The House of Shattered Wings

TWENTY. LIKE SEEDS, SCATTERED BY THE WINDS

EMMANUELLE came in with Javier: the priest looked much older, much more brittle than Selene remembered. “We found the place,” Emmanuelle said. She looked grim; her sleeves slashed in multiple places. “A cellar with a circle — like the one under the cathedral.”

A circle of power, like the one he had originally traced. Had he always intended to come back, then? Had he… engineered his own death and resurrection? “I see,” Selene said. She didn’t look at the curtain that separated her living quarters from her office; afraid that she’d see Morningstar in repose once more, with that serene, otherworldly expression: innocence personified, jarring from someone who had never been innocent, or even young.

“No, you don’t.” Emmanuelle’s face was hard. “It was full of roots, Selene. I think… I think the circle was a crack between life and death; and a crack in the wards, too — an opening big enough for the curse to exploit. The roots must have descended from the first floor and gone into the foundations through the circle.”

“Morningstar would never do that,” Selene said, startled.

“No,” Emmanuelle said. “If I understand correctly, he was dead at that point.” She bit her lip. “He had a plan, I’m sure, Selene. I just don’t think it played out as he wished it.”

No; or he would be back as he had been. But the dead didn’t trace circles, or cast spells. Someone else had done this for him.

Asmodeus. Her hands clenched, in spite of herself. “Has Hawthorn left?”

“They’re gone,” Javier said. “With apologies for taking their leave so… abruptly.”

And no wonder, if what she suspected was true. Except, of course, that she had no way to prove it — and what would she do, even if it were proved? Accuse Asmodeus — who would no doubt laugh at her, and tell her that spells of resurrection were a fantasy? In any case — she had bigger problems on her hands.

“Did you—” Choérine swallowed. “Did you learn any more?”

Selene shook her head. “He says he doesn’t remember anything. As if he were a newborn Fallen.” And she was inclined to believe him. If it was an act, some game put on for their benefit, it was an impossibly good one.

Choérine shook her head, once, twice; her dark eyes burning against the porcelain-white tones of her skin. “What’s going to happen, Selene?”

I don’t know, she wanted to say; she wanted to surrender to the pressure, to bow down and admit that she wasn’t worthy of this mantle, that she never had been. But she stopped herself, with an effort of will. Ignorance or indecisiveness was not what Choérine needed to hear. “We will talk,” she said. “See where the future of the House lies. It’s a good thing he’s back; we could badly use his insights.”

“Yes, of course.” Choérine smiled, some of the fatigue lifting from her eyes. “I’ll go see to the children.”

After she was gone, Emmanuelle pulled away from the wall she’d been leaning on, and came to rest her head against Selene’s shoulder. “A good lie,” she said.

Selene breathed in Emmanuelle’s perfume: musk and amber, heady and strong, a reminder of more careless days. If she closed her eyes, could she believe they would go to bed now; would kiss and make love with the fury and passion of the desperate?

But, of course, there had never been any careless days. There was war, and internecine fights; Emmanuelle’s addiction, and Selene’s hours of crippling self-doubt. “What else could I have told her?” Selene asked.

Emmanuelle didn’t move. “It wasn’t a reproach. But if you think you can fool me…”

“I would never dare.” Selene gently disengaged herself from her lover’s embrace, leaving only one hand trailing in Emmanuelle’s hair, running braids between her fingers like pearl necklaces. “But you can’t fool me, either. What didn’t you tell me?”

Emmanuelle grimaced. “I underplayed it, Selene. It wasn’t easy to search the cellars. Everything was… covered in roots. And they weren’t exactly friendly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Try fighting your way through a thornbush. One that hits back. And it’s big now. Entire corridors are starting to look like the underside of a particularly nasty kind of tree, yes.” Emmanuelle picked at her torn sleeves, her face grim and distant. “At this rhythm—”

“I know,” Selene said. “The entire wing will become unusable.” She didn’t need Emmanuelle to tell her that: the magic of the House was flickering, being squeezed and choked into nothingness in so many places. In too many places.

All that you hold dear — vanished.

“That’s assuming it stops at the wing,” Emmanuelle said.

Which was, on the face of it, rather unlikely. “It said, in the crypt, that it would destroy us all.” Selene stared at her hands. What could she do? She should wake Morningstar, ask him what they should do. Surely, even amnesiac, he would know….

