“You forget,” Philippe said. “Morningstar taught her.”
“How did she die?” Isabelle asked. She was standing by one of the bay windows, staring at the courtyard outside; at the daylight, slowly eclipsed by the coming of the night.
“Not well,” Philippe said. He could breathe—he could keep her at bay; keep her memories out of himself. He had to. Because, as he spoke, it was within him again—the darkness, rising within him; the growing rage, mingled with the memory of the awe Morningstar had generated as effortlessly as he breathed—with a burning sense of shame that she was revolting against her master, betraying his trust—such a terrible thing, that even hanging in her chains in the depths of Hawthorn, she’d been capable of such devotion. “They broke her piece by piece in the name of their justice, but it wasn’t them she died thinking of.”
“Thinking of?” Isabelle asked. “Hating?”
“Hate and love and all those things intermingled,” Philippe said. It was hard to focus, remembering that rage; remembering that sick feeling within him, that desperate desire to please, even after what Morningstar had done . . .
Emmanuelle’s face was pale; drained of all blood. “I didn’t know,” she said. “None of us did.”
“I know you didn’t,” Philippe said. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“Morningstar is dead,” Isabelle said, softly. “Does that not—”
“The Furies are gone,” Philippe said. He felt, again, the tightness in his chest; the sense that he was larger, stretched thinner than he ought to have been—the darkness below him, burrowing toward the foundations of the House. “But Nightingale hasn’t disappeared. Her revenge is still happening. It will destroy you, in the end.” It would destroy him, too—he’d been a fool; he wasn’t strong enough to resist her—he was being torn apart, piece by piece, bones cracking in the furnace of her anger, his brain spiked through with the strength of her implacable resolve. . . .
He . . . he needed to get out of here. Now.
Emmanuelle shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do to atone for this. Nothing that will . . .” She took in a deep, shaking breath. “I didn’t know,” she said, again, as if she still couldn’t quite imagine it. Morningstar had taught them well; hammered loyalty into them until they could barely see themselves anymore. “Philippe, you have to—”
“I’m not the one you should convince.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “But ghosts aren’t convinced anymore, are they? They’re exorcised.”
“Isabelle!” Emmanuelle said, sharply. “You can’t—”
Philippe stifled a bitter laugh—and he wasn’t sure whether it came from him or Nightingale. “See what you have?” he said. “See what Morningstar shaped; what all Fallen are, in the end? Perhaps your House doesn’t deserve to survive. Perhaps none of them do.” He rose, brushing his hands against the cloth of his trousers, as if he could remove the dust he’d breathed in the chapel. “I’m sorry, Emmanuelle. I don’t have more than this.”
He left, without looking back.
* * *
ISABELLE caught up with Philippe in the corridor. “You can’t leave.”
Philippe turned, stared at her. There was no illumination in the corridor, but, every two or three breaths, Isabelle’s skin would gradually brighten: a slow, lazy radiance that would throw underwater reflections on the flower wallpaper. It was . . . eerie, not least because she had never done that, not even at the height of her powers; back in that single, bloody night in the Grands Magasins where his life had changed.
“I can if I want to,” he said. And he had to. Before Selene found him and imprisoned him, once again. Before this House—and the rage Nightingale felt when he stood within its walls—was his undoing.
“You—” Isabelle shook her head. “You made a promise, remember?”
He had, but it had been to a different person. And perhaps he shouldn’t have made it at all. He owed nothing; not to her, not to this House. “I promised to help you. To keep you company, until you could work things out.” Philippe shook his head. “You’re all grown up now, Isabelle.”
“Why? Because of what happened in the crypt? Because I touched a body? Is that what worries you?”
No, not that—it was her entire behavior: the light, streaming out of her, the ageless glint in her eyes, the way she held herself. What she had said, to Emmanuelle and Madeleine; the casual way she spoke of exorcising a ghost that bothered her, not understanding any of Nightingale’s suffering, or the magnitude of Morningstar’s betrayal. Nightingale had been wronged, and all she could ask herself—instead of questioning the House and its ways, or the acts of Selene’s master—was how to remove this inconvenient obstacle from her path.
Like them. She had become just like them.
No. She had always been like them, and he had been too blind to see it.
“I’m still the same,” Isabelle said. “I—” She raised her hand, the one with the fingers missing; worried at the gap with her other hand, as she always did under stress. “Why can’t you see it?”
Because she was changing, and she scared him stiff. Because he couldn’t be quite sure when it had happened—when, in the seemingly endless night that had sharpened his entire being to a thin pretense of what he once had been—she had become a Fallen in her own right, like Selene, like Oris.
Like Asmodeus.
Was it when she’d touched Morningstar’s bones? A simple answer, that—that power was its own corruption, but of course there were no simple answers. “You’ve changed,” he said, simply. There was nothing else he could say that she would understand.
“I haven’t.” Isabelle’s voice was grim. “I warned you once before: this is my House, Philippe, and the only place where I feel safe. I will defend it.”
“You weren’t this”—he struggled for words—“categorical before. You didn’t go to see Selene back then, did you?”
She held his gaze, unflinchingly. “Perhaps I should have.”
