The House of Shattered Wings

Aragon put a syringe in Emmanuelle’s arm. “A mild sedative,” he said. “You need rest more than anything else.”


“And you need to talk away from my hearing. Really, you could have gone in the other room,” Emmanuelle said, grimacing. “I’m fine.” She laid her head back against the pillow, staring at the moldings on the ceiling. “It’ll pass in the night anyway. . . .” Abruptly, her gaze focused on Madeleine. “Madeleine. I’ve seen that wound pattern before.” Her voice was low, urgent, but her eyes were already rolling up again.

“Where?” Madeleine asked, but Emmanuelle had sunk down into sleep; and only an indistinct word escaped her lips. Madeleine suppressed a curse.

“She’ll wake up,” Aragon said.

“Are you sure?”

“No, of course not. I can’t be sure of many things. She’s running a fever, which means she’s fighting it.”

“People have died of fevers, Aragon.”

“Samariel didn’t have a fever,” Aragon said. “Oris didn’t have time to have one. She’s alive, and fighting. See it however you want. I’m choosing to be optimistic.” His voice was weary. “We’ve had enough death here for several lifetimes.”

No disagreeing with that.

“I expect Selene will be along later.” Aragon put the syringe back on its tray, and sighed. “And I suggest you both get some sleep. You look like you got about as much as I did.”

*

IN the end, as on so many nights, Madeleine couldn’t sleep. She drifted back into the library, staring at the pile of books Emmanuelle had been working on; and, on impulse, took a pile of them with her. If she’d indeed seen that circle, perhaps it was recent. Perhaps it had been in something that Emmanuelle had been reading.

After some hesitation, she also dropped by her laboratory, and took with her one of her strongest remaining artifacts: a nail clipping from Selene set in an amber pendant, a warm, comforting weight in her hand, like a live coal on the coldest nights. Whatever had stalked the corridors during those fateful nights seemed to be gone—vanished with Philippe’s departure—but she wasn’t fooled. Something that strong wouldn’t be so easily banished; and they still had no inkling of what it was, or what it wanted. Why target Samariel? Had it been smart enough to know what his death would cause, how it would weaken the House?

It wanted Silverspires’ downfall; and perhaps that of other Houses, too. Perhaps, like Philippe, an end to the whole system—“feudal,” Philippe had called it with a sneer, as if he came from a more enlightened place, and not a distant land locked in internecine fights between regions. The nerve of him—but he was gone now, dead; or if not dead, as good as dead. Asmodeus’s fury wasn’t to be ignored.

In Emmanuelle’s room, everything was dark. The bed was heavily warded: Aragon’s work, no doubt, though how effective would the wards be against something that could disrupt magic? Beyond the wards, Emmanuelle slept fitfully; the mark on her hand still raw and angry. No matter what Aragon said, she didn’t look well—her cheeks were flushed, and Madeleine would find her skin red-hot if she reached out—though to do so would also trigger Aragon’s wards, and wake him up from what little rest he was getting.

With a sigh, Madeleine settled in an armchair, and started to read the books.

It didn’t make for much excitement. The first was a transcription of a Greek manuscript, painstakingly copied out. It was some kind of play about Orestes, though Madeleine didn’t know the language and couldn’t read more than a few words. She remembered Emmanuelle working on it in the archives; it had apparently contained one of the first references to the morning star, the most radiant of them all—to her, an intriguing addition to the history of the House’s founder; to Madeleine, an obsession that made little sense.

The second book was an account of an obscure Merovingian procession back in the eighth century—pages and pages describing religious rituals, and the presence of noblemen and Fallen—even, it seemed, a captured manticore, such an unusual occurrence that the writer had devoted an entire chapter to its description, even though it hadn’t lasted long past the execution of its summoner—Emmanuelle had probably been only interested in the brief mention of Morningstar and the House of Silverspires, but the detailed description of what everyone had been wearing and in what order people had been ranked made for rather dry reading.

Madeleine turned to the next book in the stack, which was printed by a small university, and looked to be a medicine doctoral thesis about the effects of some medicine on the Fallen body. Her heart sank. Surely Emmanuelle wouldn’t have read this cover to cover? But of course she had.