Pathetic. He had said it himself. She was head of the House now, and it was her responsibility. “Get me Isabelle,” she said to Emmanuelle. “We need to destroy this before it destroys us.”

* * *

LATER, much later — or perhaps it wasn’t, but time seemed to have blurred between a series of unbearably sharp tableaux, like teeth, biting over and over into her flesh — walking over the Pont Saint-Michel, watching the omnibus she’d hoped to catch move away from her, the sound of the hooves like thunder in her ears — a brief conversation before a line of black cars, Asmodeus gesturing to her, Elphon prodding and pushing her into the same one as his master — the car pulling away, and the spire of the ruined cathedral dwindling farther and farther away in the distance.

“You’re much better off with us,” Asmodeus said. He was polishing his glasses with a yellow cloth; his eyes on the window, on the House that was his rival and enemy. “See? Over Notre-Dame?”

There were… clouds, but clouds didn’t gather so dense and dark, didn’t form that almost perfect circle that ringed the two ruined towers like a crown. And clouds didn’t reach down: those were extending tendrils, wrapping themselves around the ruined stone, until the entire cathedral seemed tethered to the Heavens.

“It’s survived such a long time, hasn’t it? Fire and floods and war. But this, I think, will finally break it.” He sounded thoughtful, not gloating or satisfied, as she would have imagined. His eyes rested on her; in earnest for once, with none of the mockery she was used to. “So silent? Have you nothing to say?”

Madeleine, too weary for words, rested her head against the polished, darkened glass of the car window, and watched her safe haven of the past twenty years vanish into the distance, leaving her alone with the master of Hawthorn.

* * *

ISABELLE, when she came, didn’t seem entirely happy, or entirely at ease with her new charge as alchemist. “Madeleine knew better than I,” she said.

Selene shook her head. The last thing she needed was people questioning her decisions. “Madeleine is no longer with us. There are only a few laws in Silverspires; and she broke one.”

“So you don’t forgive,” Isabelle said, slowly. She was more sharply defined, somehow, the light from her body radiating more strongly than it should have. Was she on essence, too? But there were no signs of any external sources: merely Isabelle as she’d always been, impossibly young and impossibly old at the same time. “That’s good to know.”

“Do you have objections?” Selene said. She hesitated, for a fraction of a second only, and decided to make this her show of strength. “You can leave if you disagree. I’m sure there are other Houses that are far less vigilant about enforcing their laws.”

Isabelle looked thoughtful. For a moment Selene thought she’d misjudged, that Isabelle would indeed leave, seek out Hawthorn or Lazarus — but then she nodded. “Your House, your law. I don’t approve, but it’s only fair.”

Something in her tone was sharper than it should have been — as if, for a brief moment, she’d seriously considered challenging Selene for the leadership of the House. “Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t,” Isabelle said, serenely. “Madeleine knew they were the Furies. Philippe and Emmanuelle figured out it was Nightingale. I—” She shrugged. “I don’t know much, other than that Morningstar died.” The light around her flickered, throwing distorted shadows on the walls.

“About that—” Emmanuelle said, but she didn’t have time to finish, because, in that moment, Morningstar pulled away the curtain that separated Selene’s living quarters from her office. “I heard something about my death?”

Isabelle stared. So did Morningstar. Black gaze met blue; and remained stuck there, as if they recognized something in each other, a connection that went beyond anything Selene would have expected.

What — how could they even know each other? Morningstar had been dead for years before Isabelle was born. There was no way they could recognize each other, no way that Morningstar should be paying attention to a minor Fallen of the House.

Emmanuelle laid a hand on Selene’s shoulder, squeezed gently. “Do you know each other?” she asked.

Morningstar tore himself from his contemplation of Isabelle. “I don’t remember,” he said, thoughtfully. “Perhaps I did.”

Isabelle didn’t speak. At length, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. But all the same…” She was silent, for a while. “I saw your corpse.”

“Possibly.” Morningstar shook his head. “I don’t remember, you see.”

But he’d remembered Selene. He’d lost everything else; most of the memories that would have made him more than this blank slate; but he had still recognized her.

“That’s all very nice,” Selene said, “but it doesn’t help us.”

“I’m not sure what we need help against,” Isabelle said. “A ghost?”

