GRAVE MATTERS
THEY came up in the mortal world near the Pont de l’Archevêché, where Philippe had first seen Ngoc Bich. It was night again, with the low, diffuse glow of pollution over the city, the glistening of oil on the waves that lapped at their feet.
“We weren’t gone that long,” Madeleine said, shocked.
Isabelle’s voice was distant. “Time passes differently there.”
It wasn’t only time. Philippe could feel the tug of the House again now, could feel the roiling anger within him. Morningstar stood on top of the flight of stairs, limned in his terrible light—hefting, in one hand, the large sword that he always carried. Was he defending the House against them? Of course not, he was simply a vision, a memory.
He hadn’t told Madeleine or Isabelle about the vision he’d had while Asmodeus had tortured him; not because it seemed like a fancy of his sick mind, but because he had no intention of helping Silverspires beyond healing Emmanuelle and ridding himself of the curse.
“We’ll go around the cathedral,” Madeleine said, biting her lips. “There’s a maze of disused corridors there.”
A maze where he’d lost himself; where he’d found himself. The world seemed raw to his senses, the light too harsh, the sounds jangling in his ears; even the touch of Isabelle’s hand on his shoulder scraped like a blade across his flesh. He longed for the dark and quiet of the dragon kingdom already, even knowing that it was but a mirage.
You could have stayed, Ngoc Bich’s voice whispered in his ear, and he didn’t know what answer to give her.
They crossed the small garden behind Notre-Dame: corrugated benches, skeletal trees in the midst of scorched earth; and walked toward one of the side doors of the House, a postern that gave access to the East Wing.
You could have stayed. Would it have been so bad, to be her consort? She was smart and fierce and beautiful, and doing honor to her devastated kingdom; but then again, what wasn’t devastated, in this day, in this place? He would have ruled with her, renewed and rejuvenated daily by the khi currents. He would have found a manner of peace; and, with Annam unattainable, it was probably the closest thing to coming home.
He didn’t deserve it. He was nothing but a disgraced Immortal, his offense so old and so papered over, it barely stung.
The Court of the Jade Emperor was beyond him; and, as Ngoc Bich had known, there would be no return to Annam; not even if the way magically opened, not with this curse within him. Aragon was right, he ought to make a home here in Paris, in this city of murderers who sucked the resources of Annam like so much lifeblood. He ought to . . .
And then the shadows shifted across the burned-out trunks of the trees, like blacker dapples on birches—vanishing every time he focused on them, but quite unmistakably flowing toward them.
* * *
SELENE felt it long before she saw it, of course. The shadows had been one thing—scurrying at the back of her mind, a blot on the power of the House that slowly sank to an annoying whisper. This . . . this was something else: a feeling that something was not quite right, that something was gnawing away at the foundations of the House’s power.
Javier had come back with one of the search parties: they all clustered in her office, looking glum—but at least they were alive and unharmed. One of the previous parties hadn’t been so lucky: their brush with the shadows had sent a man to the hospital with a flesh wound eerily similar to Emmanuelle’s. Aragon didn’t expect him to survive the night. One more confirmation, then, that Philippe had been the catalyst; but that the shadows had a life beyond him and were, in fact, spreading faster now that he was dead, as if he had been the only thing holding them in check—his mortality the only curb to their frenzy.
She’d have been in a better position to appreciate the irony if her House hadn’t been coming apart around her.
“Tell me again,” she said to Javier, fighting back the urge to snap at him.
“It’s not what you think,” Javier said.
“I have a very good imagination.” The House, its power and reputation diminished after the Samariel “incident,” could hardly afford another emergency. And she—she needed to be the rock they all stood on, not a Fallen shattered by the sickness of her lover. It would be fine, if she focused; if she forgot the awful pallor of Emmanuelle’s face, the dark circles under her eyes like bruises, everything Aragon wasn’t saying in his silences. We’re all mortal, Morningstar would have said, and he would have smiled. Secretly, he wouldn’t have believed anything like this would ever apply to his Fallen. What a fool he had been, sometimes. “Now tell me again why I can’t go to Asmodeus’s rooms and ask him what is going on?”
