The House of Shattered Wings

*

AFTER they were gone, Selene walked to the center of the room. She stared, for a while, at the stone bed, on which the wind lifted the remnants of dust; at the circle inscribed on the ground, with a handwriting she would have known anywhere, inscribed boldly and without apology. There were cracks all around it—on the outside, as if something had smashed itself, time and time again, trying to get beyond it.

A grave, Philippe had said.

And, from Isabelle: Morningstar’s.

It couldn’t be: Morningstar was as long-lived as the planet that had given him his name; a rock she could cling to even in his absence. He would not die so softly, so easily; would not have been lying under the House for those twenty years, silent and unmourned.

She picked up the dust in her hand, let it flow between her fingers. It was utterly inert, the ashes of a spent fire: nothing that was or had been magical, though from Philippe’s confused explanations she gathered it had once been the body of a Fallen.

You can’t be dead, she thought, slowly, fiercely. It was, had been, someone else they’d seen, some other corpse on that stone bed, a sacrifice for the spell inscribed in the circle.

And yet . . . yet, in twenty years, he had never come back. Had never sent word, or given a sign of life.

She walked to the edge of the circle and knelt, tracing the letters with her hands. They needed him in Silverspires, so badly it was like a fist clenched around her heart; a hollow in her chest only his presence would fill. She needed him; the force of his presence; his sardonic amusement at her efforts; his grudging praise when she did do something right; his effortless strength, keeping them all safe. But there was nothing; her fingers, brushing against the tip of the stone, felt only the coldness of the carved letters. She traced them, one by one: not the language all Fallen learned to read, but an older, colder alphabet that she had seen so many times in her brief apprenticeship: the language of Morningstar’s desires.

Through those words I shed aside all desires but one. . . .

Through those words I send my prayers to the City, for the good of the House and the good name of Silverspires. . . .

Let me be the one shattered, let me be the one that falls into dust, let me be borne away by the storm. . . .

Through those words I shed aside all desires but one. . . .

And on and on, around the entire surface of the circle, an intricate network of sentences crossing one another, words that mingled with one another until the spell became a litany—a secret tracery of patterns that spoke to Selene, reminding her of long afternoons practicing the gestures and words that would unlock the magic within her. “Power,” Morningstar had said, smiling—sitting in the red armchair of the room where he taught, that room now soiled by the memory of what Asmodeus had done in it. “The world shapes itself around power, and this is its language.”

She remembered kneeling, tracing letters similar to the ones on the ground in her own blood; the air trembling with the force of the power she was calling; a perfect moment when everything seemed to be frozen, waiting for the gust of wind that would sweep everything away. . . .

Yes, this was Morningstar’s work, no doubt about it. A spell of . . . self-sacrifice—the thought made her sick to her stomach, because it meant that Philippe was right, that Isabelle was right; that he was gone beyond retrieval, beyond the reach of any magic or miracles. Gone. Dead; perhaps back to that City they all dimly remembered, though she found it hard to believe forgiveness would be so easy to earn.

They needed him so badly, and he wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t ever be coming back.

Gone. Dead. Forever.

Selene knelt in the dust, one hand on the circle Morningstar had so painstakingly traced; and felt the cool, salty taste of the first tears on her cheeks.

*

WHEN Philippe and Isabelle entered her hospital room, Emmanuelle was waiting for them. She was sitting in a battered old chair, her hand lying on one of the armrests, so that the mark on it was clearly visible. It pulsed in Philippe’s vision; but only mildly, like a dying heartbeat. “It’s almost gone,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Emmanuelle smiled at him: her face pinched on itself, around the hollows of cheekbones, as if, lifting a shroud, he had seen the face of death staring back at him. “Philippe. I wasn’t expecting—”

Philippe felt himself grow red. They’d pushed him to see Emmanuelle, as if it would make any kind of difference; as if he could do anything for her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Isabelle was watching the guards lay Madeleine down on another bed; though she would be listening, he was sure.