The House of Shattered Wings

“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.”

“Then what do you want?” She knew, even before the words were out of her mouth, that they were a mistake; knew it when Selene’s face hardened like cooling glass, impossibly brittle and smooth at the same time.

“You know exactly what I want. I’m not throwing you out of the House in your current state, which Aragon tells me is probably so poor because of your use of angel essence. But I want you gone, Madeleine.”

Gone. Cast out from Silverspires; stripped out of her refuge, her last rampart against Asmodeus and the nightmares of the night Uphir had been deposed. Her worst nightmare coming to meet her, and she couldn’t even seem to muster any energy for fear; for anything but the sick feeling in her belly. “But—I have nowhere else to go.”

“You should have thought of that before you got addicted to essence,” Selene said. She snapped her fingers, almost absentmindedly; and something was gone from Madeleine’s mind, a noise she hadn’t been aware of, but whose lack was overwhelming, a glimpse into the abyss. “I withdraw from you the protection of the House. Go your own way.” And with that, she turned and left—that . . . that bitch. Emmanuelle had been an essence addict, once; and she’d been allowed to clean up her act, to go on as if nothing were wrong; but Emmanuelle was Selene’s lover, and of course she’d be favored over everyone else. Of course.

She couldn’t seem to think straight—as in the dragon kingdom, except that it wasn’t serenity that plagued her this time. Her thoughts kept running around in circles, around the gaping wound left by the loss of the House; couldn’t seem to coalesce into anything useful. But still . . .

Still, she was damned if she’d let Selene have her way. “Selene?” She forced the words through a mouth that felt plugged with cotton.

Selene didn’t turn, but she did pause for a moment.

“You’re not Morningstar,” Madeleine said. “You’re not even a fraction of what he was.”

“Perhaps not,” Selene said. “But I am the head of this House, Madeleine. And nothing will change that.”

*

PHILIPPE came out of the House under the same gray, overcast skies of Paris. He barely could remember a time when they hadn’t been thus, when he had come in from Marseilles under a sun reminiscent of the shores of Indochina, a long time ago, in another lifetime.

He carried a basket of figs, dry-cured sausage, and bread that had been forced upon him by Laure when he went to the kitchens to say good-bye—Laure hadn’t said anything or accused him of anything, merely shaken her head sadly, like a mother whose chicks had had to flee the nest far too early. He’d tried, then; to warn her; to tell her she should leave the House before it collapsed around her, and realized that she’d lived for so long in it that nothing existed outside its boundaries. It had been . . . sobering—and made him think, again, of Isabelle and what she had become.