Beside her, Emmanuelle drew a sharp, wounding breath. “I didn’t think—” she said, softly, slowly.
The wings were huge, and unadorned: they were not a toy or an accessory, but the rawest embodiment of a weapon; their serrated edges catching the light like the blades of scimitars: it was all too easy to imagine the wearer lunging, shoulder extended forward; and the sound of flesh tearing in the wake of a wing’s passage.
Morningstar laid them on the floor, gently, keeping only the matching bladed gauntlets in his hands. They looked like the spines of a fish, except that was a faintly ridiculous comparison, and there was nothing faint or ridiculous about those, either. Everything about them seemed to hunger for blood. “I remembered,” he said. “I hid them once….” He frowned; and for a bare moment he looked like his old self again, tall and fair and terrible to behold; and so achingly familiar Selene’s world blurred around her. “Buried them in the earth for safekeeping, so that no one would lay claim to what was mine.” And then the moment was gone, and he was just a newly born Fallen, bewildered and lost — and Selene blinked back her tears. It was a hard thing, to stand by the side of the dead.
“And the sword?” Emmanuelle asked, slowly, softly.
“The sword wasn’t there,” Morningstar said. He frowned, again. “It doesn’t matter.”
It did matter, because they would need to find it eventually, to know if it was merely Morningstar not remembering what he’d done with it, or someone else moving it; but right now, they didn’t have the time….
“These will cut through anything, if properly used,” Morningstar said.
Properly used. With muscles that only a Fallen could have: muscles, unused in years or decades or centuries, that still remembered what it meant to fly. “You remember?” Selene asked, not daring to hope.
“Some,” Morningstar said, curtly. Beside him, Isabelle was watching the wings, fascinated; reaching out to touch them, and withdrawing as if their mere sharpness had drawn blood. “I’m not sure it will be enough.”
“It won’t be,” Emmanuelle said, gently. She pushed aside a mahogany chair to kneel by the wings; like Isabelle before her, she ran a finger on the serrated edges, heedless of the risk — Selene fought the urge to snatch her away, before she cut herself too deeply for mending. “Don’t you remember, Selene? They were infused with magic, once.”
Oh yes. Like Morningstar, they had radiated the terrible warmth of raw power: what else could they have done, bathed day after day in his presence?
“It’s all gone,” Emmanuelle said.
“Then we’ll give breath, and whatever else is needed,” Selene said. “Isabelle—”
“I can’t!” Isabelle’s eyes were wide; her words halfway between a protest and a disappointed cry. “I’m no alchemist.”
God, the last thing they needed was her falling to pieces. Selene said, gently, “You were my choice, and the House’s choice. You have the skills.”
“I don’t. We all know I don’t. It was meant to be Oris, except that he died, and that left only me. There was no time, Selene.” It wasn’t despair, after all; merely a bald statement of fact. “Madeleine could—”
“Madeleine is no longer part of this House,” Selene said, more sharply than she’d intended to. She had no desire to be reminded of her failure — she probably wouldn’t have been able to stop Madeleine’s addiction, but she could have found out earlier. She could have avoided Claire using it against her, at a time when the House was already in disarray. Her fault. “She’s probably part of Hawthorn again, by now, if Choérine is right.” Certainly she had left at the same time as the Hawthorn delegation, and in the company of Asmodeus and his henchmen.
“I doubt by choice,” Emmanuelle said dryly.
Selene didn’t say anything. Whether it was by choice or not, there was nothing she could do for Madeleine. The House was certainly not in a position to go making demands of anyone. And she had abdicated responsibility for Madeleine. She had to remember that. If she did not stand by her decisions, who would? “Whatever the case,” she said. “We can discuss this when we survive. If we survive. Isabelle, I’m sorry. I know you deserved more time. I know you didn’t have it, but right now you’re my only choice, and our only hope.”
Isabelle said nothing. She nodded at last, but didn’t sound remotely happy. “I’ll try,” she said. “Will that do?”
As long as she didn’t do anything rash. Selene made a mental note to ask Emmanuelle or Javier to keep an eye on her. “As to the rest—” She took a deep, deep breath, not looking at Morningstar. One had to recognize when one was beaten, and plan accordingly. “I’m sorry it has come to this, but we will have to evacuate the North Wing as well, and regroup around here.”
Here. Her office. Her living quarters. The center of the House; and, it seemed, the place where they would make their last-ditch attempt to defeat Nightingale’s curse.
* * *
PHILIPPE’S return to the gang had been anticlimactic. Bloody Jeanne had smiled, and hugged him; though perfunctorily, with an expression that suggested she would stick him in the ribs if it served her purposes. Baptiste and Alex had been more circumspect, but everyone had seemed almost happy to have him back. It ought to have touched him; or to make him feel wary, or something — anything, but it didn’t.
He sat down in the little courtyard at the back of the shop, watching the flowers on the arbor, as if, with enough attention, he could still time enough to watch them grow: he had done this once, in another lifetime, in another land; but this felt so far behind him it might as well be dead.
Aragon had been right: for him, there would be no return to Annam. That dream was gone, nipped in the bud before it could ever blossom; crushed in the egg before it could stretch legs or wings.
“You look thoughtful,” Ninon said. She slid down, easily, by his side, all loose limbs and easy smiles. “You’ve hardly said a word since you came back.”
“Yeah, I know,” Philippe said.
“Is it because of what happened in the Grands Magasins?” She bit her lips. “I shouldn’t have left you behind — but I thought you were dead. I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Philippe said. He was thinking of Silverspires; of Isabelle, restless and angry, somewhere at the back of his mind. Why could he not be done with her; with the continual, distant awareness of where she was, of the power running red-hot through her — through her bones and her lungs and every sinew of her body? He could feel her; could almost taste her worry about the House, about Selene — about Madeleine. There was something about Madeleine; a glimpse of a fear he couldn’t quite focus on.
He… he had left her behind; had left the House and its buried darkness behind — and yet, he kept thinking about her — kept expecting her to walk up to him, to reminisce about Annam with him — to argue with him about what he needed, about what he ought to do in that infuriatingly direct way of hers. He…
It was none of his business. The House was none of his business. They would fail, and fall, because ghosts like Nightingale couldn’t be stopped; because what fueled her was nothing human or Fallen, just the relentless anger and love she’d felt when she died. For this, there was no exorcism; merely prayers to guide her to rebirth, and a better life — and those would have required a monk, or a priest; and he was neither. He owed them nothing, save his stiffened hand, save the memory of a night when he had been taken apart piece by piece — the same thing that had happened to Nightingale in Hawthorn.
Most of all, he owed Isabelle nothing. She had chosen, too; chosen the House and its darkness; the House and the secrets that would choke it — Morningstar’s grisly and unjustifiable legacy. They were worlds apart now; in fact, they had always been. He’d been a fool to hope otherwise.