Luc’s talons had barely touched down on H?tel Bastian’s flat roof when a flood of hot white light split the night sky. It poured over him, searing his scales, but it was a warm caress compared to what Luc knew was coming. An angel’s burn.
Gabby had gotten herself hurt, and Luc hadn’t been there to protect her. He hadn’t even known she had sneaked out of the rectory. He’d been so focused on Ingrid, on getting her up to that tower, and on hiding from Dimitrie. Which infuriated him. He shouldn’t have to hide from anyone while on his own territory.
“You have erred,” Irindi said.
The gravel beneath Luc’s talons shook when she spoke. He couldn’t look at her, not directly. Her presence forced him into a neat bow, his forehead a spare inch from the crushed gravel and snow, his wings spread out behind him. From the corner of his eye he could see the pearly contours of her lithe shape, though she had no solid features. She was nothing but a quivering mass of radiance. Irindi was what an angel of the Order was supposed to look like. Nothing like Axia and her grotesque form, stripped of her angelic glow and power.
The roof door opened, and to Luc’s deep humiliation, a human emerged. Here he was, stuck in his scales, bowing like a fool to something this Alliance human couldn’t see. To the human, the only change at all was an unexpected whipping wind. No light, no heat, no radiant shine, and certainly no chiming, monotone voice telling Luc that he had failed.
Irindi got on with it. The angel’s burn seared into Luc’s scales along his back. It ripped through the steel-like armor, and though he wanted to groan in pain, he swallowed the urge. He wouldn’t look any more of a fool in front of this Alliance member than he already did. At least the human stood back in silence, as if completely aware of what was happening to Luc.
And then Irindi’s glow was gone. All that was left was the sizzling echo of her punishment. Luc surged to his feet. Remaining in true form, he stalked toward the roof door and the Alliance member standing patiently on its threshold.
The man stood aside and allowed Luc to take the stairs first. Luc didn’t need to be shown the way. He had caught Gabby’s heady scent like a fist in the kidney earlier, and he’d been following it ever since. Her location had changed, though, and his destination had gone from a park along rue de Babylone to the town house along rue de Sèvres.
As soon as he crashed through the door and saw Gabby lying on the table, her eyes wide and cheeks burning, Luc felt the release of his true form. As if a finger had come off a trigger, everything inside him loosened and his muscles and bones shrank and slid back into their human places. His scales turned to skin.
Gabby jerked her chin up and fixed her eyes firmly on the ceiling.
“Ugh, why must you all be so naked?” she groaned, and Luc knew for certain that she was all right.
Dimitrie stepped away from Gabby’s table. He, too, was in human form. He looked even younger and scrawnier without clothing.
How had Dimitrie gotten to her first? Luc had only felt her fear in the moments before an echoing pain slammed into his shoulder, signaling her wound—and setting his punishment in stone.
“It was an appendius,” Nolan informed him, moving away from the table to give Luc space to work.
Without a word, the Alliance member from the roof plucked one of the knives strapped to his vest and held it out to Luc. He took it, drew the blade across his hand, and built a well of blood in his closed fist. He crossed the room, his eyes on Dimitrie—why hadn’t he given Gabby his own blood yet? Luc opened his hand and pressed his palm against the deep tear along her shoulder.
She squeaked in pain.
“It’s better than—” Luc stopped as his hand started to itch. Within a second, it felt like he’d pressed his hand against the glowing end of a cattle brand. He ripped his hand away and clutched it at the wrist.
Gabby lifted her head, concerned. “Luc?”
The skin covering his hand had turned a mottled gray, sickly and ancient compared to the skin that joined it at the wrist.
“Bloody hell,” Nolan ground out. “I’m sorry, Luc—I administered mercurite.”
Luc tucked his hand close to his body, his fingers stiffened open.
“You could have warned me,” Luc growled.
“What is it? What happened to him?” Gabby resisted Nolan’s attempts to keep her down on the table. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, though not without a grimace of pain.
“It’s nothing,” Luc said, just as Dimitrie said, “The mercurite.”
The glare with which Luc speared Dimitrie shut him up fast.
Nolan took over rubbing Luc’s blood into Gabby’s shoulder and explained to her anyway. “They can’t touch mercurite. The mercury and silver poisons them—a lot faster than it does us.”