The House of Shattered Wings

“Oh, yes.” Emmanuelle pulled the topmost book from the stack—it had a stylized, naturalistic design reminiscent of the art nouveau buildings in the city—and blew on it absentmindedly.

“I wanted to know more about Morningstar,” Philippe said. “You knew him when he was . . . here, didn’t you?”

“You could say that,” Emmanuelle said, cautiously. “I wasn’t there for very long, though: a century, at most, and he never paid attention to me, not the way he did to others.”

“Like Selene?”

“Yes.” Emmanuelle set the book aside. “Selene was his student; the last among many. He was . . . different. Most Fallen don’t exude more than a trace amount of power, but with Morningstar you felt as though you stood in the presence of a furnace.”

I know, Philippe wanted to say, and bit his tongue, lest he betray himself. “So he taught many students in the House?”

Emmanuelle shook her head. “He taught them for the House, yes, but—” She bit her lip, uncomfortable. “The war came.”

The war. Philippe thought of the clamor of explosions; of huddling in the doorways of ruined buildings, peering at the sky to judge the best moment to rush out; of his lieutenant in House colors, urging them to lay down their lives for the good of the city; of his squad mates buried in nameless graves, on the edge of Place de la République. Ai Linh, who had a laugh like a donkey, and always shared her biscuits with everyone else; Hoang, who liked to gamble too much; Phuong, who told hair-raising stories in the barracks after all lights had been turned off. “I don’t know what the war was like, inside the Houses,” he said, and it was almost the truth.

Emmanuelle stared at him for a while, her pleasant face almost hard. Did she suspect how he’d come to be here; what the war had been like for him? “Our magicians turned into soldiers,” she said at last. “Our students into thoughtless killers, and our best men into corpses. When the war ended, most of Morningstar’s students were dead, as were so many in the House.”

Philippe remembered the fall of House Draken; remembered retreating down corridor after corridor, as armed mortals and Fallen overwhelmed every inch of available space, and the lieutenant breathed down their necks, screaming at them to resist, to show that House Draken died with honor; he remembered thinking that he was the House’s possession, not its cherished member, that he had no honor and no desire to acquire any.

There had been so many corpses, by the time the House had succumbed; so many corpses in the abandonment of death; and he had not wept for a single one of them.

“But Morningstar—”

“Morningstar wasn’t on the front lines. He was always more comfortable manipulating people, after all. Not that it was unpleasant; people loved following his orders: who wouldn’t? It was such . . . terrible bliss, from what I have heard.” Her voice was resentful; it wasn’t clear whether she was angry at Morningstar’s behavior, or jealous that she hadn’t been singled out for that bitter honor. “Selene was lucky; he was teaching her at the time and didn’t want his efforts to go to waste before she was ready.”

So he’d sent students to their deaths. “So they died. And were happy. And those who survived?” Philippe said cautiously.

Emmanuelle frowned. “There were two, I think? Leander and Oris, and Selene, of course.”

“He taught Oris?” Philippe asked. That he’d seen something in Oris—of all people—

Emmanuelle shrugged. “Did you think Oris was always that way?” She smiled, but the look never reached her eyes. “Morningstar was . . . like living fire,” she said at last. “It can fill you up and make you shine harder than you ever did, or it can seep through every crack and burn you from the inside out.” She closed the book. “Selene . . . took it well, I think, and Leander . . .” She thought about it for a while. “Leander was always a bit odd, and it never changed him, though from time to time he’d look up and there’d be this odd light in his eyes. Cracks.”

Were there cracks, too, in Selene’s mind? What must it be like to succeed that kind of Fallen, and forever try to live up to their image? Living fire, Emmanuelle had said.

“I’ve not met a Leander,” Philippe said.

“You wouldn’t,” Emmanuelle said. “He’s been dead for decades.”

“An accident?”

“Old age,” Emmanuelle said.

A mortal, then. An odd choice for Morningstar, but then again, who was he to judge? What had the Fallen looked for, in his students—and what had he found? What had made someone burn with that twisted, dark anger he’d felt, when touching the mirror?

Leander was dead, which ruled him out. And, of course, Selene was out, because she’d been in the vision.

“You’re sure there were no other students of his who survived the war?” Taking students like commodities; bewitching them and sending them to slaughter: it was powerful and plausible motivation for someone to hate Morningstar, perhaps enough to doom his entire House in the process. But if everyone was dead or ruled out, then it left only Oris.