The Beautiful and the Cursed: Marco's Story Read Online Free PDF

see Grace creeping toward her mistress on the rooftop. She gave Marco’s naked form a wide berth.
    “Contrary to what you might be thinking right now,” he began, watching her from over his shoulder, “you need not fear me.”
    Grace helped Arabella sit up. “I know. You saved my lady’s life, but you … you were a …”
    “A monster?” he supplied.
    “I don’t know! But you weren’t
human
,” she replied, still trembling.
    He kept his back to her. It was dark here on the roof but not
that
dark.
    “No, I’m not human, and I’m not going to explain what I am, either. It’s not for you to know. I will tell you, however, that the moment I leave this roof you’ll never see me again.”
    Not having to look at her made it easier to sever the line.
    “You can’t—” Grace started, but Lady Arabella bit into her protest.
    “Yes, he can. He shall. I do not know what he is, but it is evil. If he does not leave, I shall tell Mama and Papa and they shall quit this house forever!”
    He’d liked her better when she’d been silent and bleeding.
    Marco swiveled just far enough to pin Arabella with a cold glare. “Then you should know something: I won’t truly be gone. I’ll still be here—
watching you
. Hiding. You won’t see me, but I’ll definitely see you.”
    That should take care of things. Mentally, Marco washed his hands of this mess. He’d rather have a territory filled with new humans than one filled with people who had seen him for what he was. He looked away from the refreshed fear closing over Arabella’s face and met Grace’s narrowed eyes. She inspected him with far less fear than he preferred to see.
    It wasn’t that he wished to frighten Grace. It was just that fear was easier to deal with than curiosity. She could not be a part of his world, and he had only one foot in her world to begin with. He’d been a fool to befriend her. To weaken himself like this. He was cursed. No longer meant for friendship with a human—and certainly not for anything more. That was the simple, stark truth. And it was unexpectedly painful.
    “Goodbye, Grace.” Without waiting to hear whether she called out to him, he pulled the trigger in his core and coalesced once again. His wings carried him off the rooftop and over the balustrades, down to the garden bench, where his talons carefully scraped up his waiting livery, and then back into the night sky. Alone.
    Two days later, Marco returned to Hôtel Dugray.
    They had all left by then. He had been watching from the street, from the roofs of other homes, wherever he could remain unnoticed, as the house quickly emptied. The rumor burning up Montparnasse had it that Hôtel Dugray was being quit for good.
    Marco walked along the roof as dusk settled. The windows of his territory grew dark while others up and down the street brightened. It felt good to be home. Though it left him empty, it was also good to be free of human charges.
    He kicked the foot of the old rattan chaise and sent it skittering across the roof, into one of the brick chimneys. A slap of something heavy and the fluttering of paper drew his eyes to the ground near the overturned chair: Grace’s sketchbook.
    Marco hadn’t wanted to think about her.
    He stooped to pick it up, resolved not to flip through its pages, but the temptation was too great. He pushed open the cover, annoyed with himself. Lines and dots filled the first many pages. The Pegasus constellation, done time and again. Marco settled onto his heels as he continued to page through. Constellations were not all that Grace had drawn. There were portraits of Lady Arabella, of other servants. The baroness. The building across the street.
    A self-portrait.
    Marco quickly turned that page and found a pencil sketch of himself—both incarnations. His human face filled the upper corner of the page, and at the bottom, there was a rough capturing of his wings and tail, his muscled legs and arms. She had erased and redrawn certain lines