The House of Shattered Wings

“They thought she was responsible for it. In Hawthorn.”


“Yes,” Emmanuelle said. She exhaled loudly. “I can understand why she’d be angry. But she’s dead, isn’t she?”

She’d hung in chains for days and days on end, endured pain without surcease—blades that opened her flesh, burns, spells that turned her innards to jelly, all of that to make her admit to something she hadn’t done—and she could scream and accuse her master, but in the end, it hadn’t made any difference, had it? Because Uphir hadn’t cared, so long as the price was met. “She died in Hawthorn.”

Isabelle said, “The dead don’t walk the earth, Philippe. They don’t leave mirrors with curses, or trace summoning circles on the floor.”

“They speak to the living, though,” Emmanuelle said, slowly, carefully. “To magicians foolish enough to summon them, if it comes to that. Death is not necessarily an obstacle. There are precedents . . .” Her arms gripped the side of the chair, so strongly her skin went pale.

“A ghost, then. With human agents.”

“Yes. Claire. Perhaps Asmodeus. And others, quite probably. You would not lack for people with a grudge against the House,” Emmanuelle said. “But I doubt she has need of them any longer.”

Claire—his vision of her hands; the mirror—she’d probably left it in the cathedral, years and years ago: it would be just like her, to try to give Silverspires a nudge in the right direction, to patiently wait for the curse to take hold. Asmodeus was . . . more direct. “I don’t make a habit of studying ghosts,” Philippe said, a tad stiffly. Ghosts were bad luck. Their walking the earth was against the natural order of things, and he certainly had no intention of being in the same place as one, if he could avoid it. The ghosts of dragon kings were one thing; those of indentured mortals, House dependents at that, quite another. “I—” He spread his hands, unsure. “I can’t give you much more. Madeleine knew what they were—the figures in the crypt.”

“Erinyes,” Isabelle said, in the rising silence.

“Furies?” Emmanuelle looked at her hand; and then at the pile of books on the chair next to her. “Of course. The circle that crushes the original offense. The bites of snakes. But no one has summoned the Furies in—”

“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.”