The House of Shattered Wings

“I don’t see how the situation can be made worse,” Emmanuelle said.

Selene sighed. “That’s because you lack imagination.” They still stood. It was small and insignificant—and likely would become false within a week or so—but she clung to this like a lifeline. As long as they stood, there was hope.

*

IN the end, two guards came for her and took her through corridors, down a vast staircase that led back into the hall; and into the gardens.

In an era of charred trees and blackened skies, the gardens at Hawthorn were the pride of the House. The grass was emerald green; the trees in flower, with the sheen of rain-watered plants; and there were even birds gracefully alighting on the lakes and ponds—one could almost forget their torn feathers and dull eyes, and see a fraction of what Paris had been, before the war. Statues of pristine alabaster stood around the corners of impeccably trimmed hedges; and the gravel crunching under Madeleine’s feet was the soft color of sand, with not a speck of ash or of magical residue to pollute it.

That hadn’t changed, either. If not for the two thugs at her side, she could believe herself back in happier days; could remember Elphon catching water from one of the ponds deeper into the gardens. . . .

No. She would not go there.

At the bottom of a knoll was a circle of gravel, and at the center of the circle, a fountain depicting Poseidon’s chariot emerging from the sea: the four horses surrounded by sprays, and the water glistening on the eyes of the statue, an unmistakable statement that the House of Hawthorn could afford to waste such a huge amount of clean drinking water to keep the gardens running.

Asmodeus was sitting on the rim of the basin. He was wearing a modern two-piece suit in the colors of Hawthorn: gray with silver stripes, and the tie a single splash of color at his throat, the vivid red of apples; a city man through and through, looking almost incongruous against the pastoral background of the gardens. Except, of course, that he still exuded the lazy grace of predators in the instant before they sprang.

“Ah, Madeleine.” He gestured to the two guards. “Leave us, will you?”

On the rim of the fountain beside him was a spread-out cloth, a picnic blanket with a selection of things that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the cells, knives and hooks and serrated blades, still encrusted with blood, and it didn’t take much imagination to know what they would be used for—Madeleine just had to close her eyes. . . .

“Sit down, Madeleine.”

Madeleine’s hands were clenched, though she didn’t remember how they got there; didn’t even remember sitting, yet there she was on cold, harsh stone, her clothes soaked with frigid water like the touch of a drowned man.

“You’ve been uncharacteristically silent since your return,” Asmodeus said.

Madeleine stared, obstinately, at the grass at her feet; but she could still feel his presence; could still smell the orange blossom and bergamot carried by the wind; could feel magic in the air between them; though he had no need of a spell to hold her, trembling and motionless, on the rim of the fountain.

He was silent, mercifully so—except that she could hear the sound of a blade, negligently scraping on stone—scratch, scratch, scratch, a sound that seemed to grow until it was her entire universe—each movement peeling her as raw as if it had been her skin under the knife, her muscles and veins laid bare to the water’s biting kiss.

The last thing she wanted was to speak up, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until she did. “What—what do you want?”

“Why, what has always been mine to take. Did you not know that?”

The knife was still moving; the stone still scraped raw. Madeleine tried to calm the trembling of her hands, and failed.

“No,” she said. And, because she had nothing else to lose: “You have Elphon.” She didn’t need to look up to imagine his smile, lighting up his face like a boy’s.

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you? As loyal to me as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Something happened.” Madeleine laid her hands in her lap, tried not to think of the twinge of pain in her unhealed leg. “You killed him.”

“I prefer to think of it as the result of an unfortunate picking of sides,” Asmodeus said. “One cannot rise to the top of a House without bloodshed.”

“You didn’t have to rise to the top of the House!”