“Grayson.” There was no easy way to tell him, so he just came out with it. “It’s not working.”
Grayson kept his head against Chelle’s. “No. It has to work. Try again, goddamn it!”
Luc removed his hand from Chelle’s leg. He stayed crouched by the cot.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He really was.
Grayson said nothing. He only squeezed Chelle’s hand, his cheeks wet against her temple. Vander stood silently behind them.
Luc turned to him. “Where did you last see her?”
Vander put his spectacles back on. Luc noticed that his clothing was torn and blackened in spots. Probably from where Ingrid had electrocuted him.
“My room on rue de Berri,” he answered.
Luc grew cold, then scorching hot with the urge to destroy something. He swallowed the question of what Ingrid had been doing there.
“And Marco?” Luc asked.
The Seer glared at Luc. “He wasn’t with us,” he said slowly, each word stretched tight by frustration.
Voices entered the open loft outside the room. The telling chime pounded at the base of Luc’s skull.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
Luc closed his eyes and exhaled at the sound of Ingrid’s voice.
“You might want to put something on,” Vander muttered before shouldering past Luc into the loft.
He dressed himself in jet scales before exiting through the curtains, his wings catching on the fabric as he entered the hallway. Seeing Ingrid in the Seer’s arms wasn’t ideal, but at least she was here and alive, and flanked by another massive gargoyle. Marco had kept his true form as well. He saw Luc and nodded his wolfish snout in greeting.
Then Ingrid, her cheek pressed against Vander’s shoulder, saw Luc. Her eyes went wide. Soot had streaked her cheeks and darkened her thick tumble of blond locks. Her mint-green dress had been dirtied to a deep myrtle, torn at one shoulder, and frayed at the hem. She had never looked more beautiful.
Ingrid pushed herself out of the Seer’s arms and ran down the short hallway toward Luc. Her face crumpled with a sob in the instant before she threw herself against the plated muscles of his chest. He caught her with his corded arms, trying to soften the collision before she bruised herself. She clung to him, her arms so slight he hardly felt them around his waist. Luc tensed his wings to bring them forward, and then he crossed them, folding Ingrid into a double embrace.
“I think I’ve hurt people,” she said, her voice small and muffled by the cage of his wings. “I don’t remember anything. There was a fire, and I think … I think it was me who set it.”
He wanted to grip her tighter, but he didn’t trust his talons. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. That it didn’t matter. That she was safe now and that he’d keep her that way. She wouldn’t have understood any of it, though. He could hold her, but the wall between them was still there. It would always be there.
He let his wings down, revealing their embrace. Vander skewered Luc with a glare as he came back toward them and turned into the room where Chelle lay. Marco grunted and spoke, his screech making perfect sense, if only to Luc: You’re making things worse for yourself, brother. And for her.
His reply startled Ingrid, who flinched when his answering shrieks rumbled in his chest: Come what may, I’ve made my choice and she’s made hers.
He loosened his wings and arms, and Ingrid stepped back. She held Luc’s eyes. It was the only way to communicate right then.
“My God.” Vander’s voice drew her attention away. She pulled away from Luc and entered the curtained room, rushing to her brother’s side. He was still kneeling by the cot and had turned to Vander, who was staring at Chelle. She lay immobile, no longer thrashing and moaning. If not for the slight rise of her chest every few moments, Luc would have assumed she was dead.
“What is it?” Grayson asked.
Vander continued to stare at her. He reached out over Grayson’s head and combed his hand through the air above Chelle. “It’s dust. She’s started to give off dust.”