“I know.” Isabelle shook her head. “I didn’t… There was no time, Madeleine.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Madeleine sought words; never something she’d been good at. “You’ll do fine. Believe me.”
Isabelle laughed bitterly. “Perhaps. You will write, won’t you? Send news—”
Madeleine shook her head, unsure of what to say. Tears blinked at the corners of her eyes; she didn’t move. No sentimentality. “Of course.” It was a lie; why bother Isabelle with the remnants of a sad, washed-out alchemist, a teacher who couldn’t even provide enough knowledge? “Of course I’ll write. If it makes you happy.”
Isabelle’s smile seemed to illuminate the entire laboratory; no, it wasn’t merely an illusion; it was a radiance from her skin, so strong it cast dancing shadows upon the walls. “Not as well as your staying, but I’ll take it,” she said.
Madeleine’s heart clenched in her chest. She couldn’t do anything more for Isabelle; couldn’t protect her, or even give her more than a modicum of the knowledge she’d gained. It would have to do; because Selene had left her no choice; but oh, how it hurt, as if she were betraying Oris all over again.
She hadn’t had much, and hadn’t hoped to bequeath much; save for the hope her apprentices would do better than her.
She left Isabelle in the laboratory, moodily staring at the container, and took the shortest way out, toward the ruined cathedral and its parvis.
There was something — something in the corridors that wasn’t quite usual. On her way, she bypassed the school. She could hear Choérine’s voice, explaining the finer points of Latin, and the giggles of some of the girls, but the noise was overlaid by something else, some other sound she couldn’t quite identify. A breath, a tune she couldn’t quite catch; voices whispering words on the cusp of hearing — but, no, it wasn’t voices. It was… a sound that was the creak of a mast on the sea, a rustle like cloth; a breath like the wind in outstretched sails.
None of her business, not anymore.
People stood on the parvis. At first, Madeleine thought only to push past them on her way to the Petit-Pont; but then she saw the uniforms of silver and gray, and the sickeningly familiar insignia, the crown encircling the hawthorn tree. No. Not them, not now. She would have turned in blind panic, to find her way back into the House; but there was no safety there, not anymore, only the cool welcome they would reserve for strangers.
Breathe. Breathe. Do not think about blood, or the hollow pain of ill-healed ribs, the old wounds that never stopped twinging. She was going to walk past them, cross the river, get on board the omnibus that stopped before the Saint-Michel Fountain; and at last be rid of Hawthorn’s ghosts in her life.
Her breath seemed to come out in short, noisy gasps as she crossed, on the other side of the vast plaza where the market was held, now all but deserted, with only a few House dependents hurrying about their tasks, their gazes studiously avoiding her. Halfway through, she threw a glance at them: so far away, they seemed like dolls, their faces all blurring into one another. They were talking animatedly, paying no attention to their surroundings. A leave-taking, that was what it had to be — she remembered something about the Hawthorn delegation staying on — a funeral, had it been? Or something close to it.
Ahead, the bridge beckoned, and the omnibus was waiting at the stop, its horses pawing at the ground, fresh and nervous, at the beginning of their hour-long run through Paris. She was going to make it — she was—
“Ah, Madeleine.”
She never even heard him. One moment there was nothing; the next he stood between her and the bridge — with Elphon and another Fallen one step behind him. His glasses glinted in the sunlight; the expression in his eyes light, mocking. “Leaving so soon?”
The wind blew the smell of bergamot and orange blossom into her face, so strong that her entire stomach heaved in protest. “Asmodeus.” She got the word out; barely. “It’s none of your business.”
His smile was bright and dazzling. “Oh, but it is. When a House rids itself of a most talented alchemist, I cannot help being interested.”
There was no one else; or rather, everyone was giving them a wide berth, heedless of Madeleine’s feeble attempts to signal for help. She was on her own, and she had never felt so alone. “Go away.”
“I think not. I have a vested interest in you, after all.”
Because she had once belonged to Hawthorn, because the House never let go of what it had once possessed, because she’d woken up at night, shaking and fearing that they would come to take her back, and now it was happening, and she was powerless to stop it. “Please—” she whispered, and Asmodeus smiled even more brightly.
“My lord.” It was Elphon; for a wild, impossible moment Madeleine thought he had remembered, that he was going to speak up in her favor. He would— “We need to return to the parvis.”
Asmodeus did not turn around. “For the formal leave-taking? Selene is half an hour late, and I see no sign of her coming.”
The world had shrunk to Asmodeus’s face; to his eyes behind their panes of glass, sparkling as if they shared some secret joke. She couldn’t — she had to…
Her bag. The box with the remnants of angel essence. If she could find it. Slowly, carefully, she moved her hand, creeping toward the pocket where she had put it.
Asmodeus was talking to Elphon, and his full attention wasn’t on her yet. “I expect the House to be… somewhat in disarray right now. I’ll send someone with our excuses, to apologize for the impoliteness of leaving without the formal ceremony.”
Madeleine’s hand closed around the box; undid the clasp, plunged into the essence — warmth on her fingers, a promise of power. If she could raise her hand, and swallow it. If she—
“I’m sure Selene won’t begrudge us our departure,” Asmodeus was saying. He reached out, almost absentmindedly, and caught Madeleine’s hand in a vise. His index finger pressed down, unerringly, on one of her nerves, and her fingers opened in a shock, sending the box clattering to the pavement; and the essence wafting onto the breeze, the wind picking at her palm and fingers with the greed of a hungry child.
Asmodeus’s hand went upward, toward her shoulder; and effortlessly slid down the strap, divesting Madeleine of her black leather bag. “I think not. Where you’re going, you’ll have no need of this.”
* * *
HE sat on a bed in Selene’s room — Javier had spluttered and hemmed on the way, saying something about privacy and the need to keep this a secret, but Selene had been barely listening.
Javier closed the door behind her as she entered, leaving them in relative privacy. Emmanuelle was there, too, her eyes two pools of bottomless dark in the oval of her face. “He was wandering the corridors,” she said, slowly, softly; as though everything might break, if she spoke too loud. “Stark naked.” There was not an ounce of humor in the way she spoke: in spite of the incongruity, the hour was not one for laughter or light-spirited comments.
For a good, long while, Selene did nothing but stare.
He had the radiance of newborn Fallen: a light so strong it was almost blinding, so oppressive she fought a desire to sink to her knees; and the eyes he trained on her were guileless, holding nothing but the blue of clear skies. “Selene?” he asked, quietly. “I was told you were Head of the House now.”
Selene swallowed, trying to dispel the knot in her throat — she wasn’t sure if it was relief, or anger, or grief, or a bittersweet mixture of all three. “Glad to see you, Morningstar.”