The House of Shattered Wings

She had come back for him. Had argued with Madeleine for him; had casually swept aside all of Selene’s suspicions and doubts as if they meant nothing; and had stood for him over standing for the needs of the House. That counted for something, surely? Surely she wouldn’t turn into another Morningstar or Asmodeus . . .

They reached the bottom of the stairs, hearing their steps echo in a space that was far vaster than the little they could see. Philippe tried to call more wood to him, but there was nothing there; just that breathless, expectant pause after someone had spoken; an answer, waiting to be uttered.

“There is something,” Isabelle said. She shifted so abruptly that Philippe almost didn’t react in time, and Madeleine slid down halfway to the ground. He caught her, the muscles in his arms burning.

“I can’t see—” And then he didn’t need to strain, because the soft radiance from her skin increased a thousandfold; not slowly like the rising of the sun, but with the speed of a shutter removed from a lamp; from darkness to light in heartbeats. He closed his eyes; it was almost too much.

When he opened them again, he was alone with Madeleine; Isabelle was a few paces ahead, moving toward the center of the room.

Like the church above, it was a room of pillars and arches; smaller and more intimate, the arches pressing down on the ground with the weight of the earth, the smell of damp and rot almost overbearing. It was not large, and most of it was filled with graves: the stones of the floor were meticulously laid out, each with a name and a prayer, and letters whose gold had flaked away with time.

In the center . . .

In the center was a stone bed, not unlike the one he’d been pinned to in the dragon kingdom—except that this one was occupied already, by an ivory skeleton lying in the darkness with its arms crossed over its chest, one hand over the other, as if protecting its rib cage from depredations.

“Isabelle?”

She didn’t turn. “Can’t you feel it?” she asked.

It trembled in the air: a touch of heat, a butterfly’s wings of fire, caressing his cheeks; an irresistible attraction to the locus of power in the center of the room. Bones. Angel bones.

He was halfway to the stone bier before he realized he’d left Madeleine. He turned back. She was lying in shadow, on the folded edge of his cloak—at least he’d remembered to wrap her in something, to keep away the damp—and then it had hold of him again, was reining him in like an unruly horse, pulling him to the center of the room.

Power. Magic, all that he had ever wanted, with the prickly incandescence of a thornbush. It would hurt if he grasped it, but once he did so the world would be at his feet; he would dispel the pall over his heart with a wave of his fingers, would go back to Indochina in less than the time it took to draw breath; would make Asmodeus scream and writhe as he had done with a mere look. . . .

Chung Thoai’s sad, regal face swam out of the morass of his thoughts. It’s stronger than you, he said, shaking his head, his chipped antlers shining in the darkness.

The Dragon King hadn’t referred to the bones, of course; but still . . . Still, a part of him stood, trembling; remembered what it had felt like to be hungry and not eat, to be thirsty and not drink; to feel power in every bone and sinew, and not use a drop of it.

This.

This was weaker than him.

When he opened his eyes, he stood mere inches from the stone bier, watching the bones. They looked old, though that hardly meant anything: slight and fluted, with the reinforced rib cage clearly visible; fused in odd places, a skeleton that was almost, but not quite, human, with the ridges, tapering off, that had once marked the beginnings of wings. A Fallen; but then, there had never been any doubt of that. There was no visible wound, no indication of how their owner had met his end. Merely magic, burning raw and naked, a fire he dared not touch.

“Isabelle—”

He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her: engrossed, as he was, in the power that emanated from the bones, reaching out to touch them. “Isabelle,” he said. “Wait—”

Her hand had already connected. Fire leaped from the bones into her; so that, for a moment, she stood with vast wings billowing behind her, wreathed in smoke that shouldn’t have been.

A noise, like a soft patter of rain: the bones were crumbling one after another, falling onto the stone table: mere dust, not angel essence, just the remnants of something that had died long ago.

“Isabelle.”

Slowly, she turned, her lips stretching in a familiar, arrogant smile; and in that moment, looking at the power that streamed from her like water, he knew exactly who the bones had belonged to.

Morningstar.





EIGHTEEN


THE SALTY TASTE OF TEARS