The House of Shattered Wings

“You’re just going to let Emmanuelle die.” Madeleine’s voice was low, angry; for a moment, as she moved toward him, something shifted, and she was larger than life, lit by a radiance that burned everything it touched. “She’s in a hospital bed, burning up. Like Samariel.”


“Look, I said it already. Even if I saw her, I’m not sure what I could do! I didn’t do—”

“You know something,” Madeleine said. “Don’t try to shift the blame. You know some, or all, of what’s going on, don’t you?” It was like watching a kitten grow fangs and muscles and venom; becoming the tiger that could eat you, if it so chose. It was frightening, and shocking.

“If he goes back,” Ngoc Bich said to Isabelle—who hadn’t said a further word, but simply stood, biting her lip as if trying to come to a decision—“if he goes back, he will bring it back into the House.”

“It’s already inside the House,” Isabelle said, softly. “It leaped from the mirror into the cathedral, and from the cathedral into everywhere, didn’t it?” She reached inside her jacket and held out something to Ngoc Bich. “You’re wise and old, aren’t you? Tell me what this is. Tell me how to unlock its secrets.”

Ngoc Bich shrugged, and took it—as Philippe had suspected, it was the mirror they’d found in Notre-Dame, its malice undiminished by the atmosphere of the dragon kingdom. She turned it over, slowly, her gaze fixed on Isabelle; as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. Philippe wasn’t sure, either. Her face had that terrible, ageless smile that seemed to be the province of Fallen. She scared him, even more than Madeleine did.

At length Ngoc Bich smiled. “A sealed artifact,” she said. “I could show you how to open it”—her hands danced, for a bare moment, on its rim, in the beginning of a pattern that seemed to have Isabelle hypnotized—“but it would avail you nothing. This was the source of your curse, but as you say, it has moved elsewhere. It is now within the House, and its darkness is in its corridors, climbing up toward the light. Opening this won’t gain you anything, except perhaps the release of the last few scraps of darkness contained within.”

“You’re lying,” Isabelle said.

Ngoc Bich held out the mirror to her. “Why should I lie? The problems of the surface aren’t mine.” A quick showing of teeth, pointed and sharp like those of crocodiles. “I defend my territory, but I have no interest in what Houses do, above. No one can touch the river. You know that.”

“I don’t.” Isabelle’s face was pale, resolute; as if she were really ready to take on the entire dragon kingdom by herself. Philippe found he was holding his breath, waiting for an explosion that never came. Instead, she merely took the mirror back, wrapped it in its grubby white cloth. “But I believe you.”

“How good of you.” Ngoc Bich turned back to Philippe. Behind her, Chung Thoai watched him, his hollow gaze sorrowful—but of course the dead couldn’t weep. “You heard my words. You know I’m right, Philippe Minh Khiet.”

Isabelle’s attention had turned back to him; her smile was wide, mocking, like the goad of a cattle driver. “Do you want to run away, Philippe?”

He ought to—he really did. He wasn’t one of them, to think that some quaint version of honor demanded he face the enemy. He’d always been sane about this: if outnumbered and outgunned, one should run to ground, not rely on versions of honor thought of by knights in dust-covered books.

Emmanuelle—Emmanuelle had been kind to him, in a House where not everyone was kind, or gentle—but, in the end, she still belonged to the House, to Morningstar. He’d be quite happy for the vengeful ghost to have its way, for the House to split open like a bloated corpse.

Except . . . except the darkness was within him, too, as Chung Thoai had said; the link to the curse and the ghost he couldn’t run or hide from, that he would always carry within him. He would, in the end, have to face it; or be entirely consumed by it, ground down into dust until no trace or memory of him remained within the city.

And there was Isabelle. Who stood, watching him; he could feel her through the link, her worry, her anger; her anxiety about the House, about him. He owed her—for finding him when he was being tortured, for coming all the way into the dragon kingdom, determined to bodily drag him back—and all he had given her so far was pain; and trouble—and two missing fingers.

Blasted conscience. It never worked the way it was supposed to.

“All right,” Philippe said. “I’ll come back with you. But only for a short time, mind you.”

If he said it firmly enough, he might even believe in it himself—though Chung Thoai’s ghost, looking wistfully at him and making a gesture of blessing reserved for those in dire predicaments, would have reminded him of how insane it all was, to plan to go back to Silverspires.

*