“Ghosts can be exorcised.” Morningstar lay back against one of the walls, his gaze blank, making merely a timid suggestion, so far from the maelstrom of power she had once known. He hadn’t always been that way — back in a time when things had been simpler, easier, when the House had been prosperous; and when solutions had not required so much agonizing over what they could and couldn’t do. There was a vise in Selene’s chest, squeezing her heart to bloody shreds.

“Not so easily,” Emmanuelle said. “And neither will what she summoned vanish.”

“The Furies?” Isabelle asked.

“No, the Furies are dead,” Emmanuelle said. “I was speaking of the tree choking the magic of the House.”

“How do you stop a tree? Or a ghost?”

“You don’t,” Selene said. “Morningstar—”

“Yes?”

“You really don’t remember, do you? What you did to Nightingale?”

Only polite interest from him, a raised eyebrow. Perhaps it did mean nothing to him, after all. Or perhaps it did, and there was so little emotion attached to it that he could so easily lie.

“It was done,” Isabelle said. “Are we going to stand here debating the morality of it? At the time, you judged it right for the good of the House.”

Another raised eyebrow. “No doubt.”

The image of Asmodeus rose like a specter in Selene’s mind, his eyes and the horn rim of his glasses sparkling in some unseen light. Your master had many flaws, but he wasn’t squeamish.

I am not.

Then prove it to me.

They could stand all night discussing this, with no more progress — none of them, save perhaps Isabelle, would take the authority to make decisions. And it was the decision that mattered, not its rightness.

Selene took in a deep breath. “Emmanuelle, can you research exorcism? All the others, we’re going into the East Wing, to see if we can stop the roots. I don’t know what Nightingale’s game is, but I won’t let her swallow the House.”

* * *

MADELEINE had expected to be shut into one of the cells: they’d existed back in Uphir’s day; and she had no doubt Asmodeus would have kept them all. But Elphon merely showed her into a room on the first floor — one with a little private staircase leading into the depths of the House’s huge garden. “Someone will be by later. I wouldn’t try anything funny if I were you,” he said. “Lord Asmodeus isn’t known for his patience.”

“Wait,” Madeleine said.

Elphon turned, halfway to the door, politely waiting for her to speak. His face was blank, and there was no hint of recognition in his gaze. He didn’t remember her. He would never remember her.

“Nothing,” Madeleine said, slowly, carefully. “It’s nothing.” She’d have wept; but there were no more tears to be wrung out of her. Miracles didn’t happen, did they?

“As you wish,” Elphon said, bowing to her. “I’ll leave you to speak to Lord Asmodeus.”

And he was gone, leaving her alone in the room.

The House hadn’t changed; or perhaps she didn’t remember it well enough: it had been twenty years, after all, and she was no Fallen. The brain decayed; memories became as blurred as scenes seen through rain. The green wallpaper with its impressions of flowers was the same; the elegant Louis XV chairs were the same she’d once had in her rooms; and the covered bed with its elaborate curtains was, if not familiar, entirely in keeping with the rest of the room.

She was back.

There was no escaping that fact; or the memory of that car ride with Asmodeus, so close the stink of his perfume still clung to her clothes. Back, and powerless; and entirely at his mercy, a fact that no doubt amused him. Probably the only reason she was still alive.

A fit of coughing bent her double, left her gasping for breath; her lungs wrung out, emptied of everything except bitterness. She needed essence, needed its familiar warmth to keep away the memories, to smooth over the bare, inescapable fact that she was back in the last place in Paris she wanted to be; to keep her from imagining her future, which would be short and nasty and brutal.

Does it really matter? Your future was always short. You’ve always known that.

But there was the long, slow slide into an oblivion fueled by drugs — and — this. One of her choosing, the other one emphatically not.

Selene, no doubt, would have lectured her about the need to be strong, to keep her head. Madeleine wasn’t Selene, and saw little point in any of this. This was Asmodeus’s House; and there wasn’t a corner of it he didn’t master. He had hundreds of dependents, a hundred rooms like this one; and a vast reservoir of artifacts from his predecessors in addition to his own power.

She lay on the bed, and tried to sleep, to banish the smell of orange blossom and bergamot from her clothes; although she already knew both attempts were doomed to fail.

