The Lovely and the Lost

If he had been in obsidian scales right now, this would have been easier. Instead, she had to watch his human face remain impassive, his cut-jade eyes fixed on the frozen Seine. She had to wait for him to speak.

 

He didn’t.

 

“I know you’ve said it’s impossible. I must sound like I’ve gone mad.” She let out a laugh. “Perhaps I have, but, Luc, I—” She stopped before the words could tumble out. She hadn’t even known they were there, waiting on the tip of her tongue. I love you.

 

“I’m being sent away,” he whispered. Luc kept his gaze trained on the waking skyline. “Irindi is giving me a new territory.”

 

Ingrid rocked back onto her heels and gripped the open window ledge. She mirrored Luc and turned to stare out at the city. She didn’t see it, though. Rising panic blinded her.

 

“But this is your territory,” she said.

 

“Until I’m assigned a new one. The Order can do as they please.”

 

Ingrid closed her eyes, and strangely enough, she could see again. Luc, in Lennier’s guest room. Luc, crawling over the bed, toward her. He’d told her the angels would know, that they wouldn’t forgive him.

 

“Because you kissed me,” she said. “Because of what we did.”

 

“No. It’s my affinity for you. At least, that’s how Irindi referred to it.”

 

“They’re doing this because you care for me?” Why wouldn’t caring be considered a good thing? What sort of angels were these?

 

Luc finally let go of his roof gazing and met her incredulous stare.

 

“Your offer to be mine?” he said with a gentle arch of one brow. “You’re right. It is impossible. It is completely insane. You’re a human, Ingrid. I’m not—not anymore—and we could never be … human … together.” The way he said human stirred her. She knew what he meant, even though the word itself sounded utterly innocent.

 

“The Order knows everything,” he went on. “I can keep secrets from the Dispossessed, but not from the angels. They know that I want to tell you yes, that I want to make you mine. They know … they know I’ve fallen in love with you.”

 

Ingrid lost whatever she’d been planning to say next. She’d had words lined up, ready to go, but they’d all scattered now.

 

“But … but you …,” she stammered. “You said you couldn’t love. You said you lost the ability when you became Dispossessed.”

 

“I lied.” Luc moved back from the ledge. “Did you really believe lust was all I felt for you?”

 

She had. At first. But she remembered how hard she’d worked to convince herself of it. How exhausting it had been. Ingrid shook her head.

 

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said before striding away to the corner of the belfry. “I wanted to tell you the truth before I left.”

 

Luc braced his foot against the solid bronze bell and kicked. The bell swung, crying out its disturbance with deafening gongs. Pigeons roosting along the roof took flight, swirling away in a panic of gray and white wings.

 

Ingrid had to wait for the bell to slow its dance back and forth to cross to the corner. She came up behind Luc.

 

“There has to be something I can do.”

 

“You can promise me that you’ll make existence for Marco extremely boring,” Luc replied quickly. Marco had already saved her life—like Luc, once or twice when he hadn’t been required to. She knew Marco was capable. She could trust him. But she didn’t want him.

 

“I’ll come with you.”

 

Every muscle in Luc’s back, and throughout his neck and arms, went rigid. He gave the slightest turn of his head to show he’d heard her.

 

Ingrid couldn’t believe she’d actually said it. She wouldn’t take it back, though. She wanted him to say yes too desperately.

 

“I don’t know where I’m being sent yet,” he said, voice low and husky. “I’ll have new human charges. I’ll be bound to them first, not you.”

 

“But if I stay with you, I’ll always be your human charge.”

 

Luc looked at her fully now, and not with his earlier earnestness. She heard her proposal for what it was: a request to live with him.

 

“I can exist in the top of a tower like this.” He gestured around them. “I can live in a sewer line beneath my territory, or in an attic, or in a dovecote. I can pose as a servant, like I have here, or hide within the walls of a home. I don’t have to eat or drink or sleep or keep warm. You can’t do those things, Ingrid. You can’t stay with me.”

 

Of course she couldn’t. Heat rushed to her cheeks when she thought of how na?ve she must seem to him.

 

She stared at the tips of her boots peeking out below the hem of her skirt. “I know. I’m sorry, I just … This is all my doing.”

 

She looked up and noticed that the light had changed. It was already becoming less crisp as the sun shimmered over the horizon.

 

When she met his eyes again, they had softened. The corner of his mouth pulled into a mischievous grin. “If memory serves, I kissed you first.”

 

He had. Twice. And now Irindi was going to take him away. What if Ingrid never saw him again?

 

Luc turned and walked toward the belfry stairs.

 

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