Mama stood to Gabby’s right, with Papa there to shore up Mama’s other side. He’d arrived two nights after the Harvest ended, and though his eyes had been red-rimmed, Gabby hadn’t yet seen him cry. She’d only heard him. That first night, and every night since, whenever Gabby passed the study door, she heard soft, muffled sobs. She pictured her stoic father, the man who had disowned Grayson, slouching in his chair, bawling into his monogrammed handkerchief. That was all any of them had been doing.
Ingrid had spent the week in her room. Mama and Papa had turned their heads when Luc arrived each morning and slipped up to Ingrid’s bedroom to hold her the day through. Gabby had stayed with Mama during the day and Ingrid at night, when Luc left. As she listened to Vander, who was standing at the head of the dug grave, reading from the book of Psalms, she felt exhaustion weighting her.
Theirs was a small crowd of Alliance, Dispossessed, and those who knew their secrets standing around the casket, which had already been lowered into the freshly dug ground. Nolan stood behind her, his hand lifting every now and then to the small of her back. Rory was with him, his dagger vest replaced by a more respectful black waistcoat, jacket, and tie. Hugh Dupuis had delayed his departure for London until after the burial, and he kept beside Rory—a place in which Gabby, and a few others, had noticed he could usually be found.
And then there was Chelle. She stood between Rory and Nolan, trembling like a reed in a rushing stream. Nolan and Vander had broken her out of the basement at H?tel Bastian, and when they’d told her about Grayson, she had done something neither of them had ever seen: she had collapsed. She’d cried in great, heaving sobs, and Nolan had later told Gabby that he’d needed to carry Chelle out of the basement. That she’d been inconsolable since.
So Grayson had gone and fallen in love. And yet he’d only known that first taste of it. Gabby had tried putting herself in Chelle’s place, imagined Nolan being taken from her now, before they could even really begin. It had made Gabby cling to him when he’d next visited the rectory.
Finishing with the Psalms, Vander closed the Bible he’d been reading and adjusted his wire spectacles. He was a reverend now, though he wasn’t wearing anything that would mark him as such. Just his usual threadbare tweed.
“I would like to say something more before we commit Grayson’s body to the earth. Something not found in here,” he said, lifting the Bible in explanation.
Ingrid’s arm kept shaking, and Gabby wished Luc could be standing on her sister’s other side. He, Marco, and Gaston, accompanied by Monsieur Constantine, stood across the open grave. Luc’s eyes were fastened on Ingrid, watching her, ready. But the intimacy of standing so close would not have been borne here, in public view.
“I met Grayson when he first came to Paris. He was here alone, trying to prepare this old rectory for when his sisters and mother would arrive. He admitted to me that he was nervous, that perhaps he’d made a mistake listening to Constantine and purchasing the abbey.” Vander paused and sent Constantine an apologetic glance. “Grayson told me about Waverly House, and the conditions his sisters and mother, whom I hadn’t yet met, were used to. This place would be a change. A drastic change, and he worried it wouldn’t be good enough.”
Gabby listened, rapt. This was Grayson before the Underneath. Grayson before she’d known he’d changed. Nolan slid his hand against her back, a sturdy reminder that he was there.
“I asked him, half joking, if his sisters were really that spoiled.” This time Vander sent Gabby and Ingrid the apologetic glances. “He looked at me, and more serious than I’d yet seen him to be, he said his sisters deserved to be happy here. He said he’d tear down this place and put up a new Waverly House if that was what it took.”
Ingrid’s fingers tightened around Gabby’s. She knew Ingrid’s chin was quivering just as violently as her own, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks.
“I knew right then,” Vander continued, “that Grayson was the kind of man who would do whatever it took to take care of the people he loved. He walked into Axia’s nest knowing he probably wouldn’t leave it alive.” Vander crouched before the grave, his toes crumbling a bit of dirt. The clumps landed on the varnished tiger-oak casket. “He went anyway. He went for all of us.”
Gabby released Ingrid’s hand as Luc threw caution aside and broke from his indomitable hold across the grave. He walked around Vander, to Ingrid, and brought her against his chest. He began to lead Ingrid away, her broken sobs knifing through Gabby.
Nolan touched her shoulders and brought her closer to him. If Ingrid could seek solace in the arms of a gargoyle, then she could very well do the same with a demon hunter. She still snuck a glance up at her father as she allowed Nolan to guide her away from Grayson’s grave.
Lord Brickton stared at his son’s casket, his wife shuddering in his arms. The insignificance of everything else hit Gabby, and she sank into Nolan’s warm side.