The Wondrous and the Wicked by Page Morgan Page B

alone.”
    A whole day? She’d been in the Underneath for that long? Vander let go of her but remained on the edge of her bed.
    “You’re here,” he said. “You’re safe. That’s all I care about.”
    They were simple, straightforward statements. They helped to calm her. Ingrid kept her hand on her calf, rubbing at the small ache underneath her demon marks. Vander followed the motion with his eyes. She gave a start, realizing her leg was exposed from knobby knee to bare foot.
    Ingrid let go of her calf and grabbed the hem of her nightdress, ready to tug it back into place. Vander’s hand came up and rested atop of hers, stopping her.
    “Is it healed?” he asked. He then took the liberty of skimming the soft curve of her calf with his palm.
    Ingrid sat frozen in place. Though her eyes watched him inspect her demon marks, it wasn’t Vander she was seeing in her mind. It was Luc, that first night in the abbey when he’d revealed to her what he was. A hellhound had nipped at her calf, and Luc had demanded to see the wound, roughly tossing up her skirt hem and grabbing her leg. She saw Luc, lifting her off the cold brick and gravel walkway so her bare feet wouldn’t have to endure a painful walk back to the rectory. Luc, storming into Axia’shive, coming to take Ingrid home to safety. Luc, his damaged wings hanging limply in the Daicrypta courtyard, his bond to her severed, and yet there to help her anyway. And there in the park also, her body belched up from a fissure, too weak to move. He was always there.
    He would always come for her.
    Ingrid shoved the hem of her nightdress down, dislodging Vander’s hand.
    “It’s fine,” she said.
    Vander adjusted his spectacles before standing up and moving away from the bed.
    “We have Marco to thank for that,” he said.
    Ingrid paused in bringing her duvet up around her waist. “Marco? But I thought …”
    Vander went to the window and pushed back the gauzy drapes. “Luc was with Marco when he found you,” he said, his words clipped to sharpened points. “He couldn’t stay.”
    Ingrid propped herself against the pillows, relieved. She hadn’t imagined him, then.
    “He had to return to his territory,” she said.
    Vander stayed silent at the window, looking at the churchyard lawn as if there were actually something interesting to see there.
    “You know where he is. Don’t you?” Ingrid asked.
    She hadn’t had the nerve to bring up Luc’s name or ponder his new territory with Vander these last weeks. She’d also been careful to keep Luc’s stone talisman in her pocket and out of Vander’s sight. She knew his feelings for her, and he knew of hers for Luc. It would have been awkward to discuss her heartbreak with someone who was likely rejoicing inside, so she’d stayed quiet instead.
    “Lennier’s old territory,” Vander finally answered. He turned away from the window and added, “Luc didn’t want you to know.”
    She leaned into the pillows, stunned. He’d been close this whole time. Guardian of gargoyle common grounds, a mere ten-minute walk away. She pictured him in Lennier’s sitting room, in front of the hearth. In the guest bedroom where they had kissed and held one another in the four-poster bed—the very action that had decided Luc’s fate as guardian of l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas.
    Of course he hadn’t wanted Ingrid to know. He would understand how tempted she’d be to go to him, and he wouldn’t want her at gargoyle common grounds, not when any number of Dispossessed could be there.
    Vander left the window. “I have to get back to Hôtel Bastian. Things are … busy.”
    The way he’d hesitated took Ingrid from her thoughts of Luc. “What is it? Do you know which gargoyle killed Léon and the others?”
    He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and avoided her eyes.
    “Vander, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Another thought stilled her. “Or is it Axia? Has something happened while I’ve been sleeping?”
    How