Gabby gasped, likely deducing in what state Luc had been found. It was all going to pieces. Ingrid felt Luc’s talons against the small of her back. He nodded once and backed toward the open casement window.
“But you can’t fly like this,” Ingrid said, her stomach coiling again as she looked at the tattered remains of his wing, which had been shorn neatly to the curved-in arch along the bottom. There, it looked like the stringy bands of a celery stalk, pulled and stretched and finally ripped off. Black blood crusted the stump.
Luc snorted a low hufft in answer, and she presumed he was telling her not to worry. He tucked his long black talons into his calloused palm and gently swept his knuckles down Ingrid’s cheek. He then lifted himself onto the windowsill, furled his remaining wing, and jumped.
Ingrid watched his landing and the heavy, locomotive strides he took toward the carriage house. He was such a beast. So inhuman and impossible, and she knew from the silence behind her that every last stomach in the room was tight with disgust, every tongue numbed by mystification.
Ingrid turned around and met a host of different reactions. Gabby’s jaw hung loose, her brows pressed together the way they were whenever she was fighting tears. Nolan had his hands on his hips, his eyes on the floor. Mama’s pallor had gone ghostly white. And Vander … well, he glared at her with barely contained fire. The only person missing from this display was her brother.
“Where is Grayson?” Ingrid asked. She wanted to know, but she also couldn’t think of anything else to end the insufferable silence.
Gabby blinked and cleared her throat. “Vander said he’d been in the basement of H?tel Bastian but that he escaped.”
Ingrid had too many questions. About Grayson and Chelle and why Vander’s shirt was torn and bloody, and where Nolan had been for so long, and what on earth Gabby was thinking coming back to Paris in the middle of this insanity. Nolan didn’t allow her time to ask questions, however.
“We’re going to Clos du Vie. We think we have a way to stop Axia.” He glanced over at Vander and hooked his arm again. “Come on.”
Vander’s hot glare never wavered from Ingrid’s face. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ingrid shrank back a step. Oh no.
Nolan sighed. “Remember your vows,” he murmured, and then released Vander’s arm.
Gabby spun on her heel and touched Mama’s hand. “Let’s get your coat.”
Mama inhaled deeply but didn’t object. She let Gabby lead her into the hallway, and Nolan followed. He shut the door behind him, and almost immediately the air turned dry and suffocating.
“Vander—”
“You’re choosing him. A gargoyle.”
It was the disappointment in his voice that crushed her, a palm on her heart, pressing and twisting.
“I …” Ingrid took a breath and it became a cracking sob. “I love him.”
He lowered his head and turned it sharply to the side, as if it had just been slapped. “And you feel nothing for me.”
“No, that’s not true,” she insisted. “You know it isn’t true.”
He belted out a grim laugh. “I see. You want us to be friends.”
He started toward the door.
“No! I mean … well, yes, but no, it’s not like that, either,” she stammered. “You mean more to me than that. The few times we’ve kissed, Vander, you’ve made me feel … I don’t know how to explain it.”
Vander stormed back to the bedpost where he’d been standing. “It’s not something that requires explanation. It only requires two mouths, two bodies, and two people who want one another.” He left the bedpost and took the last strides toward her. “My mouth wants you. My body wants you. I want you.”
There was nothing left inside her when he stopped speaking. No hot guilt roiling in her chest and stomach, no anxiety shivering along her arms and legs. There was only a tranquil sort of weightlessness. Those precious few seconds when your mind and body haven’t quite realized the peril of gravity. When you can see with utter clarity and be brutally honest and you have to act before you plummet toward the ground.
“I want you, too.” She closed her eyes when his hand cupped her cheek and his thumb brushed along her lower lip. “But I want Luc more.”
His hand froze. Ingrid, her eyes still shut, jerked her cheek out of his palm and slid past him, accidentally ramming into his side. She opened her eyes and stumbled around the bed, toward the door. Away. She couldn’t look at him, not after driving in that dagger. She’d had to do it, though. She’d put it off for far too long.
Ingrid was halfway down the stairwell when she saw Marco, wearing fresh livery, on the step below her.
“Lady Ingrid—”
She grabbed two fistfuls of his dark gray merino jacket and, before he could say anything more, buried her forehead against his crisp white, buttoned shirt. His chest muffled her sob. Her outburst caught them both off guard. He stood stiffly while she took a shuddering breath. His hand clunked down onto her shoulder and he gave it an awkward pat. Ingrid eased herself back.