Javier’s face was pale. “Because you need to see this first.”
Selene dismissed the rest of the search party with her apologies—and summoned two of her bodyguards, Solenne and Mythris; as well as the butler, Astyanax. Then she followed Javier.
It had once been a bedroom on the first floor of the East Wing. Now its floor was shot through with . . . “Plants?” Selene asked. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that.
They were slender green shoots with long, elegant leaves: she could imagine using one of them as a boutonnière, its vibrant green in stark contrast to the dark gray of the suit, a welcome note of freshness. They didn’t sound harmful, exactly, but they were plants. Growing on dusty parquet floors.
“That’s . . . not natural,” she said.
“No. They’re only in this room, though,” Javier said.
So far. “I assume you’ve tried pulling them out.”
Javier gestured toward the nearest shoot, which grew inches from the curved legs of a low marble table. “Be my guest.”
Selene reached out, felt the tingle of magic on her hands. Apart from that, it looked like a usual plant; though not something that would ever be found in French gardens. It was a jungle thing, blown in from Guyane or Indochina or Dahomey; longing for warm, humid weather in which to grow. That it could take root here, under the perpetual pall of pollution from the war . . .
She tried to pull it out; and her fingers slid through it, as though it hadn’t been there. And yet . . . and yet she could feel the silky touch of its leaves on her hands; could feel the sap pulsing through the stem, the slow ponderous heartbeat of the plant . . . She reached again, this time drawing to her the power of the House, whispering the words of a spell to start a fire. Again, her hand did not connect with the plant; and the fire died without fuel to consume. It was . . . it was as though the thing didn’t exist; or more accurately, wasn’t properly part of the House.
But it was part of the darkness. It was what she had sensed, lurking around the wards; circling, like vultures waiting for a dying man to breathe his last—for any weakness in the structure of the House.
And now it was in—taking root in the structure of the House itself.
That was more frightening than anything else. The wards, laid by Morningstar when he’d founded the House, should have held. It was the wards, in fact, that made the House; their slow, painstaking accretion transforming unremarkable buildings into a shelter and a source of magic, a fortress that protected them all against attacks. Morningstar’s absence would not have changed anything—they would have been flimsy things indeed, if they could not survive their creator’s leave-taking. Morningstar was no fool: he had known that most Houses survived far longer than their founders.
But if the wards were still there, what, then, was this?
She had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t like any of it. “Fine,” she said to Javier. “You’re right. We’re not going to Asmodeus’s room.”
Javier nodded. “The foundations,” he said.
There was no locus of the House, no single point of vulnerability an attacker could have used to disable the wards. Other Houses were rumored to have one: House Draken had, if the testimony of survivors could be believed; House Hawthorn, though Madeleine had been tight-lipped about it. Selene wasn’t sure if it was ignorance, or a reluctance to sell a past she would not talk about.
Madeleine. She remembered angel essence on her fingers; Emmanuelle’s pale, skeletal face; then, as now, the nights sitting by her bedside, praying that she would recover, that the preternatural thinness wouldn’t turn out to be the beginning of a long, slow slide toward death. . . .
No. That was a weakness she couldn’t afford. She needed to be as tough and as uncaring as Morningstar, focused only on the good of the House.
Morningstar had been old, and clever: the wards he had made could not be easily dispelled—Selene would not even have known where to start, if it had been her stated mission. The wards were carved into the foundations; baked in the bricks of its chimneys; ground to dust, and made into the mortar of the walls. There were places, though, where the fabric that hid them was thin and translucent; where, stretching out a hand, one could almost feel the energy surging under one’s fingers.
Selene headed for one of these: a patch of wall at the back of one of the wine cellars. She grabbed another three guards on her way with a wave of her fingers; just to make sure there was an escort in case something turned sour.
