The Beautiful and the Cursed

by Page Morgan

  “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought I wouldn’t be able to protect you,” Luc answered. She didn’t fail to notice that he hadn’t really answered her question. It was dangerous, then.

  Ingrid walked around him, toward a small dresser topped with an aged mirror. A spotty silver brush and comb set had been left to tarnish on the dresser. She ran her fingers lightly over the engraved silver.

  “If you don’t want me in here, I can leave,” Luc said. He looked at her in the mirror.

  “Don’t,” she said quickly to his reflection. “Please don’t.”

  They were alone in a bedroom, but considering they were on gargoyle common grounds and Vincent had acted as though he wanted to drain her blood himself, she would forget propriety for a little while.

  Luc held her gaze in the mirror. “What I told you the other morning. About my sister and that priest … about what I did …”

  The topic change was so abrupt that Ingrid could only blink.

  “I told you I wasn’t sorry, and that’s not going to change. If you’re uncomfortable with that—”

  “I’m not.”

  Luc sharpened his focus on her. “You ran away. You couldn’t get out of that carriage fast enough.”

  She remembered it with a pang of guilt. “I wasn’t running from you.”

  Oh, good Lord. Luc had trusted her with a secret he’d kept under lock and key for who knew how long, and she’d dashed away as if her stockings were on fire. Why wouldn’t he have thought she was running from him?

  “It was a mistake to say anything.” He turned away from the mirror.

  Ingrid did as well, catching his arm. He was too solid, though, and she couldn’t swing him back around. “It wasn’t what you did. It’s what happened to you because of it.”

  Luc held still. “What do you mean?”

  “The way you died. When you were telling me what happened I saw it all—the gallows, the noose, the black hood. The crowds shouting for your death. It was awful and I hated it. I hated imagining you dead.”

  He had turned back to her by then, his expression guarded.

  “I didn’t stay dead for very long. They threw my body in a shallow grave.” Luc cocked his head. “At least there were only three feet of earth to claw through instead of six.”

  “It’s not funny,” Ingrid said, not understanding how he could speak so casually about death and coming back to life.

  “Of course it isn’t funny. For a second I thought I’d been buried alive.”

  “Not that! Your death, Luc. It made me sick just thinking of it. That’s why I got out of the carriage so fast. I needed air. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want you to be dead.”

  He startled her by smiling.

  “I am dead, Ingrid,” he said softly. “I’ve been dead for hundreds of years. Why should that bother you?”

  She didn’t know what to say. Why should it bother her? How could it not?

  “You’re not dead. You’re standing right in front of me, breathing, talking.” Ingrid poked him hard in the chest. “Solid, see? You’re not some ghostly specter. You’re alive.”

  Luc seized the hand that had poked him and held it away from her side.

  “I do feel alive sometimes,” he whispered. Ingrid pulled her hand back, but he counterpulled and, no surprise, won. She stumbled closer to his chest.

  “There is so much that we don’t feel as gargoyles. We don’t feel hunger or thirst. We don’t have to sleep, though some of us do it out of habit. Or boredom. You have no idea how bored I’ve been before. No dreams, no goals, nothing to do but protect. Nothing driving me but that one act, and most of the time my human charges never even needed me.”

  Luc drew her hand to his cheek. Breath stuck fast in her throat, Ingrid uncurled her fingers and touched him. He was warm, his skin like velvet. He pressed her hand against him and exhaled, long and hard.

  “I never thought I’d have such difficult humans to take care of.” Before she could quarrel, he went on, “But I’ve never felt more alive than I have since meeting you.”

  He turned his cheek until his lips were against her palm, his breath hot. “You’re dangerous, Ingrid. You make me feel things that I shouldn’t.”

  He kissed the heart of her hand.

  “Luc.” It was the only coherent word revolving through her mind. There was nothing else, just Luc and his lips, and she knew that she wanted this. She wanted him to keep talking and touching her. She wanted Luc to kiss her the way he had before.

  He let go of her hand, but she kept it against his cheek, willing the moment to stretch on.

