The House of Shattered Wings

Then there was silence, broken only by the sound of Isabelle’s breath. “What”—she asked, struggling to speak—“what did you do?”


Madeleine withdrew her hand from the drawer. The container she’d used came with it, now no longer fused to her skin, though it had left a perfect, circular scar on her palm. She felt . . . light-headed, giddy—as if she could do anything, and yet all she wanted to do was to lie down and empty her guts on the floor. Isabelle had almost died. And she—she had almost succumbed again to that gut-wrenching, sickening fear of Elphon’s last night, had almost lost herself. It wasn’t death that she feared, but that touch, that reminder of what it had felt like, crawling with blood sticking to her skin, to her hair, hardening so it could never be washed away—that inescapable knowledge that Elphon was dead, that she would soon be caught and brought back to Hawthorn, to hear Asmodeus’s mocking voice before she, too, died. . . .

No. The past was the past. She couldn’t afford to live in it, anymore. Death and its sleep awaited: rest, at long last; and oblivion, free from the grasp of fear. She pulled herself up, shaking; forced herself to breathe until the room came back into sharp focus.

“I don’t understand,” Isabelle said.

In her hand was a sphere of gold, topped by a crown. “It was the last thing I had of him,” Madeleine said. “The last thing anyone had of him, perhaps—I don’t know who kept what in this House. But I had to—” She shook her head, dazed. “Morningstar. It was Morningstar’s magic.”

But now it was gone in a burst of power, all spent like the gift of Elphon’s breath; and how would they defend themselves, if the shadow came back?

She looked at the door, at the walls; heard and saw nothing but the usual sounds of Silverspires at night. It was gone, whatever it was. But it hadn’t been a hallucination. And—

“You said it was what killed Oris.”

“Philippe saw it, I think,” Isabelle said. Her voice was still shaking.

Madeleine took in a deep, shaking breath; thinking of bodies shriveling and burning under the assault of magic; of Oris, crushed under the weight of gravity on the floor of Notre-Dame. “It’s killed six people, whatever it is. Come on. We have to tell Selene.”

*

PHILIPPE ran. It was undignified, and possibly useless, but he was past caring. Doors flashed by him, indistinguishable—at one point a door opened, and he almost toppled over someone in Harrier’s uniform. “Sorry,” he said, but didn’t stop. There was a noise at his back, a hiss like ten thousand open gas taps; a shadow, slithering across flat surfaces whenever he turned his head, just enough to make a fist of ice tighten around his belly—except that the shadows were growing larger and larger, and the lights in the corridors ahead of him were dimming, throwing his own large, distorted shadow across the wall like that of some monster.

Shadows. A creature of wings and fangs and of darkness—he’d wondered, back then, what he had summoned when he touched the mirror; but he didn’t need to wonder anymore. He knew.

As he ran, he tried to gather khi currents to him. But, without the calm of his trance, it was too hard to see the few threads that would be in the House; and all he could manage was a feeble ring of fire around his hand—which did nothing much to either reassure him or light his way.

He turned one last corner, and found himself in utter darkness. The hiss had gone away, and so had the shadows. So early, so easily? Slowly, carefully, he gathered more khi currents to him, widening the ring of fire in his hand until it lit the way ahead.

It was just a stretch of corridor, going to two rooms at the end: Asmodeus and Samariel, of course, the two lovers being accommodated close to each other. There was no noise coming from either bedroom. Philippe crept closer.

It was a bad idea. He should go back to his room, forget the whole incident; and come back later. This was . . . not a good time to be there. Not . . .

There was a sound, as he approached the end of the corridor: a slight hiss like an intake of breath, already slithering away. The shadows danced, around his ring of fire—out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something folding huge wings, and sinking back upon itself, but it might have been nothing more than illusion.

The door to Samariel’s room opened easily, swinging with the tortured sound of ungreased hinges—surely it must have been heard all the way to Indochina. But no one moved, or spoke.

“Samariel?”