The cellar was at the end of a long corridor, beyond more disused rooms: all empty, the dust blown under their feet as they walked, with that sense of entering the mausoleum of a king. Empty and dead; lost since the heady days of the House’s glory, though . . .
Something was off. Something . . . not as it should have been, a feeling she couldn’t quite name. Slowly, carefully, she moved to one of the doors in the long corridor—it was ajar, and she only had to push to open it.
“Selene?”
Nothing but a reception room: an upholstered sofa, its flower motif tarnished by layers of dust, a handful of elegant chairs with curved legs, a Persian carpet stretching away toward a grand piano.
“Selene?”
“It’s nothing.” She looked again at the room, trying to see what had bothered her. Just dust, and the smell of beeswax; and a faint, familiar smell of flowers.
Flowers. Bergamot. “Asmodeus was here.”
Javier said nothing, though his face made it all too clear he thought she was imagining things.
He didn’t know Asmodeus. “You do have people keeping an eye on him, don’t you?”
Javier looked affronted. “I do,” he said. “He hasn’t left his room.”
Or had already left it; and returned, with no one the wiser.
Selene suppressed a sigh. One thing at a time. She had to worry about Asmodeus; she couldn’t afford not to; but, first, she had to know what was going on. “Let’s go.”
The butler, Astyanax, opened the door of the cellar for her, the creak of the key in the lock resonating like the groan of tortured souls. “Here you go, my lady.”
The cellar was bone-dry, and relatively clean—the wine for the conclave’s banquet had come from here, after all—but still, it exuded the same pall of neglect as the rest of the House. Why was she so sensitive to it, all of a sudden? It wasn’t as though anything had changed; but, perhaps the setback they had suffered had finally exposed the truth—as if, with Silverspires’s reputation in shambles, she had suddenly discovered that she couldn’t lie to herself anymore: the House was in decline, and it would never, ever claw its way back to its former glory; not even if Morningstar himself were to come back from whatever obscurity he had vanished into.
If he wasn’t already dead, or worse, imprisoned somewhere. But no, if he had been imprisoned somewhere, whoever had him would have used it against the House by now. No, it was either dead or gone to some other project of his own. She’d have liked to think he wasn’t capable of such casual betrayals, but she knew him all too well.
“There.”
Between two of the wine bottle racks, there was a slightly clearer patch of wall: a place where the plaster had peeled off, revealing the stone of the cellar walls; nothing much, either at first or second sight, or even with magic to boost one’s darkness-encrusted eyes.
Selene reached out, drawing for a suspended moment the scraps of magic the House could spare, from Madeleine’s deserted laboratory to the wards of the school; from the hospital wing where Emmanuelle fitfully slept, to the ruins of the cathedral and the shattered throne; from the dusty corridors and disused ballrooms to this place, here, now, where she and Javier and her escort stood, breathless and skeptical and praying that it would work, that it would still work. . . .
The chipped stone of the wall gradually went blank, as if a hand had reached out, melted it to liquid, and smoothed out every single imperfection from it. Light spread from its center, slowly, gradually: a soft, sloshing radiance like that of a newborn Fallen, until every wine bottle seemed to hold captured starlight; and a slow, comforting heartbeat traveled up Selene’s hands; the reassurance she’d craved for, with no hint of faltering or of weaknesses.
The wards still held, then. The House still held.
Javier must have seen her face. “Selene—”
“It’s going to be fine,” she said, slowly exhaling. She withdrew her hands from the wall; but the light and the heartbeat persisted for a while yet, balm to her soul. She might have failed everything else, but not that. Never that. They still stood strong. “The wards are intact.”
“Thank God,” Javier said. Such fervor in his voice; had he found his faith again, then? “We’re still safe.”
Selene thought of the sour smell of bergamot in a disused room, and of the ghost plants that she couldn’t touch, or tear out. “Yes,” she said, “we’re still safe.”