  “Is he courting you?” he asked, his voice hoarse, his eyes sooty malachite.

  Vander. He was there now, stuck within the spare inch or so left between Ingrid and Luc. Reminding her that she’d kissed him just a few hours before. How could she have been so thoughtless?

  “No. But you should know—”

  Luc kissed her, stealing away the rest of her confession. Ingrid let it go, tasting again the wild spice of his lips, his warm breath as it mingled with hers. She gave herself over to the touch of his tongue, the rock of his body as he crushed her closer. He wanted to make her a part of him, and she wanted that, too. To dissolve into him, sink deeper, into a place without end. He explored her hips and hitched them flush against his own.

  Luc dropped his chin and gave her a gentle push away. He breathed deeply, his jaw tight and eyes closed.

  “Are you … changing?” She’d known it couldn’t last. His curse might allow a kiss, or perhaps even two. But his body would forever revolt against what it wanted: her.

  Luc shook his head and opened his eyes. They were surprisingly serene. “Not yet. Knowing that it’s coming this time helps.”

  Ingrid didn’t understand how, but it made her happy nevertheless. She lifted her hand to his mouth and traced his full lower lip, the same way she had in the underground arcade. It moved beneath her fingers as he spoke.

  “If we try hard enough we can sometimes stave off a shift. Not for very long. A minute. Maybe two.” With another gentle push, Luc moved Ingrid backward. Her skirts brushed against the mattress. “It won’t be easy. I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Ingrid smoothed the front of his shirt with her palms. She wanted him to try. She wanted it so badly the need for it weighed heavy in her chest. Luc locked his hands around her waist and lifted her to sit upon the mattress. He inclined toward her, but Ingrid leaned back. If they kissed again, his hold on his shift might break. She wanted him to stay as he was for as long as he could.

  “Perhaps we should … talk,” she said.

  Luc raised one of his dark brows. “Talk?”

  “It might help you to not change so quickly.”

  Luc put one knee onto the mattress, then the other, until they bracketed her legs.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  Ingrid edged backward, pushing herself toward the headboard. He followed. On hands and knees, Luc crawled over the ugly chintz coverlet.

  “I really don’t know very much about you,” she answered, trying to keep her voice steady. The predatory shine in his eyes was distracting her. “What did you do when you were human? Did you go to school?”

  Ingrid’s back hit the mound of pillows and she swallowed hard.

  “I never went to school. I needed to work my family’s farm, a small place outside the old Paris wall. Goats, pigs, chickens. A couple of cows.” Luc came down beside her, the headboard creaking against his weight. She tried to picture him tending farm animals. Tried to imagine what his parents or sister might have looked like. People from so long ago. Dead for centuries. And yet, here Luc still was.

  “I taught myself to read, but that wasn’t until after,” he said.

  After. If anyone had a clear-cut before and after, it was a gargoyle.

  “Do you like to read?” she asked. Luc’s eyes followed the motion of her lips.

  “Not as much as I like doing this,”
he answered, and to stop her from speaking again, Luc cupped her chin and ran his thumb along her lips.

  Ingrid lay still against the pillows, uncertain. Barely breathing. What did Luc intend? Her mind ran wild with ideas, all of which she wanted. When Luc reached for the folds of her creamy blue skirt, he hovered over the silk, as if afraid to touch her.

  He took a long moment to run his eyes down the length of her body, and then his hand settled lightly on her leg. His palm barely ruffled the silk at first, but as he traveled from her thigh to the arc of her hip, he grew bold. He angled her toward him and wrapped his arm around the small of her back, pulling her closer.

  Ingrid flattened her palms against Luc’s chest, her head tucked into the curve of his neck. His skin was still smooth and white, without a single patch of obsidian. He was tense, though, his breathing ragged. But they were still touching. Lying beside one another.

  “It’s okay if this is all it can be,” she whispered.

  He buried his nose and mouth in her hair, his breath hot against the crown of her head. “I want more. You do, too.”

  Ingrid closed her eyes and pressed a kiss to Luc’s neck. His skin was warm and he smelled of clean cedar. “How much more?” she asked.

