The House of Shattered Wings

Isabelle made a face. “You said that the last time.”


“That’s because it takes time to get genuinely better,” Laure said. “Now I’ll be off. You two have things to discuss.” The kitchen girls left with her, leaving Madeleine staring at Isabelle. From the covered basket wafted the tantalizing smell of warm, just-baked bread.

“Am I . . . Am I disturbing you?” Isabelle asked.

“No, hardly.” Madeleine laid a small wooden box at the end of the line. There was a small fragment of skin trapped inside, its magic almost spent. “I thought I’d catalog everything. If there ever was a time when we needed magic . . .” The heat of the artifacts’ magic played on her fingers, as if she stood close to a flame in the heart. This was the bedrock of Silverspires: the power that made Asmodeus and Claire and Guy recognize Selene as their equal; the power that kept them all safe.

Except that it was all useless, wasn’t it, if Selene couldn’t keep things together?

“Emmanuelle is a bit better,” Isabelle said. She wore men’s clothing, an unusual occurrence for her: a tweed jacket and creased trousers, and a stiff white shirt that looked as though it’d come straight from the laundry. “Aragon said the worst of the infection appeared to be over, but he didn’t sound very confident.” She didn’t sound very confident, either—she kept worrying at the gap between her fingers, quickly, nervously.

“He’s a doctor. They seldom commit to anything.” She wished she could believe her own lies: it would have been so much easier, so much neater. So much more reassuring, without Emmanuelle’s life hanging in the balance, and everything that made Silverspires slowly unraveling like frayed clothes. Damn Asmodeus and his intrigues; and Philippe and his pointless grudges.

“I guess they do,” Isabelle said.

Madeleine hesitated for a moment. “Does Emmanuelle remember—”

“What she said before she went under? I asked.” Isabelle flushed. “She didn’t, not exactly. She looked at her hand again, and said she’d have a look in the books she’d been cataloging recently.”

“I had a look already,” Madeleine said. “But I suppose she’d know best.”

“She said she’d have them brought to her and try to work on them.” Isabelle forced a wan smile. “Always working, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

Isabelle took a deep breath, and opened her hand. “I found this.”

It was a flat, black thing—an obsidian mirror, the sort of old-fashioned artifact that had been dated even before the war. Madeleine took it, absentmindedly; and then almost dropped it. It was . . . malice, viciousness, hatred—whispers that she was worthless, that Silverspires was worthless, doomed to be carried away by the wind—black wings, blotting out the sun, that same slimy feeling she’d got when the shadows filled the room . . . “What is this?”

Isabelle blushed. “It was under the throne. In the cathedral. There was a paper with it.” She took a deep, trembling breath; held it for a suspended moment. “All that you hold dear will be shattered . . .”

Madeleine’s fingers worked around the curve of the mirror—seeking the catch, the point of release. There was nothing; just that terrible sense of something watching her, darkly amused at her feeble attempts; that faint odor of hatred that seemed to lie like a mist over the smooth surface. “I can’t open it,” she said, finally. “It feels like an artifact, holding some kind of angel magic—breath, perhaps?” One she would have liked to hurl down the deepest ravine in some faraway country; and even then, she wouldn’t have felt safe.

Isabelle picked it from Madeleine’s hand with two fingers, and laid it back in a handkerchief—careful never to leave her skin in contact with it for too long. It was as bad for her as for Madeleine, then. “I thought you could . . . Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” Madeleine said. “It’s connected to the shadows, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said. “You can’t open it.”

“I can’t open it now. It’s locked,” Madeleine said. Not that she was keen on releasing whatever was inside it—whatever remnant of darkness still clung to its innards. . . . “It doesn’t mean that, with a little work or a little research or both . . . Can you leave it to me?”

“Of course.” Isabelle’s face hardened again—as changing as the sky on a spring day, when clouds pushed by the wind could blot out the sun in a heartbeat. When she spoke again, her voice had a determined, harsh tone Madeleine had never heard from her before. “Madeleine?”

“Yes?”