The Beautiful and the Cursed

by Page Morgan

  The problem, Ingrid was coming to realize, was that there were no hard and fast rules when it came to evil. It could change shape. Be one thing one moment and something else the next. It could be demon. Gargoyle. Human. Angel.

  Ingrid wondered what evil would look like the next time it came knocking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Marco broke the lock on the rear kitchen door with one twist. He pushed the door open and stood aside, his mouth a taut line. He hadn’t spoken to Gabby yet. In Luc’s carriage-house loft, Gabby had sunk to the cold wooden planks and waited, eyes squeezed shut, while Marco returned to his human form and dressed.

  His usual smooth sarcasm, his coy, dangerously playful air, had not returned along with his human skin. She’d seen this man in his birthday suit, she realized, and it had left her feeling exposed. Now, as he glared at her, waiting for her to enter the kitchen, she felt not only exposed but afraid.

  Marco was her gargoyle. He couldn’t harm her. But that certainly didn’t stop him from looking like he wanted to.

  Gabby stumbled inside, her legs still wobbly from the fast flight high over Paris. Her dress was damp and cold, torn in spots from the fighting at the Daicrypta estate. A low fire was going to cinders in the hearth, and Gabby walked toward it, craving warmth.

  Marco slammed the door behind them.

  “You’ll wake the servants,” Gabby said staring at the glowing embers under the grate.

  “I scent your mother, her lady’s maid, and your father’s valet,” Marco replied, coming closer to her than she liked. “The rest have quit the house.”

  Her father’s disappearance must have been the final straw. Gabby held her hands out to the pathetic fire.

  “Good for them,” she said. If she could flee this madness … No. That was a lie. She wouldn’t flee. She wouldn’t leave Nolan or the Alliance. Her hair hung limply around her face, ripped out from the pins, her hat lost long ago. She lifted her hand to push the strands back. The pads of her fingers brushed the bumpy scars along her cheek.

  She’d forgotten all about them.

  “I killed him,” she said, suddenly not caring at all about her blasted face. She’d killed someone. Her breath came faster. “The dagger, it was the one I took from the draining room floor. The mercurite one. I didn’t know. I just … I just grabbed it and threw and I didn’t mean to.” She swung around and there Marco was, less than an arm’s length from her. His amber eyes were sooty in the low hearth light.

  “You pierced his heart,” Marco said, unblinking. “We are not immortal, Lady Gabriella. Whether the dagger had been of silver or mercurite doesn’t matter. A knife in the heart means death to human and gargoyle alike.”

  “But I didn’t aim. I just threw. I swear it, I didn’t want to kill him!”

  “Then you should not have been so careless.” Marco spun away from her and stalked to the long farm table in the center of the kitchen. He braced himself against it.

  Gabby grasped for something to say. Her throat hurt too much. If she tried to speak, she knew she would only let out a sob. Marco was right. He was so right that it ached. She’d panicked. Forgotten everything Chelle had taught her. And now Lennier was dead.

  “Forget your conscience for a moment,” Marco said, and she remembered he could pry his way into her feelings the same way Luc could. “As we speak, every single Dispossessed in Paris is learning that their elder is dead. That he’s been killed by an Alliance fighter.”

  “I’m not Alliance—”

  “Do you think any of them will care?” Marco pushed off the table, sending it screeching across the tiles. “Yann isn’t the only gargoyle who will be out for your head. Hell, if I weren’t your guardian, I’d be one of them.”

  Marco let out a sigh and his grimace softened. He’d likely felt Gabby’s flash of alarm.

  “It isn’t safe for you here,” he said, gentler than before. “There is a gargoyle named Vincent who will want to take on the title of elder now that Lennier is gone. He is no friend to the human race, and it would be ignorant to think he wouldn’t try to make an example of you to prove his power.”

  Marco’s wolfish sneer appeared even more dangerous in the shadowy kitchen.

  “Lennier was the first gargoyle to ever speak with the Alliance. The one who brought peace between us. For hundreds of years he worked to keep that peace. But a new elder means new rules.”

