The House of Shattered Wings

She knew, but still she had to try.

While Emmanuelle was sleeping, she stole away, wrapped only in a thin cotton shawl, the cold wind on her skin like the beginning of a penance. She had put two guards outside Emmanuelle’s room, but though she wouldn’t be such a fool as to requisition them, neither would she be fool enough to go off on her own. She dropped by the mess hall, and asked which bodyguards were available. Two of the idle ones—Imadan and Luc—leaped up at the chance to follow her, abandoning a spirited discussion on the proper way to sketch the human body.

The crypt where Morningstar had lain was all but deserted. The stone bed was still empty in its circle of power—do not think of the bed now, not of the grave or whom it belonged to—but the place had changed. Along every column holding up the ceiling, something crept downward: great buttresses like snakes, moving so fast she’d have sworn she could see them shifting; encircling the pillars so hard and tight that the stone had cracked. Selene walked closer, touched them. They were as hard as rock, but the material wasn’t rock. It was wood.

She thought of the plants in the East Wing; of the leaves she couldn’t touch or pull out. Green things. And, like all green things, they had roots; roots which were now choking the foundation of Silverspires. If it couldn’t be stopped . . .

Of course it could. It was silly to think that any ghost could affect the oldest and most powerful of Houses . . . But this ghost had summoned the Furies—killed Oris and Samariel and others; used Philippe as a catalyst to enter the House; and perhaps Asmodeus and Claire to wreak its havoc. This ghost had led Morningstar to sacrifice himself in order to exorcise her; in vain, for he had only kept the danger at bay, not eradicated it.

A worthy student, Morningstar would have said; except that, of course, it was his House being torn apart, and he who had been killed.

Selene knelt in the circle, touched her fingertips to it: nothing but cold, inert stone. Dead, all dead, and yet . . .

She brushed her fingers against the stone bed, and, calling to her the magic of the House, pulling in every strand like a weaver at her loom, spoke the slow, measured litany of a spell.

Something stirred, in the dark; large and unfathomable and not feeling human anymore. “I would speak with you,” she said, slowly.

Darkness; and the wind, howling between the pillars with their weight of tree roots. “I know Morningstar harmed you, but he is gone. I—I am mistress of his House, and would offer amends in his name.”

Amends, the darkness whispered to her, in her own voice. A cold, unpleasant feeling, slithering across her hands. Amends. There are none.

“Whatever you desire—”

All that you built—destroyed. All that you hold dear vanished. All that you long for—borne away by the storm.

“What storm?”

It is coming. Can you not hear it?

Selene could hear nothing but it; the sound of the wind racing between pillars; the distant noise of branches bending against its onslaught; the tightness in the air, a cloth stretched taut, almost to snapping point. “Your storm?”

There was no answer from the darkness. “What do you want, damn it!”

She had already had her answer; had already seen what was happening. Not a House, but something else; the foundations of a new building, a new garden, its roots in the wreckage of Silverspires.

Never.

It wasn’t Morningstar’s voice in her mind, but it could have been: it was that same cold, dry feeling of steel against the nape of a neck, that same feeling of unbreakable promises. The House was hers, now that Morningstar was dead; wholly hers, with none of the whispers that Asmodeus and Claire had started, none of the doubts about her ability to rule. It was hers; and, because no one else could protect it, that duty fell to her.

“I will crush you,” she said to the darkness, her voice taking on the singsong of chants and litanies, and powerful spells. “Hack off your roots and suck the sap from your leaves, and burn your seeds before they can ever land.” The air was taut again, as if listening to her promise; but what could it know of fear? It wasn’t even human, not anymore.

“Selene?” It was Javier, pale and untidy. His creased face had the same expression as when he had waved Asmodeus into her office.

Her heart sank. “What’s happened?”

“Asmodeus is leaving,” Javier said. By now, she knew, all too well, his expressions and what they meant; and could read what he didn’t say in the tightness of his clenched hands, in the thinness of his stretched lips.

“Asmodeus. That’s not what I ought to be worried about, is it?”

Javier winced. “You—you have to come and see. There really is no good way to explain it.”