The House of Shattered Wings

“I don’t want to ask Philippe,” Madeleine said. “I’m asking you.”


“Then all I can tell you, as a doctor and a Fallen, is that it’s impossible. This person—is he a mortal?”

“No. A Fallen.”

Aragon sighed. “No one knows what happens when Fallen die. We’re not exactly in the official texts. Humans get sorted out into Heaven or Hell. We probably do, too.”

Or perhaps you’re reborn, she thought, chilled. Perhaps God doesn’t want you back in the City, and can’t bring Himself to send you to Hell. Perhaps you keep being incarnated, time and time again, until you get whatever you were supposed to get right.

But if that was the case; if Fallen could indeed be reborn on Earth, then why Elphon? Why now?

*

PHILIPPE had not expected to enjoy the evening; and in this at least, he wasn’t disappointed. Emmanuelle, with the help of what seemed like an army of valets, had fitted him into formal clothes: a stiff suit and equally stiff trousers, which had obviously belonged to someone shorter and with much larger shoulders. He was . . . exposed, and not only because his white socks were amply visible below the hem of trousers that were too short.

He was the only Viet in a sea of white faces: Emmanuelle herself seemed to have vanished, though of course she’d be doing Selene’s bidding, flattering the various players among the Houses, smiling at who needed to be smiled at. It was something he’d done, once, in the Jade Emperor’s Court; smiling at Immortals, gracefully mingling with the newly ascended. Now things were different, and he had no desire to make any kind of effort at indulging his captors.

He sidled toward the buffet, helping himself to a mouthful of bland food. He missed fish sauce more than he’d thought possible, but here in Paris only an ersatz version of it was available, at a price so expensive he couldn’t afford it anyway. There would be a dinner later, in the ballroom, where Selene had had huge round tables taken out of storage; draped with embroidered cloth and adorned with the best silverware of the House. The seating plan was on a wooden board at the other end of the room: separate tables for the children of course; and then a careful selection of groups that would not give offense to anyone, while still allowing fruitful exchanges. Not that he was interested at the moment; he’d find out soon enough where he was placed, and probably wouldn’t enjoy the dinner any more than he’d enjoyed the cocktail party.

“You look . . . lost,” a familiar voice said in his ear.

Philippe looked up, to see Samariel.

He hadn’t changed—he wore formal clothes in gray and silver with effortless elegance, and his face was creased in that wide, perpetual ironic smile. But, of course, Philippe wasn’t supposed to have met him at all: he was meant to know him distantly perhaps, as one knew the heads of Houses, but that was all.

“I’m not used to this kind of event,” he said.

“Indeed.” Samariel inclined his head, gravely. “To be fair, most people here aren’t. The last such conclave—”

“Was a disaster.”

Samariel’s lips tightened. “Rather, yes,” he said. “You weren’t there, I take it?”

“I was brought in . . . afterward,” Philippe said. When the war had gone badly, when the Houses had needed all the bodies they could spare, and had bled their colonies dry to provide soldiers for the slaughter.

Parasites, all of them; smiling and bowing in their lace clothes from another age; subsisting on blood. For this, Hoang had died, and Ai Linh, and Phuong, and the rest of his unit. The lot of them could go burn in the Christian Hell.

Except, of course, that it wouldn’t bring back the dead, or free him from this captivity.

“Count yourself fortunate, then,” Samariel said. He laid a hand on Philippe’s shoulder, casually sliding it down to his wrist; like the last time, his touch was as cool as frost, but there was warmth at its core, slowly rising, burning fire held in a fist of ice. “It’s a shame, really. I was told the view from the H?tel-Dieu was beautiful, but I was given a room in the Old Wing.”

“The H?tel-Dieu is a hospital,” Philippe said, not sure where Samariel wanted to go.

“A ruin.” Samariel’s voice was grave, but he said nothing more.

At length, Philippe spoke up, voicing only what was expected of him. “So, where did they put you up?”

Samariel’s smile was wide and sharp, like broken mirrors. “The North Wing. At the end of the corridor on the ground floor, the first one on your right when you enter from the street.”