Isabelle’s voice was quiet. “A House took you. It wasn’t this House, Philippe.”
As if it made any difference — how could she not see it? How could she—? “No,” Philippe said. “It wasn’t. But, deep down, they’re all the same. Can’t you see? Morningstar betrayed Nightingale for what? Two deaths? An advantage with Hawthorn that didn’t last the winter? Houses all think lives are cheap.” Pointless. It was all so pointless, their little games like children’s fights in school, with no more rhyme or reason than their meaningless professions of charity and care for the weak.
They didn’t deserve anything — except to crumble and fall.
“We don’t,” Isabelle said. “I–I—”
“You don’t, or you don’t think you do.” He sighed. She looked bewildered once more, her preternatural maturity gone. She’d always been like that, hadn’t she, a child who had seen too much to remain one? But children were cruel, too; casually tearing the wings from flies, mocking and hurting one another and never knowing when to stop. What would she do, with Morningstar’s powers, and some of his memories? What would she think of? He didn’t want to find out. Better leave now, with some of his illusions intact.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. How do you appease a ghost, if they’re right? I can’t believe the House is worth saving.”
“I have to believe.” Isabelle drew herself up, gathering light around her like a mantle; appearing, for a bare moment only, as she must have when in the City, her black hair ringed with radiance, and with the shadow of huge, feathered wings at her back. Like the wings of Asmodeus in his prison cell, he thought, hands shaking. Even if everything else had been different, he couldn’t live with that. “Don’t you see, Philippe? I have nowhere else to go.”
“I know.” They wouldn’t budge, either of them. It was futile. “Let’s agree to disagree, shall we?”
Isabelle said nothing. He could have done something then; could have found words to comfort her, could have laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that it was all going to be all right. He didn’t, because he couldn’t lie to her anymore. Because there was still darkness in his heart; and underneath the House, the soft, crushing sound of that huge thing hungering to reduce the foundations to dust. Because the sound of the wind through the corridors was no longer a lament, but that of an oncoming storm.
She’d be strong enough to weather it — she had Morningstar’s magic; and the protection of the other Fallen in the House. He didn’t need to worry; or to listen to the treacherous voice in his heart that reproached him for leaving her. “Be well, will you? I–I would hate for you to come to harm.”
Isabelle shrugged. “It happens,” she said. “To Fallen.”
“To mortals. You’re not anything special.”
Her smile was bitter, wounding. “Hunted for magic in our bones, in our breath? We didn’t ask to be made special, Philippe. But we have to live with it, all the same.”
While he — he had asked to become an Immortal, of course; had starved himself until he was whiplash-thin, meditated until all the mountains blurred and ran into one another like watercolors under rain. He couldn’t blame an accident of birth; he had made a deliberate choice.
But then, so had she, one she couldn’t remember — the one that had driven her from Heaven. “I guess this is good-bye, then. Fare you well, Isabelle.”
“And you.” Her gaze was clear, distant; the radiance of the wall soft, like water, like tears. “Fare you well, Pham Van Minh Khiet. I hope we meet again.”
They both knew they wouldn’t; or that, if they did, it would be under very different terms.
* * *
SELENE might have wished to keep her grief private, but news of Morningstar’s death filtered through the House, leaving dependents in a state of stunned shock. No one had believed Morningstar could die, just as the sea or the wind couldn’t die — and, if he could die, was the House truly as invulnerable as Selene assured them?
The news filtered elsewhere, too — and in another part of the House, a dusty, disregarded cellar that hadn’t been opened in twenty years, other people set to work.
Asmodeus knelt in the center of a circle much like the one that had been traced in the crypt; with the same kind of flowing tracery that had adorned its edges, the same alphabet that was the language of power. He had removed his usual, elegant finery; the letters flowed across his broad torso, like writhing snakes outlined in the light of another world — slowly descending along his arms toward his hands, and from there into the floor, linking the two halves of the circle together.
At one point, halfway through the work, he raised his head, sniffing the air like a hound scenting blood; and bent back with a white-toothed smile, intent on his spell. He whispered words, as the letters filled the empty space on the floor: a litany that seemed to be at once a mourning chant and a prayer.
When he was done, he lifted his hands. For a moment, there was nothing: silence, filling the room as the last echo of his words faded into nothingness, and every letter going dark. Then a pure, single note rang, like a plucked harp string. Asmodeus smiled, and got up.
His attendant, Elphon, was waiting for him at the entrance to the room. He handed Asmodeus his shirt and jacket, which Asmodeus slipped into effortlessly. As he buttoned up his shirt, Elphon spoke up. “My lord, if I may?”
Asmodeus didn’t say anything. Elphon went on. “This is a circle of rebirth, isn’t it? I’m not sure I understand why—”
Asmodeus smiled, white and sharp, like a tiger prowling the woods. “You mean, because Silverspires is my enemy?”
Elphon blushed, obviously bracing himself for further rebuke. “Yes.”
“You think this is going to benefit them? Oh, Elphon,” Asmodeus said, shaking his head. “I had a bargain with someone else for… a ritual. For a weakness in Silverspires’ wards, at a key point in time — which required us to be here, in the House, in order to undermine it from within. This isn’t a gift I’m making them. Quite the contrary. This, my friend, is their downfall.”
And with that, he turned away, leaving that single note behind him. Unlike the words, it didn’t fade away into silence, but gradually was joined by others, until a faint but clear chorus of voices echoed under the vault.
In the room, in the center of the circle, light danced on motes of dust; and then the light died down, and the dust settled, slowly accreting itself into the shadowy shape of a human being.
And something else, too: on the edges of Asmodeus’s circle, tendrils of leaves and wood started to grow — plunging so deep into the floor that the stone itself began to crack.
NINETEEN. THE ONCOMING STORM
MADELEINE woke up, and wished she hadn’t.
She was lying in an infirmary bed. She would have known that peeled, faded painted ceiling and its flower-shaped moldings anywhere. When she tried to move, every joint in her body seemed to protest at the same time, with a particular mention to a crick in her neck that seemed to have become permanently stuck. What— There had been the strangeness of the dragon kingdom — the flight to the cathedral—
“Oh, you’re awake. Good.” Emmanuelle’s face hovered into view. She looked better, but distinctly worried.
“What did I miss?” Madeleine said, or tried to. Her tongue was as unresponsive as a lump of wood — her mouth felt full of grit and ashes, and her words came out garbled. She tried again, felt something shift and tear. “What—?”
“Aragon said you needed to rest,” Emmanuelle said.
“You’re — you’re fine,” Madeleine said. “You’re healed.”
Emmanuelle nodded.