He never would have—
And her mind paused then, hanging over the precipice, because she knew, deep down, that he was perfectly capable of it. That he had always been.
“You can’t appease a ghost,” Emmanuelle had said, with a tired sigh. “She’s dead, Selene, and she’s been working on her revenge for decades. The dead don’t easily change their minds.”
She knew, but still she had to try.
While Emmanuelle was sleeping, she stole away, wrapped only in a thin cotton shawl, the cold wind on her skin like the beginning of a penance. She had put two guards outside Emmanuelle’s room, but though she wouldn’t be such a fool as to requisition them, neither would she be fool enough to go off on her own. She dropped by the mess hall, and asked which bodyguards were available. Two of the idle ones — Imadan and Luc — leaped up at the chance to follow her, abandoning a spirited discussion on the proper way to sketch the human body.
The crypt where Morningstar had lain was all but deserted. The stone bed was still empty in its circle of power—do not think of the bed now, not of the grave or whom it belonged to—but the place had changed. Along every column holding up the ceiling, something crept downward: great buttresses like snakes, moving so fast she’d have sworn she could see them shifting; encircling the pillars so hard and tight that the stone had cracked. Selene walked closer, touched them. They were as hard as rock, but the material wasn’t rock. It was wood.
She thought of the plants in the East Wing; of the leaves she couldn’t touch or pull out. Green things. And, like all green things, they had roots; roots which were now choking the foundation of Silverspires. If it couldn’t be stopped…
Of course it could. It was silly to think that any ghost could affect the oldest and most powerful of Houses… But this ghost had summoned the Furies — killed Oris and Samariel and others; used Philippe as a catalyst to enter the House; and perhaps Asmodeus and Claire to wreak its havoc. This ghost had led Morningstar to sacrifice himself in order to exorcise her; in vain, for he had only kept the danger at bay, not eradicated it.
A worthy student, Morningstar would have said; except that, of course, it was his House being torn apart, and he who had been killed.
Selene knelt in the circle, touched her fingertips to it: nothing but cold, inert stone. Dead, all dead, and yet…
She brushed her fingers against the stone bed, and, calling to her the magic of the House, pulling in every strand like a weaver at her loom, spoke the slow, measured litany of a spell.
Something stirred, in the dark; large and unfathomable and not feeling human anymore. “I would speak with you,” she said, slowly.
Darkness; and the wind, howling between the pillars with their weight of tree roots. “I know Morningstar harmed you, but he is gone. I–I am mistress of his House, and would offer amends in his name.”
Amends, the darkness whispered to her, in her own voice. A cold, unpleasant feeling, slithering across her hands. Amends. There are none.
“Whatever you desire—”
All that you built — destroyed. All that you hold dear vanished. All that you long for — borne away by the storm.
“What storm?”
It is coming. Can you not hear it?
Selene could hear nothing but it; the sound of the wind racing between pillars; the distant noise of branches bending against its onslaught; the tightness in the air, a cloth stretched taut, almost to snapping point. “Your storm?”
There was no answer from the darkness. “What do you want, damn it!”
She had already had her answer; had already seen what was happening. Not a House, but something else; the foundations of a new building, a new garden, its roots in the wreckage of Silverspires.
Never.
It wasn’t Morningstar’s voice in her mind, but it could have been: it was that same cold, dry feeling of steel against the nape of a neck, that same feeling of unbreakable promises. The House was hers, now that Morningstar was dead; wholly hers, with none of the whispers that Asmodeus and Claire had started, none of the doubts about her ability to rule. It was hers; and, because no one else could protect it, that duty fell to her.
“I will crush you,” she said to the darkness, her voice taking on the singsong of chants and litanies, and powerful spells. “Hack off your roots and suck the sap from your leaves, and burn your seeds before they can ever land.” The air was taut again, as if listening to her promise; but what could it know of fear? It wasn’t even human, not anymore.
“Selene?” It was Javier, pale and untidy. His creased face had the same expression as when he had waved Asmodeus into her office.
Her heart sank. “What’s happened?”
“Asmodeus is leaving,” Javier said. By now, she knew, all too well, his expressions and what they meant; and could read what he didn’t say in the tightness of his clenched hands, in the thinness of his stretched lips.
“Asmodeus. That’s not what I ought to be worried about, is it?”
Javier winced. “You — you have to come and see. There really is no good way to explain it.”
* * *
MADELEINE wrapped her things carefully; not that there were many of them, of course. Isabelle watched her in silence, leaning against the doorjamb of the laboratory: she’d come in the middle of Madeleine’s packing, and had settled in her current position without a word. At last she said, “You don’t have to—”
Madeleine winced. She’d scoured her drawers before Isabelle had arrived, and had found only one small locket with a little angel essence; nothing like what she’d have needed to take. A vague edge of hunger seemed to overlay everything she did. It wasn’t a craving, not something irresistible that would have left her in tears; merely a faint sense of discomfort that seemed to be slowly increasing. She refused to think about what it would mean for her, out there. “Selene gives me no choice.”
Isabelle’s hands clenched. “Selene can’t drive everyone away.”
“Philippe, you mean?” Madeleine asked. She’d never liked him, so she couldn’t say she was sorry for him. But anything that would rile up Selene had her approval at the moment. How dare she — how–
Her throat was closing up. She took a last look at her laboratory: at the old, battered chair she’d sat in during her wild nightmare nights; the secretary desk, with the first drawer that always jammed — if she closed her eyes, she could still see Oris, sitting at the table with a frown on his face, trying to understand what she wanted from him.
Oh, Oris.
She blinked back tears. She’d never been one for sentimentality: she and Selene had that in common, at least; and she wasn’t about to collapse in tears in the middle of her laboratory.
“Madeleine?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. She had her bag. All the containers within belonged to the House, but she didn’t think Selene would begrudge her a battered leather bag, so old it could have seen the days of Morningstar. “You should—” She closed her eyes. She couldn’t feel the House; couldn’t even reassure herself that she would be safe. And she’d had so little time to know Isabelle; but she and Emmanuelle were the one shining spot left in the desolation. “Take care of yourself, will you?”
Isabelle smiled sadly. “That’s what Philippe said. Do you all think me such a child?”
“No,” Madeleine said. She laid one of Isabelle’s containers on the now-empty table. “But you’ll be House alchemist. That’s a big responsibility, trust me.” One that she’d never been quite up to, she suspected; but she’d done better than her predecessor, at the least. And she’d trained a successor, in all too short a time. If only she could have stayed longer…