The House of Shattered Wings

“You’re doing great work,” Selene said, and it wasn’t a lie. Isabelle was reckless, and ill inclined to take advice, but she seemed to have come into her powers at last—they wouldn’t have made it this far without her.

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of Morningstar: he came holding a wrapped package that was twice as large as him, and half as tall again. “What is that?” Selene asked, and then Morningstar let fall the cloth that served as a wrapper, and she forgot she had ever asked.

Once, the head of House Silverspires had had wings, and a sword. Both had been lost when he vanished—gone with him, Selene had assumed—what would have been the point of looking for them, when only he had known how to wield them?

Beside her, Emmanuelle drew a sharp, wounding breath. “I didn’t think—” she said, softly, slowly.

The wings were huge, and unadorned: they were not a toy or an accessory, but the rawest embodiment of a weapon; their serrated edges catching the light like the blades of scimitars: it was all too easy to imagine the wearer lunging, shoulder extended forward; and the sound of flesh tearing in the wake of a wing’s passage.

Morningstar laid them on the floor, gently, keeping only the matching bladed gauntlets in his hands. They looked like the spines of a fish, except that was a faintly ridiculous comparison, and there was nothing faint or ridiculous about those, either. Everything about them seemed to hunger for blood. “I remembered,” he said. “I hid them once. . . .” He frowned; and for a bare moment he looked like his old self again, tall and fair and terrible to behold; and so achingly familiar Selene’s world blurred around her. “Buried them in the earth for safekeeping, so that no one would lay claim to what was mine.” And then the moment was gone, and he was just a newly born Fallen, bewildered and lost—and Selene blinked back her tears. It was a hard thing, to stand by the side of the dead.

“And the sword?” Emmanuelle asked, slowly, softly.

“The sword wasn’t there,” Morningstar said. He frowned, again. “It doesn’t matter.”

It did matter, because they would need to find it eventually, to know if it was merely Morningstar not remembering what he’d done with it, or someone else moving it; but right now, they didn’t have the time. . . .

“These will cut through anything, if properly used,” Morningstar said.

Properly used. With muscles that only a Fallen could have: muscles, unused in years or decades or centuries, that still remembered what it meant to fly. “You remember?” Selene asked, not daring to hope.

“Some,” Morningstar said, curtly. Beside him, Isabelle was watching the wings, fascinated; reaching out to touch them, and withdrawing as if their mere sharpness had drawn blood. “I’m not sure it will be enough.”

“It won’t be,” Emmanuelle said, gently. She pushed aside a mahogany chair to kneel by the wings; like Isabelle before her, she ran a finger on the serrated edges, heedless of the risk—Selene fought the urge to snatch her away, before she cut herself too deeply for mending. “Don’t you remember, Selene? They were infused with magic, once.”

Oh yes. Like Morningstar, they had radiated the terrible warmth of raw power: what else could they have done, bathed day after day in his presence?

“It’s all gone,” Emmanuelle said.

“Then we’ll give breath, and whatever else is needed,” Selene said. “Isabelle—”

“I can’t!” Isabelle’s eyes were wide; her words halfway between a protest and a disappointed cry. “I’m no alchemist.”

God, the last thing they needed was her falling to pieces. Selene said, gently, “You were my choice, and the House’s choice. You have the skills.”

“I don’t. We all know I don’t. It was meant to be Oris, except that he died, and that left only me. There was no time, Selene.” It wasn’t despair, after all; merely a bald statement of fact. “Madeleine could—”

“Madeleine is no longer part of this House,” Selene said, more sharply than she’d intended to. She had no desire to be reminded of her failure—she probably wouldn’t have been able to stop Madeleine’s addiction, but she could have found out earlier. She could have avoided Claire using it against her, at a time when the House was already in disarray. Her fault. “She’s probably part of Hawthorn again, by now, if Choérine is right.” Certainly she had left at the same time as the Hawthorn delegation, and in the company of Asmodeus and his henchmen.

“I doubt by choice,” Emmanuelle said dryly.