* * *

MAGIC didn’t harm the roots. Fire did, but they immediately grew again, more numerous, as if they’d cut off the hydra’s head. Emmanuelle suggested axes infused with angel breath: that worked better than fire, but with the same drawbacks.

And the tree fought back. Roots uncurled, far faster than anything vegetal had a right to — and strangled the unwary, or knocked them against the wall so hard their bones broke.

Selene lost two bodyguards, Solenne and Imadan; and Isabelle, reckless and heedless of the danger she put herself in, almost got herself killed.

In the end, nothing really seemed to make a dent in the inexorable engulfment of the House.

Selene stood in what had once been the entrance to the East Wing: the corridor was now a dense mass of roots and branches — not exactly inaccessible, but certainly not a part of the House anyone would run through.

She kept a wary eye on the labyrinth of roots blocking the corridor; but the tree appeared to be quiescent for once. Emmanuelle had theorized that it was most active at transition times: at twilight, or at dawn, or when the moon moved away from a quadrant of the sky into another. Which, as insights went, wasn’t very helpful.

“Please tell me you’ve found something useful,” she said to Emmanuelle, who only grimaced.

Morningstar hovered by — hesitant, ill at ease — even more useless than Isabelle, who didn’t master her powers but didn’t hesitate to use them. It broke her heart: he looked like him, and sometimes the odd mannerism would surface, but there was nothing left, not one useful memory, not one bit of deeper comprehension of magic, or of the predicament they found themselves in. “I can’t exorcise her,” Emmanuelle said. “I would need access to her grave for that.”

Said grave was either in Hawthorn — where the chances of Asmodeus giving them access were so slim they might as well not exist — or in an unknown place in the city, wherever Hawthorn dumped its bodies — again, Asmodeus might know; and again, he would not tell them a thing.

“Morningstar?” She hoped — she prayed against all evidence — that there would be a miracle, that he would recall something of use. But there was nothing.

“I don’t—”

“It’s fine,” Selene lied, swallowing the words like so many shards of glass. “We’ll find another way.”

“There is another way,” Isabelle said, detaching herself from one of the walls. Disheveled and wild, she looked for a moment like one of the feral women from legend; and the radiance she cast flickered fast and out of control, from soft to almost blinding.

“I’m not sure I see one,” Selene said. Something had changed in Isabelle; something that made her ill at ease, though she couldn’t have told what.

Isabelle looked at Morningstar, who gazed steadily back at her. “You don’t remember anything.”

“No,” Morningstar said, his voice holding nothing but mild, polite interest.

“I could fix that.”

“You could — that’s not possible!” Selene said. Spells that tinkered with the mind weren’t impossible, per se. They were just very complex, and had a higher chance of frying a brain than actually working.

Isabelle smiled, as slow and as enigmatic as an Asian idol. “Why not?”

“Because — because it won’t work,” Selene said. “Because you’ll damage his mind—” She stopped, before she could say “even further than it already is,” but the words hung in the air, regardless.

Morningstar was looking curiously at Isabelle. “What makes you believe you can do that?”

Isabelle came closer to him; and bent, briefly, to whisper something in his ear. Morningstar didn’t move; his face remained emotionless; but his hands clenched. “I see,” he said.

Selene didn’t. And didn’t like it much, either. “Do tell.”

Isabelle shrugged. “I learned a few things, that’s all.”

From Philippe and his mysterious magic, which made no sense to Emmanuelle? Or from whatever had happened when she and Madeleine left the House, whatever conflagration had left Madeleine on a sickbed, Philippe missing, and Isabelle secretive and withdrawn?

“I don’t think you should—” Selene said, but Isabelle had already put both hands on Morningstar’s temples. “No!”

Neither her cry nor Emmanuelle’s came soon enough. Light blazed, a radiance like the heart of the sun, so strong she had to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Isabelle stood in a circle of charred parquet; and Morningstar was stock-still, his face the color of bleached paper, his blue eyes as vacant as those of a corpse. Selene’s arm completed the movement it had started, and pried Isabelle’s hands from Morningstar: they were warm, quivering as if with fever. “Morningstar? Morningstar?”

His eyes swung to look at her, but life didn’t come back into them. What had Isabelle done? How could she, heedless of everything, go blazing in, eager to number him once more among the dead? “If you have harmed him…,” Selene said to Isabelle, who only shook her head.