  Gabby needed to sit. The chairs at the table were too far away, so she simply lowered herself to the warmed slate around the hearth. Nolan had told her about the gargoyle who had ended the wars between the Alliance and Dispossessed. It had been Lennier.

  The kitchen door flew open and cracked against the plaster wall. Gabby leaped to her feet as Nolan crossed the threshold, his broadsword thrust in Marco’s direction.

  “Get away from her,” he snarled.

  Marco groaned. “Human, relax. My tie to her is stronger than my loyalty to Lennier.”

  Nolan lowered the broadsword, if only a few inches. “Will they come here?”

  Gabby realized that Nolan had already pieced together what Marco had just explained. The Dispossessed were now her enemy.

  “Why shouldn’t they? Sacred ground keeps demons at bay, not gargoyles,” Marco answered. “Luc and I can only protect her so much. She needs to leave Paris.”

  A chill darted up Gabby’s spine. “I will not.”

  Leave Paris and go where? Running from the mess she’d made wasn’t an option. It would be cowardly.

  Marco twisted toward the swinging doors that led into the dining room. “Lady Brickton is coming. I’ll attempt to detain her with the riveting details of our evening’s events.” He started for the doors. “I think we rather got along when we met this afternoon, don’t you?”

  Marco didn’t require an answer. He knew perfectly well that Gabby’s mother had detested him. Of course, she’d hired him on the spot when it had been made clear to her that he was going to be as much a fixture to the abbey as one of the actual gargoyles set along the roof.

  Nolan sheathed his sword once Marco had left, his hand clasped around the hilt. Gabby crossed the kitchen toward him. She wanted to pry his fingers from the sword and lace them with her own. Kiss each clenched knuckle until he let go of the tension that gripped him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching for his hand.

  Nolan stepped aside. “I know you didn’t mean to kill Lennier.”

  He didn’t look at her and Gabby pulled her hand back. “No, I mean about your father.”

  Anguish cut across Nolan’s face. He didn’t respond, but the muscles along his jaw worked with tension. She thought he might say something about his father. A few of the insubstantial words one was supposed to say in situations like these. Not as if witnessing a father getting killed by a hellhound was a situation one often found oneself in. Still. Nolan only took a deep breath and continued to avoid her eyes.

  “Marco is right. You need to leave Paris. And if Grayson knows what’s good for him, he’ll do the same.”

  Gabby frowned. “What do you mean? Why would Grayson need to leave Paris?”

  When Marco had taken her from the closed-in Daicrypta courtyard, her brother had been in hellhound form. Had she missed something?

  Nolan held his spine straight as a rod. “He led those hellhounds to the courtyard, Gabby. He was in league with them.”

  A snort of laughter escaped before she could tamp it down. Nolan seared her with an icy glare.

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “My brother planted himself in front of Ingrid. He was going to fight that hellhound. He would have if—” She stopped. If Carrick hadn’t thrown himself in the beast’s path.

  “Rory said your brother had them under his command. Grayson admitted that it was true.”

  Gabby refused to believe it. She shook her head, something hot boiling up inside of her. The innate desire to defend her brother. “There must be a piece missing, then. Something we don’t know. Grayson wouldn�
��t have put any of us in danger, not on purpose.”

  Nolan balled his hands into fists. “My father is dead. The hellhound your brother was controlling ate him. He will answer to the Directorate in Rome for what he’s done.”

  Gabby bit her lower lip to keep herself quiet. She wanted to argue. Insist that her brother was innocent. But then, her father had just accused Grayson of killing someone as well. He’d called him a murdering monster, a wicked beast. Gabby shut her eyes as if she could block out the memory. It couldn’t be true. Nolan and her father were wrong. Her father had always disapproved of Grayson, and Nolan … well, he didn’t know Grayson the way she and Ingrid did. Besides, he had just seen his father die.

  Maybe all he needed was a little time. Space to calm down and see things clearly.

  “Isn’t there someplace safe in Paris where no avenging gargoyles can find me?” she asked, the forced change of topic rough. It took Nolan a moment to adjust, but if anything, he only appeared more irritated.

