The Wondrous and the Wicked by Page Morgan Page A

cold ground. His scales were desert hot in comparison, and as he drew her to his plated chest, she felt the tug of a memory. Marco had never held her like this before, and yet she knew these arms. Knew the warmth of this steel chest, and what it felt like to be cradled against it.
    Ingrid looked up, already knowing what she’d see. A pair of peridot eyes, pale and bright as jewels; shimmering jet scales tightly woven along his face; and short, clipped ears set high upon his head.
    “Luc,” she managed to whisper before her head fell against his chest once more. Luc had come for her. She didn’t know how he’d known, but he was here and she was safe and there wasn’t anything for her to worry about any longer. So Ingrid let her eyes close and Luc took her into the night sky.
    The soft down of a pillow had replaced Luc’s hard, reptilian scales when Ingrid found consciousness again. She was warm, buried underneath the weight of a thick duvet.
Her
duvet, she saw after opening one eye.
    She stirred under the covers, and by the clear honey light coming in through the window, she determined it was early morning. She heard the even, rhythmic breaths of someone sleeping and pushed herself up onto one elbow. Luc had flown her here.
Luc.
After a full month of not seeing or hearing from him, he’d come for her when she’d needed him most.
    It wasn’t Luc in her room now, though. With a start, she saw Vander in a chair at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed, his legs wide, and his chin tucked into his chest as he slept. The sun lit his golden-brown hair, mussed from where he’d likely raked his hands through it again and again. She wondered what Vander had said to her mother to gain permission to sit watch here without a chaperone. The fact that he was to be ordained soon must have certainly come into play. A smile touched her lips, until she twisted to sit up and felt the soreness of her shoulder where the hellhound’s fang had sliced into her.
    The memory hit her like a fist. Ingrid batted the heavy duvet off and yanked up the hem of the nightdress that someone had changed her into. Her calf didn’t burn with the same fury that it had in the Underneath or when she’d woken in that darkened park, but the spot was tender. Luc had likely healed her wounds with his blood, because the skin along her calf was unmarred by the fangs Axia had plunged into her flesh.
    Ingrid closed her eyes, a hand pressed to her temple. How could she have been so stupid? Racing into that alley, chasing Grayson’s voice. And now Axia had reclaimed her blood. All of it? Ingrid didn’t know. She didn’t feel any different than before, other than the sweep of panic making her hot and then cold again. What would happen now?
    “Ingrid?”
    Vander shot up from the chair, sleep rasping his voice.
    “She has it,” Ingrid said, her thumb rubbing the two strawberry ovals on her calf. “She took her blood back. She had me in her cave again and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t make any electricity, and the demon poison, it burned—”
    Vander came to her side and lowered himself onto the bed. The mattress shifted and dipped.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said, gasping for air around the tight, aching ball of a sob lodged in her throat.
    Vander’s hands cradled her neck and jaw, his fingerscombing through her hair. He forced her head up, her eyes to look into his.
    “Ingrid, you have nothing to be sorry for.”
    She shook her head, though his hands held her tightly.
    “She has her blood and now she’ll be coming here, for her Harvest. I gave her exactly what she wanted, Vander.”
    He pressed his fingers into her skin more firmly. “She
took
what she wanted. Do you believe any of us care about that right now? You were taken into the Underneath. You were gone a full day. I’d started to worry that you weren’t—” Vander stopped, his thumbs sweeping over the curves of her jaw. “I should be the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have left you