At length, Morningstar drew a deep, shuddering breath. Selene could almost hear his chest inflating, could almost trace every ounce of color coming back to his skin, every smidgeon of red flushing his cheeks. “Selene,” he said. His eyes had unclouded; but they were still clear, guileless.

“Do you—” She forced herself to breathe through the obstruction in her throat. “Do you remember anything?”

“Images,” Morningstar said, after a pause. “Memories, things that make no sense.” He closed his eyes, opened them again — there was something in his face that hadn’t been there before, a slightly harsher set to the boyish features. “No,” he said. “I don’t remember much that would be of use. Sorry.”

Selene shook her head. “Forget it.” She’d hoped, against all hope… But no, miracles didn’t come to Fallen, not so easily. “We’ll need to take another look at our options.” She’d sent messengers to Minimes, one of her traditional allies; though she doubted anyone would come. Draken, Hell’s Toll, Aiguillon — when these had fallen during the war, not a single House would have lifted a finger to help them. In the world of Houses, being vulnerable was merely a reason for people to abandon you, like rats fleeing a sinking ship — no, she had to be fair there. Had Minimes fallen so low, she would have looked the other way. Allies didn’t mean friends. “And the tree?”

Emmanuelle’s voice was grim. “I have no idea about the tree. Selene?”

“Yes?” Selene asked. “You’re going to make a suggestion I won’t like.”

“You know me too well,” Emmanuelle said.

“Of course.”

Emmanuelle took a deep breath. “You should ask Philippe.”

No. “Philippe is the one who got us here. Did you forget that?”

“No,” Emmanuelle said, but she had forgotten. She’d forgotten those agonizing hours when she lay with labored breathing — when Selene wasn’t sure if she’d lose her or the House first, when she’d only had Aragon’s reports to track the progress of the infection. She’d forgotten, and forgiven. Emmanuelle had always been too nice.

And Selene wasn’t. “He brought the Furies here, Emmanuelle. And he was the one who disturbed the crypt, which got this — this mess started.” She wanted to say something other than “mess,” some stronger word that would encompass the fear that gnawed at her entrails like a carrion eater, that would take her, unaware, in a moment when she’d felt herself safe, when she’d forgotten, for a bare minute, that the House was collapsing around them.

“Be fair. Asmodeus and Claire are equally responsible for this mess. And he was also the one who helped us figure out the identity of Nightingale. He has a connection to her — he could find her grave, if moved to it. Or give us another way to go around her.”

Selene looked at the mass of roots that blocked the corridor — that spread through open doors, tearing holes through furniture, lifting wallpaper like snakes — was something moving, in the darkness? Branches and roots; and something deeper and darker, crouching behind it all like a spider in the center of a web? “We should head back to my office,” she said. “But you know I can’t countenance this.”

Morningstar had moved; was leaning against one of the walls — he reached out, absentmindedly, as a root attempted to wrap itself around his wrist — and snapped it cleanly in two. The neighboring roots shuddered as if stung, and fell still; almost as though they’d decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.

Something had changed. He was… stronger than he had been. But still not strong enough.

“I don’t see how the situation can be made worse,” Emmanuelle said.

Selene sighed. “That’s because you lack imagination.” They still stood. It was small and insignificant — and likely would become false within a week or so — but she clung to this like a lifeline. As long as they stood, there was hope.

* * *

IN the end, two guards came for her and took her through corridors, down a vast staircase that led back into the hall; and into the gardens.

In an era of charred trees and blackened skies, the gardens at Hawthorn were the pride of the House. The grass was emerald green; the trees in flower, with the sheen of rain-watered plants; and there were even birds gracefully alighting on the lakes and ponds — one could almost forget their torn feathers and dull eyes, and see a fraction of what Paris had been, before the war. Statues of pristine alabaster stood around the corners of impeccably trimmed hedges; and the gravel crunching under Madeleine’s feet was the soft color of sand, with not a speck of ash or of magical residue to pollute it.

That hadn’t changed, either. If not for the two thugs at her side, she could believe herself back in happier days; could remember Elphon catching water from one of the ponds deeper into the gardens….

No. She would not go there.

At the bottom of a knoll was a circle of gravel, and at the center of the circle, a fountain depicting Poseidon’s chariot emerging from the sea: the four horses surrounded by sprays, and the water glistening on the eyes of the statue, an unmistakable statement that the House of Hawthorn could afford to waste such a huge amount of clean drinking water to keep the gardens running.

