by Page Morgan
“I will protect them all, brother,” Marco said before descending the loft stairs.
The promise did little to comfort Luc. Ingrid would be lost to him. His home, taken away. And he had no one to blame but himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ingrid knew she would find him in the belfry.
It wasn’t instinct that brought her into the abbey just before dawn. It wasn’t the same sort of knowing that Luc had with his humans that led her up the narrow, winding steps to the bell tower, bathed in watery blue light. She wished to feel Luc the way he no doubt felt her again now that she was back in her room at the rectory. She longed to have that knowledge, to be able to experience everything he did and felt. But no. It was logic, pure and simple, that told her where Luc would be.
Vander had delivered her and her father to the rectory less than an hour earlier. After he had helped her to the ground and opened the carriage door, he’d found Brickton alone. Luc had already fled. Ingrid figured he would want to be alone, in a place where he could avoid Marco and any human who might try to find him.
Her father was not one of those humans.
He had already commenced packing his belongings. His harried instructions to his valet could be heard throughout the rectory, along with his declarations that he would never be returning to Paris, that the gallery was officially finished, and that he no longer had an heir. Ingrid had soothed Mama’s panic by explaining that Grayson was in fact alive, just out on his own for now. And when Lady Brickton had outright refused to leave Paris until her son came home, her husband hadn’t objected. He didn’t care. So long as he was gone on the morning train.
Gabby had also started packing, but in a much more somber and quiet manner. After Lennier’s death, Ingrid thought Nolan’s and Marco’s advice wise. The gargoyle named Vincent had mentioned that there were Dispossessed out there who practically salivated for reasons to attack humans. Ingrid knew her sister loathed the idea of going home, especially now that there would be whispers about her scars. If London could keep her safe, though, it would be worth the humiliation.
Ingrid spotted Luc behind the massive bronze bell. He crouched against the belfry wall, his elbows hooked around his knees. She couldn’t see his face yet, but he was definitely in human form. Her pulse raced faster when he was like this. When he was in his scaled, true form, he couldn’t speak. She didn’t long to touch him. His gargoyle form erected a kind of safe, impenetrable wall between them.
“I spent the last thirty years here,” Luc said before Ingrid could come around the curve of the bell and meet his eyes.
She walked beside the railed parapet. The parched wooden boards complained under her weight, reminding her that the bell hung suspended over the tower shaft. It would be a long fall.
“You’re safe,” he added.
She smiled. “I suppose I trust you.”
As Ingrid came around the bell, he leaned his head back against the rough stone and watched her.
“Someone once told me that gargoyles turn to stone when they hibernate.” Ingrid didn’t want to mention Vander by name.
Luc tucked in his chin. He wore old work clothes instead of formal livery: canvas trousers and a loose white linen shirt rolled to the elbow, never mind the zero-degree-Celsius weather.
“We don’t feel it,” he said. “When we sleep we don’t feel anything. Not until a human comes around, at least.”
Ingrid inched closer to him. Her feet crunched over loose rock. When she looked down, she saw broken pieces of stone littering the wooden boards. She crouched and picked up one shaped like a crescent. The inside curve was smooth, the exterior rough and weather-worn. Luc had slept here for thirty years. When Grayson had moved into the abbey a handful of months ago, his stone casing must have shattered.
“Yours?” she asked, holding it out to him.
Luc saw what she cupped in her palm. “It’s not really stone. More like a crust our scales build up over time.”
He let out a sigh and pushed himself to his feet, wincing when his legs straightened. Ingrid followed, her hand closing around the small piece of him.
“Are your wings going to heal?” she asked. She couldn’t stop thinking about the gaping hole in each one.
She also couldn’t stop thinking about Dimitrie’s head hanging from Luc’s talons.
“In a few days,” he answered. He faced the Seine and the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Morning light was always so perfect and clear. Ingrid liked its honesty. After being swamped in darkness for so long, the first hour of sun as it crept over the city revealed the truth like no other time.
She wanted to be as honest as the morning sun.
“In the Daicrypta courtyard, when I told you I wanted to be yours again, I meant it. Not just as your human charge, but as yours.”
If he had been in obsidian scales right now, this would have been easier. Instead, she had to watch his human face remain impassive, his cut-jade eyes fixed on the frozen Seine. She had to wait for him to speak.
He didn’t.
“I know you’ve said it’s impossible. I must sound like I’ve gone mad.” She let out a laugh. “Perhaps I have, but, Luc, I—” She stopped before the words could tumble out. She hadn’t even known they were there, waiting on the tip of her tongue. I love you.
“I’m being sent away,” he whispered. Luc kept his gaze trained on the waking skyline. “Irindi is giving me a new territory.”
Ingrid rocked back onto her heels and gripped the open window ledge. She mirrored Luc and turned to stare out at the city. She didn’t see it, though. Rising panic blinded her.
“But this is your territory,” she said.
“Until I’m assigned a new one. The Order can do as they please.”
Ingrid closed her eyes, and strangely enough, she could see again. Luc, in Lennier’s guest room. Luc, crawling over the bed, toward her. He’d told her the angels would know, that they wouldn’t forgive him.
“Because you kissed me,” she said. “Because of what we did.”
“No. It’s my affinity for you. At least, that’s how Irindi referred to it.”
“They’re doing this because you care for me?” Why wouldn’t caring be considered a good thing? What sort of angels were these?
Luc finally let go of his roof gazing and met her incredulous stare.
