The soft down of a pillow had replaced Luc’s hard, reptilian scales when Ingrid found consciousness again. She was warm, buried underneath the weight of a thick duvet. Her duvet, she saw after opening one eye.
She stirred under the covers, and by the clear honey light coming in through the window, she determined it was early morning. She heard the even, rhythmic breaths of someone sleeping and pushed herself up onto one elbow. Luc had flown her here. Luc. After a full month of not seeing or hearing from him, he’d come for her when she’d needed him most.
It wasn’t Luc in her room now, though. With a start, she saw Vander in a chair at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed, his legs wide, and his chin tucked into his chest as he slept. The sun lit his golden-brown hair, mussed from where he’d likely raked his hands through it again and again. She wondered what Vander had said to her mother to gain permission to sit watch here without a chaperone. The fact that he was to be ordained soon must have certainly come into play. A smile touched her lips, until she twisted to sit up and felt the soreness of her shoulder where the hellhound’s fang had sliced into her.
The memory hit her like a fist. Ingrid batted the heavy duvet off and yanked up the hem of the nightdress that someone had changed her into. Her calf didn’t burn with the same fury that it had in the Underneath or when she’d woken in that darkened park, but the spot was tender. Luc had likely healed her wounds with his blood, because the skin along her calf was unmarred by the fangs Axia had plunged into her flesh.
Ingrid closed her eyes, a hand pressed to her temple. How could she have been so stupid? Racing into that alley, chasing Grayson’s voice. And now Axia had reclaimed her blood. All of it? Ingrid didn’t know. She didn’t feel any different than before, other than the sweep of panic making her hot and then cold again. What would happen now?
“Ingrid?”
Vander shot up from the chair, sleep rasping his voice.
“She has it,” Ingrid said, her thumb rubbing the two strawberry ovals on her calf. “She took her blood back. She had me in her cave again and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t make any electricity, and the demon poison, it burned—”
Vander came to her side and lowered himself onto the bed. The mattress shifted and dipped.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, gasping for air around the tight, aching ball of a sob lodged in her throat.
Vander’s hands cradled her neck and jaw, his fingers combing through her hair. He forced her head up, her eyes to look into his.
“Ingrid, you have nothing to be sorry for.”
She shook her head, though his hands held her tightly.
“She has her blood and now she’ll be coming here, for her Harvest. I gave her exactly what she wanted, Vander.”
He pressed his fingers into her skin more firmly. “She took what she wanted. Do you believe any of us care about that right now? You were taken into the Underneath. You were gone a full day. I’d started to worry that you weren’t—” Vander stopped, his thumbs sweeping over the curves of her jaw. “I should be the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
A whole day? She’d been in the Underneath for that long? Vander let go of her but remained on the edge of her bed.
“You’re here,” he said. “You’re safe. That’s all I care about.”
They were simple, straightforward statements. They helped to calm her. Ingrid kept her hand on her calf, rubbing at the small ache underneath her demon marks. Vander followed the motion with his eyes. She gave a start, realizing her leg was exposed from knobby knee to bare foot.
Ingrid let go of her calf and grabbed the hem of her nightdress, ready to tug it back into place. Vander’s hand came up and rested atop of hers, stopping her.
“Is it healed?” he asked. He then took the liberty of skimming the soft curve of her calf with his palm.
Ingrid sat frozen in place. Though her eyes watched him inspect her demon marks, it wasn’t Vander she was seeing in her mind. It was Luc, that first night in the abbey when he’d revealed to her what he was. A hellhound had nipped at her calf, and Luc had demanded to see the wound, roughly tossing up her skirt hem and grabbing her leg. She saw Luc, lifting her off the cold brick and gravel walkway so her bare feet wouldn’t have to endure a painful walk back to the rectory. Luc, storming into Axia’s hive, coming to take Ingrid home to safety. Luc, his damaged wings hanging limply in the Daicrypta courtyard, his bond to her severed, and yet there to help her anyway. And there in the park also, her body belched up from a fissure, too weak to move. He was always there.
He would always come for her.
Ingrid shoved the hem of her nightdress down, dislodging Vander’s hand.
“It’s fine,” she said.
Vander adjusted his spectacles before standing up and moving away from the bed.
“We have Marco to thank for that,” he said.