The House of Shattered Wings

“Then give me another one.”


Isabelle flinched; but did not draw back, or apologize, as she might have done once. She had changed; carbon pressed together until it became the first inklings of a diamond.

“I can’t—I don’t know enough, Philippe.”

“I know,” he said, wearily. “But I need a way forward, Isabelle.” He needed—freedom? The same sense of weightlessness he’d once enjoyed in Annam, in the court of the Jade Emperor; when he moved among bejeweled ladies and haughty lords, drinking pale tea in celadon cups as fragile as eggshells—a feeling that was now lost forever. In that desperate longing he wasn’t so different from Fallen, after all: a frightening thought.

She sat still for a while, staring at him; biting her lip, young and bewildered and lost. “I—I know. But you’re playing with fire, and I can’t. I need the House, Philippe, or I won’t survive. I can’t allow you to damage it, even if I understand why you’re doing it. I have to tell Selene.”

“No. Please.”

He was hurting the House, or planning to—it wasn’t a bad place to be, insofar as Houses went, and the people—Laure, Emmanuelle, the kitchen staff—had been kind to him. But it was a House—built on arrogance and blood and the hoarding of magic—and its master held the keys to his chains. He had . . . He had to be free.

“I won’t tell her it’s you,” Isabelle said. “But she needs to know what Hawthorn is doing.”

As if Selene wouldn’t guess which of her new arrivals was being unfaithful. “She’ll flay me,” Philippe said, reflexively; but something within him, something older and prouder, whispered, Let her try—and the voice was Morningstar’s.

What? No. That wasn’t—that wasn’t possible.

Isabelle shook her head. “She’s not like that. You don’t know her—”

Of course he knew her. She’d do anything to preserve her chosen Fallen and mortals, and let everyone else rot—and he couldn’t tell, anymore, if the thoughts were his or Morningstar’s. He teetered on the edge of the abyss where he would lose himself in a way utterly alien to him, subsumed in the unpalatable memories of a Fallen. . . .

“Give me time,” he said through clenched lips. “Please, Isabelle. You know—”

“That you don’t mean harm?” She was silent for a while.

“That’s not what I mean. I don’t wish the House harm.” And it was a lie, and they both knew it. “But you have to see I’m a prisoner here.” As she was not. She was Fallen, with all the privileges this afforded her; and Silverspires was her home. It could never be his, even if it had been as welcoming as his own mother’s hearth. He was . . . Annamite. Other. “Please.”

Her eyes shone in the paleness of her face. “I can guess what you feel. I can—” She took in a deep, shaking breath. “I feel some of it.”

Philippe looked away, trying to avoid her gaze, or her three-fingered hand. What was it for her, the same as for him: an odd twisting in his belly; a nagging sense of always knowing where she was, a faint echo of what she felt? Affection, embarrassment? It was too weak an emotion, whatever was in her mind; and he wouldn’t understand her so easily. They moved in wholly different worlds.

“Then—” He hardly dared to breathe.

She didn’t move for a while. “Three days. That’s all I can give you, Philippe.”

After she’d left, he sat in his chair, staring at the book in front of him—the past that should have had no bearing on him—breathing hard.

Three days. He had three days before Selene was informed of what he was up to, and his life got a lot more difficult, and possibly a lot shorter. Three days to find something; that was if the memories didn’t kill him first.

He had to find out what was going on in the House, and not entirely so he could get rid of his chains.

No, he had to know, because it looked as though the curse wasn’t going to be content with the occasional vision from the past. If he didn’t understand it, he was going to find himself swept along in whatever twisted revenge the unknown Fallen had dreamed of, and utterly lose himself in the process.





SEVEN


A DARKNESS WITHIN THE HOUSE