He sighed. “It hasn’t got much to do with you in any case, Isabelle. I’m just—” Tired. Tired of it all, of their stupid power plays and reputation games; tired of wondering where he fit into all this and never finding an answer. “I can’t go on like this.”
And of course, it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t just weariness, but also her. What she had become; the power she effortlessly wielded—and the effortless cruelty that surfaced, like a scorpion sting, in the moments he least expected it.
He couldn’t face that, not anymore.
Isabelle’s face was a mask, all emotions smoothed out of it. “You—you could offer Selene your help. I’m sure she would pardon you, take you into the House—”
“I don’t want to be in a House!” He hadn’t meant to shout it, but the words slipped out, as treacherous as a wet knife blade. “A House took me, once. Tore me from my home and marched me all the way here, to fight in a stupid, senseless war; and left me with nothing, not even a mouthful of food or a scrap of cloth to call my own.”
Isabelle’s voice was quiet. “A House took you. It wasn’t this House, Philippe.”
As if it made any difference—how could she not see it? How could she—? “No,” Philippe said. “It wasn’t. But, deep down, they’re all the same. Can’t you see? Morningstar betrayed Nightingale for what? Two deaths? An advantage with Hawthorn that didn’t last the winter? Houses all think lives are cheap.” Pointless. It was all so pointless, their little games like children’s fights in school, with no more rhyme or reason than their meaningless professions of charity and care for the weak.
They didn’t deserve anything—except to crumble and fall.
“We don’t,” Isabelle said. “I—I—”
“You don’t, or you don’t think you do.” He sighed. She looked bewildered once more, her preternatural maturity gone. She’d always been like that, hadn’t she, a
child who had seen too much to remain one? But children were cruel, too; casually tearing the wings from flies, mocking and hurting one another and never knowing when to stop. What would she do, with Morningstar’s powers, and some of his memories? What would she think of? He didn’t want to find out. Better leave now, with some of his illusions intact.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. How do you appease a ghost, if they’re right? I can’t believe the House is worth saving.”
“I have to believe.” Isabelle drew herself up, gathering light around her like a mantle; appearing, for a bare moment only, as she must have when in the City, her black hair ringed with radiance, and with the shadow of huge, feathered wings at her back. Like the wings of Asmodeus in his prison cell, he thought, hands shaking. Even if everything else had been different, he couldn’t live with that. “Don’t you see, Philippe? I have nowhere else to go.”
“I know.” They wouldn’t budge, either of them. It was futile. “Let’s agree to disagree, shall we?”
Isabelle said nothing. He could have done something then; could have found words to comfort her, could have laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that it was all going to be all right. He didn’t, because he couldn’t lie to her anymore. Because there was still darkness in his heart; and underneath the House, the soft, crushing sound of that huge thing hungering to reduce the foundations to dust. Because the sound of the wind through the corridors was no longer a lament, but that of an oncoming storm.
She’d be strong enough to weather it—she had Morningstar’s magic; and the protection of the other Fallen in the House. He didn’t need to worry; or to listen to the treacherous voice in his heart that reproached him for leaving her. “Be well, will you? I—I would hate for you to come to harm.”
Isabelle shrugged. “It happens,” she said. “To Fallen.”
“To mortals. You’re not anything special.”
Her smile was bitter, wounding. “Hunted for magic in our bones, in our breath? We didn’t ask to be made special, Philippe. But we have to live with it, all the same.”
While he—he had asked to become an Immortal, of course; had starved himself until he was whiplash-thin, meditated until all the mountains blurred and ran into one another like watercolors under rain. He couldn’t blame an accident of birth; he had made a deliberate choice.
But then, so had she, one she couldn’t remember—the one that had driven her from Heaven. “I guess this is good-bye, then. Fare you well, Isabelle.”
“And you.” Her gaze was clear, distant; the radiance of the wall soft, like water, like tears. “Fare you well, Pham Van Minh Khiet. I hope we meet again.”
They both knew they wouldn’t; or that, if they did, it would be under very different terms.
* * *
SELENE might have wished to keep her grief private, but news of Morningstar’s death filtered through the House, leaving dependents in a state of stunned shock. No one had believed Morningstar could die, just as the sea or the wind couldn’t die—and, if he could die, was the House truly as invulnerable as Selene assured them?
The news filtered elsewhere, too—and in another part of the House, a dusty, disregarded cellar that hadn’t been opened in twenty years, other people set to work.
Asmodeus knelt in the center of a circle much like the one that had been traced in the crypt; with the same kind of flowing tracery that had adorned its edges, the same alphabet that was the language of power. He had removed his usual, elegant finery; the letters flowed across his broad torso, like writhing snakes outlined in the light of another world—slowly descending along his arms toward his hands, and from there into the floor, linking the two halves of the circle together.
At one point, halfway through the work, he raised his head, sniffing the air like a hound scenting blood; and bent back with a white-toothed smile, intent on his spell. He whispered words, as the letters filled the empty space on the floor: a litany that seemed to be at once a mourning chant and a prayer.
When he was done, he lifted his hands. For a moment, there was nothing: silence, filling the room as the last echo of his words faded into nothingness, and every letter going dark. Then a pure, single note rang, like a plucked harp string. Asmodeus smiled, and got up.
