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.”