Asmodeus was sitting on the rim of the basin. He was wearing a modern two-piece suit in the colors of Hawthorn: gray with silver stripes, and the tie a single splash of color at his throat, the vivid red of apples; a city man through and through, looking almost incongruous against the pastoral background of the gardens. Except, of course, that he still exuded the lazy grace of predators in the instant before they sprang.

“Ah, Madeleine.” He gestured to the two guards. “Leave us, will you?”

On the rim of the fountain beside him was a spread-out cloth, a picnic blanket with a selection of things that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the cells, knives and hooks and serrated blades, still encrusted with blood, and it didn’t take much imagination to know what they would be used for — Madeleine just had to close her eyes….

“Sit down, Madeleine.”

Madeleine’s hands were clenched, though she didn’t remember how they got there; didn’t even remember sitting, yet there she was on cold, harsh stone, her clothes soaked with frigid water like the touch of a drowned man.

“You’ve been uncharacteristically silent since your return,” Asmodeus said.

Madeleine stared, obstinately, at the grass at her feet; but she could still feel his presence; could still smell the orange blossom and bergamot carried by the wind; could feel magic in the air between them; though he had no need of a spell to hold her, trembling and motionless, on the rim of the fountain.

He was silent, mercifully so — except that she could hear the sound of a blade, negligently scraping on stone — scratch, scratch, scratch, a sound that seemed to grow until it was her entire universe — each movement peeling her as raw as if it had been her skin under the knife, her muscles and veins laid bare to the water’s biting kiss.

The last thing she wanted was to speak up, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until she did. “What — what do you want?”

“Why, what has always been mine to take. Did you not know that?”

The knife was still moving; the stone still scraped raw. Madeleine tried to calm the trembling of her hands, and failed.

“No,” she said. And, because she had nothing else to lose: “You have Elphon.” She didn’t need to look up to imagine his smile, lighting up his face like a boy’s.

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you? As loyal to me as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Something happened.” Madeleine laid her hands in her lap, tried not to think of the twinge of pain in her unhealed leg. “You killed him.”

“I prefer to think of it as the result of an unfortunate picking of sides,” Asmodeus said. “One cannot rise to the top of a House without bloodshed.”

“You didn’t have to rise to the top of the House!”

Silence; and a cold touch against her hand; and the smell of orange blossom, sickeningly close. Raising her gaze, she found him holding the knife against the back of her hand, driven down until he’d broken the skin. “You forget yourself,” Asmodeus said. His hand, wrapped around the knife’s blade, was utterly still; but why would he have trembled? “But never mind. It’s not Elphon I am concerned about.”

“Me?” Madeleine watched the blood — a vivid red, like Asmodeus’s tie — smear itself against the paleness of her skin. She ought to have cared. She ought to have felt pain, but she was just so tired. “What could you possibly want with me, Asmodeus?”

“A washed-out alchemist addicted to angel essence?” He smiled at her shock. “Do credit me with a reasonable information network, Madeleine. You belong here. It’s high time you came back to us.”

As what, a corpse in a coffin? As a blank-minded, obedient fool like Elphon? But she’d known all along — Hawthorn, and Asmodeus, never let go of what was theirs — and what were twenty years to a Fallen, after all? “You might save yourself the trouble,” she said. “Kill me and resurrect me, like Elphon.”

“I would, if it worked on mortals.” He smiled, again. “Which leaves me with… more prosaic tools.” The knife tensed against her hand, but did not draw further blood.

“You ought to know that won’t work,” Madeleine said. She wished she had the confidence to believe that; and he knew it.

“You’d be surprised what does work. In the depths of pain and darkness, what kind of spars people can seize and never let go of…” Another sharp-toothed smile; and then, to her surprise, the knife withdrew. “But I have other means.”

Magic? Could he use a spell to render her docile? Not impossible, after all; there were precedents….

But he cast no spells. He didn’t move. She felt the air between them fill up with magic, with radiance and warmth like a summer storm; a feeling she remembered from her meeting with Morningstar; that sense of vast insignificance and terrible satisfaction at the same time, that transcending joy that someone like him should have noticed someone like her…

No.

