The House of Shattered Wings

Behind them, Selene and Asmodeus were still facing each other. “I ask again,” Selene said. “Are you satisfied?”


“In the name of the House, as reparation for Samariel’s death?” Asmodeus’s voice was sardonic, each word grating on Madeleine’s exposed nerves like sandpaper. “It will have to do. I know the signs. He’s gone away to bleed his last somewhere. There’s only so much abuse mortal flesh can take, after all.”

“And what if he’s still alive?”

An amused snort. “Highly improbable. But, nevertheless, since you’re smart enough to ask—yes. If he’s found alive somehow, I’ll have my revenge on him, but that will be outside House business. I’ll consider—honor”—he rolled the word around on his tongue, as if it were an unsatisfying piece of meat—“satisfied, insofar as we’re both concerned.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Selene said. “Now tell the other Houses.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure I do.”

How could she be so calm, so focused, with her lover all but ready to collapse, struck by whatever had already killed seven people? On her shoulder, Emmanuelle cracked a painful smile. “Mustn’t worry her,” she whispered. “She has a lot of things to do.”

The first of which should have been worrying about you, Madeleine thought, but didn’t say, as they went deeper into the maze of the East quarter, looking for a way into the hospital wing—leaving the two bickering Fallen behind her, talking about honor and the price of revenge on a House, and all the meaningless things they were all so obsessed about—what was the point, when the shadows were still around—when they could still kill as they had killed Oris?

*

LATER, much later—when the burst of magic was all but gone, the pain in his body a song that wouldn’t fade away—Philippe crawled. He was almost out of the House by then—he needed to get away from it, from the shadows and the curse and everything that had broken him—on the bloodied floor of Notre-Dame, where Oris had died, his hands brushing the burned remnants of benches, feeling the harshness of carbonized wood against his bloodied skin. The stone under him was warm; the stars above cold and uncaring, as they had always been—where was the Herder, where was the Weaver, where was the River of Stars and all the figures he’d delighted in as a child?

He’d expected them to chase him; surely they’d guess where he would go? But there was nothing but the silence of the night; and the fumes rising from the banks of the Seine. The Seine. The bridge at the back of the church. No one in their right mind would go toward the river, or consider the low bridge safe. But he had no mind, not anymore.

He crawled farther, his mouth filling with the salty taste of blood—every inch a struggle against the encroaching darkness. He’d find his old gang again, beg forgiveness of Ninon, impress them all with his knowledge of the great Houses. . . .

He must have blacked out again, because when he woke up again, the stars had all but vanished, and the gray light before dawn suffused the church, striking the throne. He’d half expected the ghost of Morningstar to be sitting in it, but the stone seat was empty. However, something was . . .

He felt it again then—that thin thread of water he’d first touched here—and then later in Aragon’s office—that same bubbling, simmering enthusiasm. Dragons. A dragon kingdom.

There were no dragon kingdoms, not here in Paris; not in the blackened waters of the Seine. That dark, angry power they had warned him about could not be the graceful, generous beings he remembered from Annam. But, nevertheless, he crawled, following the thread—soon, it would be dawn, and people would exit the House; soon, someone would see him and raise an alarm, though what could they do to him that hadn’t been done before?

There had been a little verdant square, once, but the grass under him was scorched and dark; and the elegant stone wall that had adorned the bridge was torn, the carvings shimmering with the remnants of the spell that had destroyed them. Hauling himself to the opening, Philippe saw the waters of the Seine, glinting as black as coal under the gray skies. The waves glimmered with an oily, malodorous sheen. No dragon kingdoms there, of course not. What a fool he’d been.

When he looked away, there was a woman, sitting by the bridge. “I didn’t see you. I’m sorry,” he said, but the words couldn’t get past the taste of blood in his mouth.

The woman smiled. She was dressed in a long court dress—not of France, but with the long billowing sleeves of the Indochinese court. Her face was whitened with ceruse, but patches of it had flaked off, revealing dull scales; and the pearl she wore under her chin was cracked, its iridescence the same sickening one as the reflections on the waters of the Seine. “It’s quite all right, Pham Van Minh Khiet,” she said—effortlessly putting all the inflections on his name. And before he could ask her how she spoke such good Viet, she swept him up in the embrace of her long wet robes and plunged with him, deep into the waters of the Seine.