“Your offer to be mine?” he said with a gentle arch of one brow. “You’re right. It is impossible. It is completely insane. You’re a human, Ingrid. I’m not—not anymore—and we could never be … human … together.” The way he said human stirred her. She knew what he meant, even though the word itself sounded utterly innocent.
“The Order knows everything,” he went on. “I can keep secrets from the Dispossessed, but not from the angels. They know that I want to tell you yes, that I want to make you mine. They know … they know I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Ingrid lost whatever she’d been planning to say next. She’d had words lined up, ready to go, but they’d all scattered now.
“But … but you … ,” she stammered. “You said you couldn’t love. You said you lost the ability when you became Dispossessed.”
“I lied.” Luc moved back from the ledge. “Did you really believe lust was all I felt for you?”
She had. At first. But she remembered how hard she’d worked to convince herself of it. How exhausting it had been. Ingrid shook her head.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said before striding away to the corner of the belfry. “I wanted to tell you the truth before I left.”
Luc braced his foot against the solid bronze bell and kicked. The bell swung, crying out its disturbance with deafening gongs. Pigeons roosting along the roof took flight, swirling away in a panic of gray and white wings.
Ingrid had to wait for the bell to slow its dance back and forth to cross to the corner. She came up behind Luc.
“There has to be something I can do.”
“You can promise me that you’ll make
existence for Marco extremely boring,” Luc replied quickly. Marco had already saved her life—like Luc, once or twice when he hadn’t been required to. She knew Marco was capable. She could trust him. But she didn’t want him.
“I’ll come with you.”
Every muscle in Luc’s back, and throughout his neck and arms, went rigid. He gave the slightest turn of his head to show he’d heard her.
Ingrid couldn’t believe she’d actually said it. She wouldn’t take it back, though. She wanted him to say yes too desperately.
“I don’t know where I’m being sent yet,” he said, voice low and husky. “I’ll have new human charges. I’ll be bound to them first, not you.”
“But if I stay with you, I’ll always be your human charge.”
Luc looked at her fully now, and not with his earlier earnestness. She heard her proposal for what it was: a request to live with him.
“I can exist in the top of a tower like this.” He gestured around them. “I can live in a sewer line beneath my territory, or in an attic, or in a dovecote. I can pose as a servant, like I have here, or hide within the walls of a home. I don’t have to eat or drink or sleep or keep warm. You can’t do those things, Ingrid. You can’t stay with me.”
Of course she couldn’t. Heat rushed to her cheeks when she thought of how naïve she must seem to him.
She stared at the tips of her boots peeking out below the hem of her skirt. “I know. I’m sorry, I just … This is all my doing.”
She looked up and noticed that the light had changed. It was already becoming less crisp as the sun shimmered over the horizon.
When she met his eyes again, they had softened. The corner of his mouth pulled into a mischievous grin. “If memory serves, I kissed you first.”
He had. Twice. And now Irindi was going to take him away. What if Ingrid never saw him again?
Luc turned and walked toward the belfry stairs.
“You’re not leaving yet, are you?” she asked.
Luc paused at the top step. The bell hung between them. It still swayed, though the hammer inside no longer chimed. He shook his head and attempted a smile, but it fell quickly.
He let his eyes rove over her, interrupted every few seconds by the lip of the bell. When Luc continued down the steps and out of sight, Ingrid remained where she was. She didn’t know if she could move, not yet. Her legs might not support her. Because she had the awful feeling that Luc had been lying to spare her a good-bye.
Acknowledgments
Before I started to write this book, my husband worked for months to transform a run-down cabin on our property into an official writing haven. Thank you for giving me my own space, Chad, and for understanding how much I needed it. It’s the fourth-best gift you’ve given me. The first three? Our beautiful daughters, Alexandra, Joslin, and Willa (who actually ask permission before entering the writing cabin!).
As always, I have an endless amount of gratitude for my fabulous agent, Ted Malawer, and my insightful and supportive editor, Krista Marino, along with Beverly Horowitz, Barbara Marcus, Jodie Hockensmith, Johanna Kirby, and the entire team at Random House Children’s Books. Thank you for the love and dedication you’ve all shown this series.
I’m also blessed with the best critique partners and friends: Maurissa Guibord, Dawn Metcalf, and Cindy Thomas. I’ll let you rip my manuscript to shreds any day, ladies!
A special thank-you to the HB&K Society—Amalie Howard, Cindy Thomas, Danielle Ellison, Kristi Cook, Arianne Mandell, and Kate Kaynak—for welcoming me into their annual retreat and for an incredible amount of friendship and support.
I wrote most of The Lovely and the Lost during summer vacation, so a big thank-you to my mother-in-law, Charley, and our wonderful babysitter, Anna, for entertaining the girls while I sequestered myself in the cabin.
Though this book is dedicated to my parents, Michael and Nancy Robie, they deserve one more thank-you here. They deserve much more than that, actually, but if all I have are words, the best ones would be “I love you.”
About the Author
Page Morgan has been fascinated with les grotesques ever since she came across a black-and-white photograph of a Notre Dame gargoyle keeping watch over the city of Paris. Her subsequent research fed her imagination, and she was inspired to piece together her own mythology for these remarkably complex stone figures. Page lives in New Hampshire with her husband and their three children.
Look for the first book in the Dispossessed series, The Beautiful and the Cursed, available from Delacorte Press.
Table of Contents
eBook Information
Also by Page Morgan
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Acknowledgments
About the Author