  His laughter gusted against her scalp. He pulled back until his face was over hers. “All of you.”

  Ingrid laughed, trying hard not to blush. “I meant how much more here? Now. Before you change.”

  “Let’s find out,” he whispered. Luc lowered his mouth to hers. She breathed him in, wishing they could stay like this for as long as they wanted.

  “They won’t forgive me for this,” Luc whispered, his mouth still brushing against hers.

  Ingrid froze stone-cold beneath him. With an awkward slap of her hands against his chest, she shoved Luc away and covered her throbbing lips. Oh, how stupid! How unbelievably reckless.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said through her trembling fingers. “I forgot where we were. Lennier …” The window. She rolled out from underneath Luc and off the bed, landing behind the four-poster.

  They were on gargoyle common grounds. They could have been seen.

  Luc followed her off the bed, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean them. Lennier left a few minutes ago. There’s no one here. I would have felt them.” He tapped the back of his neck, just below his skull. He could feel the presence of other gargoyles?

  “I meant the Order,” he went on. “They know everything I do. Everything I feel.”

  His body had tensed, the muscles along his jaw rippling with some hidden effort. He must have been trying not to shift.

  “What will they do?” Ingrid asked. They were angels. Their punishment couldn’t possibly be as bad as the violent death the Dispossessed would order.

  Luc shook his head again and clenched his eyes shut as a tremor rippled through him. “I don’t know. Irindi warned me—”

  His voice broke into a shriek. Luc’s eyes flew open, alert and focused. “Your father.”

  “What do you—” Ingrid stopped as Luc kicked off his boots and tore at his shirt, buttons popping off and spinning to the floor.

  He shot up toward the ceiling, the muscles beneath his creamy skin bulging, his shoulders broadening; jet scales quilted his skin, clambering like vines up his neck, along his face, and to the crown of his head, where his ears had sharpened into clipped points.

  She understood now. Something was happening to her father.

  Ingrid didn’t turn away as she usually did. She watched with determined bravery as Luc transformed into a sexless, scaled monster even before his trousers had hit the floor.

  Ingrid went for the balcony door and threw it open a bare second before he could smash through it. Luc’s wings unfurled and he soared into the sky, a black stamp against the bleak clouds.

  And then he was gone.

  Oh God. Papa. Ingrid sat on the edge of the bed, the balcony door still open. Waiting until nightfall had been a mistake.

  She couldn’t stay in this room another second.

  The dim hallway seemed to tip side to side as she ran down it, into the spare, depressing dining room that no one ever ate in. The receiving room was empty, but even if Lennier with his crazy, long white hair had been inside, she would have surged right past him.

  The peeling wallpaper along the corridor and the faded carpet in the stairwell blurred as she ran. She passed the dead cat in the downstairs corridor without flinching as she had the first time, then bolted through the dingy ballroom, toward the open doors, and into the courtyard.

  But there was nowhere to go.

  Ingrid came to a stop just in front of a stone fountain with a nine-headed Hydra waterspout. One of the snakelike heads had cracked and slid off and now rested in the dry basin.

  She stared at the coarse gray stone serpent, its carved fangs having weathered to blunt ends. Just as Luc’s had, her body felt as if it was revolting. One moment, throbbing with desire, the next, squeezed tight with guilt. How could this world be real? How could any of it be possible?

  She sank to the ledge of the basin and dropped her head into her hands.

  “Your father must have met with difficulty for Luc to have flown off in such haste.”

  Ingrid jumped up from the stone fountain. Vincent stood within the columned entrance to Hôtel du Maurier. He had his black cloak folded around him, and in this natural light, his complexion appeared even whiter.

  “And Lennier,” Vincent said, taking languid steps across the courtyard toward her. “He hardly ever leaves his territory. You must be feeling rather abandoned.”

  She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Not at all.”

