The House of Shattered Wings

Nightingale smiled. “See, Selene? I will leave you to your ruins. Unless you want to fight? Your dependent did, and it brought her nothing.” She turned away, and started going down the stairs; planning, no doubt, to leave the island and strand them all in the middle of nowhere.

Isabelle. She knew more than Isabelle; but in the end, it would probably avail her nothing. Nightingale had the power of the entire House behind her now; the magic that had enabled her to defeat Isabelle and Morningstar. Because she had asked them to go; because she had known, all along, that this was where it ended.

She ought to have grieved; but there was no space in her heart anymore—nothing but a growing, roiling anger. The storm is coming, the Furies had whispered in the crypt.

Yes, it was.

A tree of rebirth, Philippe had said: gathering the magic of the House to allow Nightingale to walk once more upon the earth, the House’s destruction the price of her resurrection. Selene could not hope to stand against such magic—except for one small thing.

No one could be Morningstar.

But she was head of Silverspires, and it mattered. Here, now, she was all they had; and that was all the worth she needed. She was their head because there was no one else, and that wasn’t a badge of dishonor.

She did what she had to. Always.

And she knew exactly what needed to be done.

“Wait.”

Nightingale turned, a half-mocking smile on her face; saw Selene standing, surrounded by magic. “Yes? You will fight? I expected better of you.”

“No, not fight,” Selene said. “You forget. I am head of House Silverspires.”

*

THERE.

Madeleine’s hands, twisting and turning, found a slight yield; pressed it.

The breath trapped in the mirror flowed straight into her—an unstoppable river—so much hatred and rage and malice and suffering—no, no, no—a raging whirlwind that invaded her mind and carried her along into deeper darkness, where it snuffed itself out—taking her mind with it.

*

NIGHTINGALE paused; raised her head toward the cathedral. “What is going—”

In that moment, Selene struck.

At Nightingale, but not where she expected it: not any spell, not anything that could have been dodged or parried, but a primal strike, one that stripped from her the link to the House, as Selene had once removed it from Madeleine. She was surprised at how easy it was: there was no resistance, because Nightingale had never thought that this could be done; that the magic she had stolen would be taken away from her.

“You—” Nightingale stood, watching her. The light was fleeing her, like clouds borne away by the wind, rushing across the surface of the sky.

“I am head of the House,” Selene said, softly, almost gently. “This is my prerogative.”

“I see.” Nightingale raised a trembling hand as one wound, then another, appeared on her: great open gashes that bled only a fraction of what they should have; fingers crooked out of shape, broken ribs poking through her shift.

Shall I tell you what they did to me in Hawthorn, Selene? Every cut of the knife, every broken bone, every wound that wouldn’t close . . .

Everything that had killed her, in the end. Selene watched, unmoving, as the wounds appeared one by one upon a body that had no right to exist. Nightingale didn’t appear to feel them; or perhaps she had transcended them. Her eyes—her large, piercing eyes—rested on Selene all the while, bright and feverish and mocking.

You would style yourself Morningstar’s heir, wouldn’t you? Say that you defend everything that he stood for? In the end, I still win, Selene. In the end, your House still teeters on the brink of extinction. . . .

Even when she sank to her knees—even when she bowed her head—even after she had turned to dust, borne away by the wind—her eyes still remained in Selene’s memory; and her challenge, too; a reminder that she was and had always been right.

*

PHILIPPE took the steps of the cathedral two by two; running through the ruined benches, the fluted tree trunks that were slowly losing their radiance, toward the altar and the throne. He almost stumbled on another body in his eagerness; stopped, then, staring at it.

There was no mistaking it, even lying in the debris with his eyes closed, and none of the towering presence that he remembered.

Morningstar. But Morningstar was dead. He had seen the corpse. . . .

Almost in spite of himself, his hands lifted Morningstar’s limp arms, bared the black shirt to uncover the skin; and he laid a finger in the hollow of the wrist bone.

A slow and steady heartbeat like a secret music; and, when he bent over the Fallen, there was a slight intake of breath, and the ghost of an exhalation on his face. Alive, then, if barely so.

Unfair. The dead would not remain dead, and yet Isabelle was gone: her presence an emptiness in his mind like an open grave.

Unfair.

He left Morningstar without a backward glance, and went on, to find Isabelle.