And tried to ignore the small, fearful voice in her mind: the one that knew all about lies, and the things they denied until it was too late, and all the masks and the faces beneath them had crumbled into dust.
* * *
NO one spoke as they walked back to the House. Madeleine kept an eye out for anyone; though Asmodeus would have left with everyone by then, surely? She hoped so; because if he found them, he would take his revenge; and it was quite unlikely he’d bother with minimizing loss of life, especially since it looked as though they were all in it with Philippe.
Which they might well be. She wasn’t sure if she believed him; if he was merely, as he said, a victim of something he’d accidentally released into the House; or if it was part of a longer game he was playing with all of them. But if he could help Emmanuelle; if he could shed some light on what was happening . . .
“You heard what Ngoc Bich said,” she said to Isabelle, as they walked toward the postern. “Morningstar wanted a powerful spell to protect the House against something.”
“It was twenty years ago. I can’t imagine—”
“It was a threat large enough that Morningstar had to look for help,” Madeleine said. “It could be unrelated to the shadows, but it would be one hell of a coincidence.”
And he’d disappeared shortly after coming back from the dragon kingdom. So either he was imprisoned somewhere; or he was dead—and, either way, it had to be linked to the spell. If they could find him—if they could get his help . . .
What was it Ngoc Bich had said? A beseeching. An offering of himself as a burned sacrifice . . .
A cold wind rose across the ruined gardens, bringing with it a sharp, familiar tang. It took Madeleine an agonizingly long moment to realize it was the animal smell of fresh blood. The clouds over them had darkened, as if a storm were coming; the sun still shone, but its light was weak and sickly: that of a winter’s day, with no power to warm or comfort.
“Madeleine.” Philippe’s voice was low, urgent.
“I can see.”
“No, you can’t. They’re here.” The fear in his voice was bad; what could he be scared of, when he’d seemed to shrug off whatever Asmodeus had done to him?
“We have to find shelter.”
“There’s no shelter that will hold against them,” Philippe said.
They came out of the ground; great splashes of shadow that seemed to move just below the charred earth—circling them, like wolves—large shapes flowing across the walls of the cathedral, extending huge leathery wings.
Was this what Oris had seen, before he died?
A burned sacrifice. Forever delivered from darkness.
Burned offerings.
A prayer.
He was offering a prayer to God—and where else would you pray to God, but in a church?
“The cathedral,” Madeleine said.
Morningstar wasn’t in the cathedral—not in the razed church that had been searched, again and again and with growing despair, in the past twenty years. But . . .
“The cathedral didn’t help Oris.” Philippe’s voice was bleak.
“No, that’s where they came from.” Isabelle rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, staring speculatively at the faint light emanating from her hands.
If they could find Morningstar, or the refuge he’d hoped for, or the spell he’d cast—something, anything . . .
There was a sound around them, like a hiss of snakes. Madeleine kept a wary eye on the ground, where the shadows were flowing like ink stains; curling and curving in a slow dance, forming circles with a dot in the center like the one in Emmanuelle’s palm. It was . . . almost beautiful, if one didn’t remember Oris; didn’t remember Samariel; didn’t remember the five corpses in the morgue. Had it hurt, when magic overflowed every cell of a mortal’s body? Or was it like angel essence, a slow, heady feeling of rising power, until all life had burned away?
“We have to get to the cathedral,” Madeleine said. “Morningstar . . .” She couldn’t voice the thought. He’d been gone for twenty years; what made her think she could find him, when the entire House had failed?
“Morningstar is gone. He won’t help you,” Philippe said, softly.
Isabelle looked at Madeleine for a while; then she shook her head. “No, but it’s no worse shelter than elsewhere,” she said. She was running already, moving toward the ruined arches of Notre-Dame.
Madeleine barely heard them. There was something . . . hypnotic about the circles, some half-remembered thing, perhaps an image she’d seen in Emmanuelle’s library? She watched them coalesce and vanish, watched the single dot like a thousand unblinking eyes. . . .
