The House of Shattered Wings

Come with us.

“Not yet,” he whispered to the encroaching night; and turned away from the stairs, to cross the bridge toward House Silverspires.

*

OUTSIDE, in the gray light of late afternoon, Madeleine turned to Isabelle. “Thank you,” she said.

Isabelle shook her head, pulling her toward a black car. “Don’t thank me. I need you, Madeleine—I gave Selene something, but it’s not what she needs—you have to come—”

“You make no sense,” Madeleine said, but she let Isabelle pull her toward the car, where Javier waited, a frown on his face. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She asked for explanations in the car; but Javier was distant, and Isabelle uncommunicative.

As they approached Silverspires, she held her breath. The cloud over it had now extended tendrils all the way into the cathedral; and there was something around the ruined towers, a canopy of . . . leaves?

“You have to explain,” she said, playing with the box of essence.

“I don’t have all the explanations,” Isabelle said. “But the House is dying.”

Dying? She’d left it in bad shape, granted, and Asmodeus had seemed so sure it was about to fall, but . . .

“Trust me,” Isabelle said, and half dragged her, half pushed her into corridors overrun by huge roots and branches. There was an open door; and before she could realize it was Selene’s office, now invaded beyond recognition, Isabelle had pushed her in.

It was empty; or almost so: Emmanuelle turned as they entered, surprised. “Madeleine? I thought—”

Madeleine felt the presence of Hawthorn in her mind, a weight dragging her down. “Emmanuelle? Where is Selene?”

“Overseeing the evacuation,” Emmanuelle said; and in the face of Madeleine’s blank stare: “You came in through the North Wing? If you’d gone to the other side, you would have seen everyone else. Everyone still alive, that is.”

“I—” Madeleine took a deep breath, struggling to balance her sense of panic. “I thought—”

“This is a dying House,” Emmanuelle said. Her smile was bitter. “But she hasn’t won yet, not if I can help it. Selene’s first duty is to her dependents, but I—I have no such compunction.”

Isabelle was looking left and right, frantically. “Where are they?”

“The wings?” Emmanuelle took a deep, slow breath; let it out again. “Morningstar took them and went inside, to open the way. You just missed him.”

Morningstar? But Morningstar was dead. Surely . . .

“Then I’m too late.” Isabelle slumped. “It can’t have worked, the power I infused them with. I brought Madeleine because she’d know how to do it properly. Emmanuelle—” She almost looked as though she was pleading, but without the tone that Madeleine would have associated with that. She looked and spoke as though she was head of the House.

Asmodeus had asked, “So you set yourself up as his heir, do you?”

The heir of Morningstar; but there was only one heir, and she was head of the House.

“That’s a dangerous position to occupy.”

Selene would be livid. Then again, Selene had no part in what they were now doing.

Emmanuelle said, “You got my message?”

“You know messages aren’t that clear,” Isabelle said. “Merely an intimation to come back, and that there was something here for me.”

“Yes,” Emmanuelle said. “Selene had a mission for you.”

Madeleine merely stood, and listened; everything sliding past her. The box Asmodeus had given her was warm in her hands. “It can’t be this easy—”

“Of course not. Morningstar . . . should provide you with time.”

“With a distraction, you mean,” Isabelle said. “Did Selene expect him to survive?”

Emmanuelle’s voice was low, bitter. “She did what had to be done.”

Isabelle said nothing for a while. At last, she said, and her voice was cold, and wholly unlike what Madeleine remembered, “Blood and revenge and death. She is truly head of the House.”

“Of course.” Emmanuelle sounded exhausted. She opened her hand: in it was a small, blackened thing. “You didn’t ask what Selene wanted of you. You will take this to the heart of the tree, and kill the curse. If it can still be done.”

Isabelle looked at it, intently. “Why are we not going through the parvis? That would be simpler, wouldn’t it?”

“Because the door of the cathedral is where we’re evacuating,” Emmanuelle said, “and we’d rather not have a fight conducted among our refugees.”

“I see.” Isabelle bit her lips. “It might work.”

“It might not,” Emmanuelle said.

“Of course it will. I will come back,” Isabelle said, carelessly. “But I have accounts to settle, first.”