  Vincent’s slow smile made her think of a slinking cat. The balcony door to the guest room was right there, in plain view. What if Vincent had seen her and Luc? But hadn’t Luc said he’d have been able to sense another gargoyle’s presence? Vincent must have only just returned.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Vincent stopped at the fountain and ignored her question. “Have you met many of my kind?”

  She ground a heel into the gravel, prepared to run if need be. As if she could get far. The man could sprout wings, for heaven’s sake.

  “A few,” she answered. Marco and Yann. Dimitrie and Lennier. Gaston, Constantine’s gargoyle. And of course, Luc.

  “There are hundreds of us in Paris. Thousands the world over,” Vincent said, his attention turning toward one of the several pitted and cracked flowerpots rimming the base of the fountain. In one, a single white Christmas rose, though stunted, had managed to bloom.

  Vincent ran his fingers over the fragile petals. “No one ever thinks of a garden in winter. When one chances upon such a thing, the flowers are a welcome sight, though an unnatural one. The Dispossessed are much the same. No one ever thinks of us. No one knows to think of us. And yet, here we are, at humans’ beck and call. Here to be plucked, to serve, and when we are no longer useful, discarded.”

  Vincent lifted his eyes and held her gaze with unsettling frankness. He strangled the thin stem of the rose and pulled.

  “Does that sound fair to you, my lady?” He rolled the stem between his fingers. “The Dispossessed you’ve met have done you a disservice by sympathizing with you so quickly. I assure you, dear human, they are in the minority.”

  He sniffed the air, thinning out the waxy bridge of his nose. “I can smell your demon blood from here. Like fermented wine. It tempts, but not without the slightest hint of revulsion.”

  Ingrid put a stopper on her fear. She could not be afraid of Vincent, not with Luc gone to help her father. She couldn’t give Luc a reason to turn back and help her instead.

  “You won’t touch me.” Her voice surprised her. It was strangely calm, and even more strangely, confident.

  Vincent tossed the Christmas rose to the ground. His smirk became a laugh.

  “I would be doing Luc a favor in the end,” he said.

  It happened then. Not a spark in her shoulder
. It was something else. Ingrid started to feel … she didn’t know how to describe it. She started to feel full and heavy, yet incredibly light. Like all of her blood had stopped its natural flow through her veins and started to push down, hard, toward her feet and fingertips. Ingrid swooned, her eyes fluttering shut. The top of her body grew light and airy, the bottom swollen and gravid. And then even the engorged sensation filling her fingertips and toes had gone, and she felt totally and mercifully erased. As if there were nothing left of her at all.

  Just like the night in the churchyard when Marco and Yann had cornered Grayson.

  Ingrid opened her eyes, and even though it was still day, the space around her shone bright, as if the clouds had all peeled back and the sun had dropped closer to the earth. She blinked at the glaring whiteness. Looking down, saw she was suspended in the air—and Vincent was on his knees, his chest and head pressed low against the courtyard gravel in a bow.

  “Leave here,” Ingrid said. Her voice rang out hollow yet canyon-deep.

  It wasn’t like last time, when she hadn’t understood what was happening. This was her angel blood coming to life after so long being dormant. Why now? Why not earlier, when she’d been in grave danger? She felt its power and saw its weight as Vincent, still bent forward in a bow, scuttled backward like a cockroach.

  Ingrid gave him a push with her mind and his body responded. Vincent crawled back toward the stone arcades that led into the Luxembourg Gardens.

  The glow she cast flickered. Her body started to fill back in. Ingrid strained against it, waiting for Vincent to pass under the arcades and out of sight. It was like fighting against a sunset. As soon as he disappeared into the park, Ingrid let go. She collapsed to the ground, onto her side, and a rush of cold air filled her chest. She shivered, her limbs heavy and tired. If Vincent rushed back into the courtyard right then, she would be finished.

  And there it was, the crunch of gravel under a pair of approaching feet. She was too exhausted to feel afraid. I would be doing Luc a favor in the end. Perhaps he would be.

  The boots that stopped next to her face, which was flat against the frozen ground, were not Vincent’s. Ingrid turned her eyes up and saw Yann staring down at her. He made no move to help her stand.