returning to Paris, that the gallery was officially finished, and that he no longer had an heir. Ingrid had soothed Mama’s panic by explaining that Grayson was in fact alive, just out on his own for now. And when Lady Brickton had outright refused to leave Paris until her son came home, her husband hadn’t objected. He didn’t care. So long as he was gone on the morning train.
Gabby had also started packing, but in a much more somber and quiet manner. After Lennier’s death, Ingrid thought Nolan’s and Marco’s advice wise. The gargoyle named Vincent had mentioned that there were Dispossessed out there who practically salivated for reasons to attack humans. Ingrid knew her sister loathed the idea of going home, especially now that there would be whispers about her scars. If London could keep her safe, though, it would be worth the humiliation.
Ingrid spotted Luc behind the massive bronze bell. He crouched against the belfry wall, his elbows hooked around his knees. She couldn’t see his face yet, but he was definitely in human form. Her pulse raced faster when he was like this. When he was in his scaled, true form, he couldn’t speak. She didn’t long to touch him. His gargoyle form erected a kind of safe, impenetrable wall between them.
“I spent the last thirty years here,” Luc said before Ingrid could come around the curve of the bell and meet his eyes.
She walked beside the railed parapet. The parched wooden boards complained under her weight, reminding her that the bell hung suspended over the tower shaft. It would be a long fall.
“You’re safe,” he added.
She smiled. “I suppose I trust you.”
As Ingrid came around the bell, he leaned his head back against the rough stone and watched her.
“Someone once told me that gargoyles turn to stone when they hibernate.” Ingrid didn’t want to mention Vander by name.
Luc tucked in his chin. He wore old work clothes instead of formal livery: canvas trousers and a loose white linen shirt rolled to the elbow, never mind the zero-degree-Celsius weather.
“We don’t feel it,” he said. “When we sleep we don’t feel anything. Not until a human comes around, at least.”
Ingrid inched closer to him. Her feet crunched over loose rock. When she looked down, she saw broken pieces of stone littering the wooden boards. She crouched and picked up one shaped like a crescent. The inside curve was smooth, the exterior rough and weather-worn. Luc had slept here for thirty years. When Grayson had moved into the abbey a handful of months ago, his stone casing must have shattered.
“Yours?” she asked, holding it out to him.
Luc saw what she cupped in her palm. “It’s not really stone. More like a crust our scales build up over time.”
He let out a sigh and pushed himself to his feet, wincing when his legs straightened. Ingrid followed, her hand closing around the small piece of him.
“Are your wings going to heal?” she asked. She couldn’t stop thinking about the gaping hole in each one.
She also couldn’t stop thinking about Dimitrie’s head hanging from Luc’s talons.
“In a few days,” he answered. He faced the Seine and the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Morning light was always so perfect and clear. Ingrid liked its honesty. After being swamped in darkness for so long, the first hour of sun as it crept over the city revealed the truth like no other time.
She wanted to be as honest as the morning sun.
“In the Daicrypta courtyard, when I told you I wanted to be yours again, I meant it. Not just as your human charge, but as yours.”