  “I doubt Lady Brickton will be open to your moving in with me at Hôtel Bastian,” he said. Normally he would have delivered a suggestion like that with an arched brow and a sly grin. It would have kindled a blaze inside Gabby. But Nolan’s words were flat, his expression emotionless. “And then you wouldn’t have any gargoyles bound to you,” he went on, all cold logic.

  Nolan’s glossy black curls swept over his forehead, falling over one eye. He pushed them back and looked at her. She had never seen him so sad before. Gabby wanted to go to him. Slip her arms around his waist, hold him close.

  “There is no safe place in Paris. You need to go.”

  She stared at him, willing him to take it back. Or, barring that, at least look regretful. I don’t want you to leave, lass, but I can’t have you in danger here. Or I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt again, Gabby. She could imagine him saying such things.

  He licked his lips and shifted his attention to the stacks of bowls and folded napkins on the table.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said, and then something awful came to mind. “Unless I go back to London.”

  Her father would likely instruct his valet to begin packing as soon as he returned to the rectory. Whether he’d order them all to leave with him, Gabby wasn’t certain. He’d seemed rather frightened of his own children earlier.

  “I’ll send someone with you for protection,” Nolan said. Gabby could only stare at him. How easily he’d accepted the idea of London.

  “Can’t it be you?” she asked, grasping for a connection to him. He met her eyes, but only for as long as it took for her to see the rejection he was about to deliver. He’d broken her heart before he could even part his lips.

  “I need to stay in Paris and deal with what happens here.” Because of you and what you’ve done.

  “And what about the Directorate? Your father told you not to trust them,” Gabby said, desperate to think of a way to convince him to let her stay. To hear him say he wanted her to stay.

  “I’ll speak to Ingrid and Marco and find out what he told them.” He still wouldn’t look at her.

  “I don’t want to leave you.” Gabby cringed at how needy she sounded. She couldn’t feel sorry for it, though, because it was at least honest. Nolan had kissed her earlier. He’d told her that he loved her.

  He struggled for a response now. Nolan, who always knew what to say.

  He chose action instead of words, breaching the arm’s length he’d kept between them. He cupped the nape of Gabby’s neck and pressed his lips firmly against her forehead. He pinned her there, his fingers pressing on the back of her neck until she felt a tremor passing through them. Then he let her go and walked away, toward the door he’d burst through a few minutes before.

  “Nolan—”

  “I’ll come for you when I can.” And then he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.

  Luc took the last step up into the loft, ready to collapse and lay still for a thousand years. His unmade cot looked more welcoming than a bare, crepe-thin pallet had a right to. Still, he would have fallen into it had it not been for Marco. The Wolf was leaning against the loft door, which was rolled open to the sky purpling toward dawn.

  “You weren’t exaggerating about those humans of yours,” Marco said.

  Luc shifted his gaze from the cot, determined not to show how badly the mercurite had affected him. He’d never been subjected to so much of it before. He limped lightly toward the open loft door as if every step weren’t killing him.

  “Of ours, you mean,” Luc replied.

  “Oh, so now you’re willing to share them with me?”

  Luc ignored him and watched the rectory. He felt Lord Brickton’s presence. Gabriella and Lady Brickton. One of the maids. Brickton’s valet.

  Luc waited.

  A light went on in her room. The sweet scent of spring replaced the dead bite of winter in his nose. He breathed her in and forgot the mercurite tainting his muscles and bones. Ingrid appeared in the window. She drew aside one panel of sheer gauze and Luc felt her eyes searching the carriage house. Looking for him.

  “If you continue to be so obvious, brother, you will surely die.”

  Ingrid let the panel fall back into place. Luc watched her figure turn and disappear. He didn’t care. Let them rip him apart. Let them send him to hell or wherever dead gargoyles went.

  Ingrid was alive. He’d killed another gargoyle, but he’d done what he’d needed to do to protect her. No gargoyle would mourn a shadow like Dimitrie, or care to punish Luc for destroying him. Not when there was Lennier’s death to avenge. A new elder to be determined.