“A truth like a salted knife’s blade… Tell me, Madeleine, does your calf still pain you?”

Madeleine’s hand moved toward her leg; stopped.

Asmodeus bent forward, the warmth becoming so strong it was almost unbearable. “I know every wound you bear from that night, Madeleine — the knuckle-dusters that shattered your ribs, here and here and here…” His hand lingered, quite softly, on her three broken ribs, the ones that hadn’t quite healed, that would never heal. “… the knife that slipped into your calf, here and here”—a touch on the scars of her calves, heedless to the trembling in her entire body — to have that obscene parody of love, of friendship that wouldn’t stop — to know he wouldn’t stop, even and especially if she said anything, the effort of holding herself silent and still through her rising nausea—“and the other cuts, the ones on your arms and chest, the ones that healed”—a touch here, a touch here and there; his hand, with fingernails as sharp as a blade, resting on her chest, just above the heart. “You haven’t asked me how I know.”

She spoke, dragging her voice from the faraway past. “Why would I?”

“Oh, Madeleine.” Asmodeus shook his head. He didn’t withdraw, or make any effort to move his hand. “It was a dark, lonely night, and the citizens of Paris were keeping their heads down, as they always do when it’s obviously House business.”

“Someone was there,” Madeleine said. If she moved, if she pulled away from him, would he drive that knife into her chest? And would it matter quite so much? Perhaps that was the cleaner ending, after all, the death she’d craved for all of twenty years. “What does it matter, Asmodeus?” She didn’t say she had no more patience or fortitude for his games, but if she had broadcast the thought, it would have been a scream.

“Because I was there,” Asmodeus said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You heard me quite correctly. I was there. I carried you, all the way into Silverspires.”

“That was — that’s a lie,” she said, more sharply than she’d meant to. “Morningstar—”

Asmodeus’s laughter was darkly amused. “Morningstar was away. Do you really think he came halfway across the city to find you dying on the cobblestones? Why? Because he smiled to you once, gave you the charm treatment? He was like that with everyone. He wouldn’t have known you two seconds after his back was turned.”

He had been kind to her; had offered her the asylum of the House — no, no, that wasn’t it — memory, merciless, conjured the scene again; Morningstar’s distant, distracted courtesy.

“This is the first and greatest of Houses, Lady Madeleine. The safest place in Paris.”

A boast, nothing more: as Asmodeus had said, a grandiloquent statement of pride in himself, in his House.

No. No. That couldn’t be.

She’d heard — footsteps — she’d felt — the warmth of magic — hands, taking her, the grunt as her body shifted and he bore her full weight — and the world spinning and fading into darkness. “No,” she said. “No.” That’s a lie, she wanted to say, but what reason would he have for lying?

“You were in Hawthorn,” she said.

Asmodeus still hadn’t moved. His eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses were unreadable. “You remember nothing, do you? It was almost dawn when I found you, Madeleine. It was over by then, in Hawthorn; had been, for a long time. I was head of the House.” He said it quietly, calmly, with no inflection to his voice; not even pride.

“Why would you—”

“I had business. In Silverspires. Did you never wonder why you had lost the link to Hawthorn?”

“I—” Madeleine took in a deep, trembling breath. “Uphir died—”

“Oh, Madeleine. Do you think it’s that easy to break a link to a House? I broke it — before I dropped you off.”

“I don’t understand,” Madeleine said again. Stupidly, like a lost child. “Why would you—” Why would you carry me to Silverspires? Why would you let me live?

His smile was wide, dazzling. “Call it… a whim. Or a loan, for safekeeping, while I purged the House of all remnants of Uphir’s days. But all loans are called, in time. All whims run their course.”

He withdrew, but the feel of his hand on her chest remained, sharp and wounding and God, oh God…

She was going to be sick, this time: the cough was welling up in her lungs; and she was on her knees in the damp grass, not sure if she was vomiting or coughing — breathing hard when she was done, nauseated and drained and utterly unable to move. “Ah yes. The little matter of the angel essence. We’ll have to do something about that. Can’t have you addicted this badly.”

“Why—” Madeleine whispered. He shouldn’t have heard her, but of course he did. Of course he always did.

“To remind you,” Asmodeus said. “That you owe nothing to Silverspires, or to Morningstar. Your place is here, Madeleine. It’s high time you accepted it.”