His attendant, Elphon, was waiting for him at the entrance to the room. He handed Asmodeus his shirt and jacket, which Asmodeus slipped into effortlessly. As he buttoned up his shirt, Elphon spoke up. “My lord, if I may?”
Asmodeus didn’t say anything. Elphon went on. “This is a circle of rebirth, isn’t it? I’m not sure I understand why—”
Asmodeus smiled, white and sharp, like a tiger prowling the woods. “You mean, because Silverspires is my enemy?”
Elphon blushed, obviously bracing himself for further rebuke. “Yes.”
“You think this is going to benefit them? Oh, Elphon,” Asmodeus said, shaking his head. “I had a bargain with someone else for . . . a ritual. For a weakness in Silverspires’ wards, at a key point in time—which required us to be here, in the House, in order to undermine it from within. This isn’t a gift I’m making them. Quite the contrary. This, my friend, is their downfall.”
And with that, he turned away, leaving that single note behind him. Unlike the words, it didn’t fade away into silence, but gradually was joined by others, until a faint but clear chorus of voices echoed under the vault.
In the room, in the center of the circle, light danced on motes of dust; and then the light died down, and the dust settled, slowly accreting itself into the shadowy shape of a human being.
And something else, too: on the edges of Asmodeus’s circle, tendrils of leaves and wood started to grow—plunging so deep into the floor that the stone itself began to crack.
NINETEEN
THE ONCOMING STORM
MADELEINE woke up, and wished she hadn’t.
She was lying in an infirmary bed. She would have known that peeled, faded painted ceiling and its flower-shaped moldings anywhere. When she tried to move, every joint in her body seemed to protest at the same time, with a particular mention to a crick in her neck that seemed to have become permanently stuck. What— There had been the strangeness of the dragon kingdom—the flight to the cathedral—
“Oh, you’re awake. Good.” Emmanuelle’s face hovered into view. She looked better, but distinctly worried.
“What did I miss?” Madeleine said, or tried to. Her tongue was as unresponsive as a lump of wood—her mouth felt full of grit and ashes, and her words came out garbled. She tried again, felt something shift and tear. “What—?”
“Aragon said you needed to rest,” Emmanuelle said.
“You’re—you’re fine,” Madeleine said. “You’re healed.”
Emmanuelle nodded.
“I’m glad,” Madeleine breathed. At least they had succeeded in that. At least . . . “Philippe—”
“He left. Isabelle went after him,” Emmanuelle said. “She has some foolish notion that she can change his mind.” Her eyes—her eyes had changed somehow. They were . . . older, as if something had made her age in the space of a few hours. What had happened? Had Philippe healed her? She was standing, and didn’t seem to be in any pain other than extreme weariness. Surely that meant they had succeeded; but then, why did she seem so distant? Something . . .
The House, she realized, and felt as though something was squeezing her heart. Something was wrong with the House. She could feel it, even through the tenuous link she had with it.
The House’s magic was coming apart.
A commotion: Aragon’s raised voice, and then steps, getting closer to her. “I know she’s awake,” Selene said. “You should have notified me before.”
If Emmanuelle looked ill at ease, Selene looked unchanged. She was dressed in her usual men’s swallowtail and trousers, regal, apparently unaffected by whatever seemed to have oppressed the atmosphere. “Madel
eine.” Her voice was cold, cutting. “Will you leave us?” she asked Emmanuelle.
Emmanuelle winced. She cast a hesitant glance at Madeleine, but withdrew; her mouth shaped around words she never did get to pronounce. An apology? But what for?
“You’re going to chastise me for lacking to do my duty,” Madeleine said. “We were trying to help Emmanuelle.”
Selene said nothing.
“Isabelle thought that, if we could find Philippe, we could convince him to help—” It sounded small and pitiful, when she said it; with none of the hard-edged certainty she’d felt when she went with Isabelle; as if whatever magic had flowed out of her had utterly, finally gone, leaving only the taste of ashes in her mouth.
Selene’s face had not moved. She let Madeleine’s awkward, spluttering speech fade into silence. Only then did she speak, and her voice was entirely emotionless. “I would reproach you for that in ordinary circumstances, yes. I expect the alchemist of House Silverspires to be available when I have need; and not gone into God knows what senseless adventure with her apprentice, whom you’re supposed to keep an eye on, not indulge, may I remind you?”
“In ordinary circumstances.” Madeleine struggled to think through the layers of cotton wool that seemed to fill her mind. “I don’t—”
Selene raised a hand, and power crackled in the room like the prelude to a thunderstorm. “You will remain silent. How could you be such a fool, Madeleine?”
“I don’t understand—”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. You knew. You knew the rules, and you flaunted them. How long has it been going on?”
“I—” She knew. The only thing that came to Madeleine’s befuddled mind was the truth. “Five years. Nights are hard, when you remember the past. It’s—” She took in a deep, burning breath. “The dead and the dying and the bloodbath at Hawthorn—”
“Be silent. I don’t want your excuses, Madeleine.”
The House of Shattered Wings Page 32