  “Why don’t you do it yourself, then?” Luc asked. Marco could. He was bigger. Older.

  Marco moved away from the open door. “Kill the only gargoyle I can trust to protect one of my humans with or without being compelled to do so?”

  There was more to it than that. There had to be. Marco had destroyed René with relish. Luc still remembered the gleam of disgust in Marco’s eyes, the curl of his lip, when he’d discovered that René had consorted with a human girl. The difference, Luc figured, was that Marco had not known René’s girl. He knew Ingrid. Though Marco would never admit it, she intrigued him. If he destroyed Luc, he would only alienate her.

  “Lady Gabriella is leaving, and I assume it will be with their dear father,” Marco said. “Her brother is no longer our concern.”

  Luc felt the loss of Grayson as well, along with the pervasive sadness lingering in Ingrid’s chest because of it. There would be no feelings of regret when Brickton left, he was sure. That would leave Lady Brickton, Ingrid, and a single lady’s maid.

  “Three humans. Two gargoyles. I like the new ratio, don’t you, brother?”

  White light poured through the loft. It curled over Luc and threw him face-first onto the floor.

  Luc had known it would come, but he still swore under his breath as his knees and forehead bashed into the wooden planks. Irindi’s burning presence sent Marco sprawling as well.

  “This happens to you a lot, doesn’t it?” he muttered.

  “Silence,” Irindi intoned.

  They obeyed. Outside, the wind kicked up. It battered the old roof slates and thrashed the bare-limbed trees.

  Luc tried to think whether any of their humans had been injured. The severed finger had not been Lord Brickton’s, and he had rubbed his own skin raw on those ropes. Ingrid had been bitten by a crypsis, but at that time she’d belonged to Dimitrie, not Luc or Marco. Gabby, by some miracle, hadn’t received so much as a scratch.

  The angel of heavenly law wasn’t here to punish them with angel’s burns.

  Then again, her presence never boded well.

  “Luc Rousseau, you have erred.”

  Of course he had.

  “You have not heeded my warning regarding the child christened Ingrid Charlemagne Waverly.”

  It always came back to her.

  “Your affinity for her will no longer be tolerated.”


  Lennier’s guest bedroom flashed into his mind with sharp focus. With everything that had happened since then, Luc had forgotten. Ingrid’s lips. His hands exploring her body. The two of them sinking onto the mattress. The way he’d fought the shift.

  “You will be removed from l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas.”

  Irindi’s hollow voice stabbed him like a mercurite-dipped blade. No. No.

  “Irindi—”

  “Your new territory awaits approval. That is all.”

  Irindi’s departure was usually a relief. This time, however, Luc wanted to gather her light back. Keep her here and convince her she was wrong.

  He and Marco breathed heavily as they straightened, their breath rolling out as fog in the cold loft.

  This couldn’t be the end of everything.

  The abbey was his. The rectory and carriage house, the cemetery and grounds. It all belonged to him. Ingrid belonged to him, and she wanted it that way. I want to be yours again, she’d said.

  He’d done this to himself. He’d known the Order wouldn’t forgive him a second time, and yet he’d still kissed Ingrid. He had still desired her in a way no Dispossessed should ever desire a human.

  “You have too much human left inside you,” Marco said, his tone curiously soft.

  Luc growled. He was not human. No part of him was. What human had talons sharp enough to peel through the skin of a boy’s neck? What human was strong enough to shear through tendons and cartilage, vertebrae and a spinal cord, all to rip off a head? What human would be able to stomach such an act?

  “I’m no human,” Luc said.

  If Marco disagreed, he kept it to himself as he crossed to the loft stairs. This place would be his now. Luc didn’t know when he’d be severed from the abbey or the humans living on its sacred ground. He didn’t know where he’d be sent, or even whether his new territory would be within Paris. But it would happen. He’d have new humans, and their scents, their emotions, would settle right into the knowing place inside him where he’d kept Ingrid and her family.