The House of Shattered Wings

Selene let go of the magic. Suspicions, nothing more; Claire playing them all for fools. She shouldn’t have entered her game; whatever secrets Madeleine was keeping, they were none of her business. God knew everyone from Javier to Aragon to her was keeping secrets—she might not be taking in all the strays, as Claire had accused her of, but many people in Silverspires had come here because it was a refuge—and one could seek refuge from many things, not all of which could be freely admitted.

She was about to leave the room when something caught her attention: something that jangled in the subtle tracery of magic, a feeling like something scraping her skin raw. She followed it to a smaller cabinet, which she opened. There was nothing there, either, in any of the compartments; but when she put her hand in one of them, she felt the scalding heat. Something powerful had been kept there: a pendant, judging by the empty jewelry box still bearing its imprint.

“Show me,” she whispered, and put her hand in the box. When she withdrew it, there were minute traces, like dust. Without the magic, she wouldn’t have seen them, but with it, they burned like raging fire. An intimately, obscenely familiar touch: a power that required its users to take always more, always more often—to find more bones, more Fallen corpses to strip—a power that fueled its existence on the death of her kind, an abomination that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist.

Angel essence.

Claire had been right, then, damn her.

Selene reached into the cabinet, and incinerated the jewelry box and every trace of essence it had contained: an empty, grandiloquent gesture, but it made her feel better.

Angel essence. How could Madeleine be so stupid? It was forbidden in Silverspires, because all it did was beget more deaths, more junkies clamoring for a fix; all that for a power they were too drugged to properly master. Morningstar had despised it, and she was no different. She would not have it in her House. Not now, not ever.

*

MADELEINE stood on the bridge, staring down into the waters of the Seine—fighting her instinct to take a few steps backward, to be safe from whatever might come up from the river. “Here?” she asked. Below her, black waves were lapping at the embankment. The stone was stained dark, with the oily residue of the water still clinging to the mortar; and the water itself was foaming, far more than it should have been—much as if you’d poured soap into a bath, though she very much doubted it was similarly innocuous. She wouldn’t have leaped into that water, even if you’d paid her. “That’s really not attractive—”

“I think it’s here.” Isabelle bit her lip. “That’s where he is, but they have to grant us entry.”

“You’re not making sense,” Madeleine said. She carried her bag close to her, the weight of the artifacts a reassurance that she could handle whatever they happened to find. Isabelle hadn’t been forthcoming with any information; or rather, the little she’d given Madeleine had added up to no coherent picture. She should have been scared, if she’d had any sense; but the memory of Asmodeus’s fingers, still stained with blood—of being unerringly picked out from where she stood, as if he’d had eyes on the back of his head—left her no room to fear anything else.

The river. Everyone in their right mind avoided the Seine; and here they were, headed straight into its heart—to the frothing insanity it had become, corrupted by the remnants of spells and magical weapons. “Isabelle?”

Isabelle said nothing for a while. Her eyes were closed, and the low-key radiance that emanated from her body intensified—until everything around her, from the stunted trees to the broken benches, seemed slightly grayer, slightly less colorful. The light spread, slowly, softly, engulfing the embankment, the patches of dirty, foamy white on the river; the overcast sky above. Everything seemed limned in that curious illumination, everything somehow diminished, bereft of something vital.

“Speak to me,” Isabelle said, and her voice rang like a bell tolling for the dead.

There were stairs, leading down the embankment onto a small stone dock, where boats would sometimes moor. But, on the last step of the flight of stairs, a shadow caught the light: a hint of something that wasn’t quite there. “Speak to me,” Isabelle said.

The shadow solidified, became the outline of an Annamite pavilion: the elegant curve of the roof, the sharp, brittle brightness of lacquer, the flowing lines of calligraphy on the wooden pillars.

Impossible. This was Paris, not the colonies. There could be nothing like this here. . . . But Philippe had come to the city, and perhaps other things had. Madeleine found, by touch more than by sight, the pendant around her neck, filled with angel essence, let the warmth of its power wash over her until nothing of fear remained. Oris. She was doing this for Oris, and for Emmanuelle; and so that the Silverspires she knew could continue to exist.