“Madeleine!” Philippe’s hands grasped her shoulders, and shook her. “Come on!”
They ran. After just two steps, Madeleine’s breath seared her lungs, and the desire to stop, to bend over, to cough out phlegm, was an almost unbearable, agonizing weight.
There was a hiss, like a knot of a thousand snakes; shapes that she couldn’t quite make out, at the edge of her field of vision; vague images of fangs, of huge wings like a drake’s, slowly beating like a dying heart; if she could only turn her head, she would see them clearly; would be able to name what was after them . . . No. She didn’t look back, or aside. She dared not. Like angel essence, this was a power that subsisted on the forbidden.
Had . . . to . . . run. Had to take in a searing breath, and another one—to put one foot before the other, time and time again. The courtyard wasn’t very large, but it felt as though it contained the entire city now—the postern never growing any nearer.
“This way,” Isabelle said, somewhere from the left. “Not the postern!”
Madeleine turned, almost blind. She could feel Philippe, dropping behind to check on her. “I’ll—be—fine,” she breathed through lungs that seemed to have collapsed; but he didn’t hear her. “A few more meters,” he said, softly. “Come on, Madeleine.”
“Come on, come on, come on.” It was a prayer now, each word stabbing the fabric of Heaven. A shadow loomed over them, solid and reassuring this time, the bulk of the ruined cathedral. There had been a side door, somewhere. . . .
No time for that. Isabelle had plunged into the ruins; they followed, weaving their way between two walls supporting the shards of stained-glass windows.
They stood, panting, just under the dais with the throne, the ruined altar only a hand span away. How much protection was it, really? Did God still look at unrepentant Fallen, at desecrated places? Except, of course, that the place had never been deconsecrated; it had simply fallen into ruin with the rest of the House. . . .
The shadows circled, under the benches, deeper pools of darkness; reaching out tendrils to touch the charred wood, spreading wings on the arches. The hiss was stronger; and behind it she could almost hear—words, a litany like an obscene chanted prayer.
Philippe had closed his eyes; his face had gone pale and slack, as if he were asleep; but in his outstretched hand a green light was growing stronger and stronger: faint traceries, like lines of power, came and went through the skin of his palm.
Madeleine took a deep, trembling breath, staring at their surroundings. The glass windows were dark and dull, their colors and brilliance drained away; the remnants of the ribbed vault weighed down on them, like the fingers of a giant hand pressing them down into dust. She forced herself to look away, opening the pendant at her throat. There was nothing in it but scraps of essence; a bare hint of a power that had once been strong. Like the cathedral, she thought, fighting the urge to retch.
If only they knew where Morningstar was—if only they could call on him—
But that was impossible. Why had she even suggested they go there? Give it up, Madeleine—no time for fancies or flights of the imagination. When this was done—if they survived, she’d have time to go back into the dragon kingdom—no matter how uncomfortable it was—she’d have time to ask Ngoc Bich what she knew. . . .
The shadows appeared reluctant to reach the dais. They circled it warily, tentatively sending tendrils to touch the steps; withdrawing as if burned. Perhaps they’d be safe.
And perhaps she was the messiah come again.
“They’re waiting,” Philippe said. He hadn’t opened his eyes. The light had now spread to both his hands; he held it against himself, cradling it like a child.
“For what?” Madeleine said; and wasn’t so sure she wanted to know. “What are you doing?”
Philippe’s face was pale. “Keeping them at bay. Can’t . . . do much. The power . . . is weak here.”
Isabelle was kneeling, inscribing a ward across the dais, a blinding radiance streaming from her skin; rushing through the now translucent stone, illuminating every crack and every blackened spot from within. “They’re shadows,” she said. “Every shadow is cast by something.”
She’d been right. She didn’t want to know; or to inquire how either of them knew. The noise was stronger now; there were words, if she paid attention; whispered curses, vicious hatred . . .
“All you hold dear will be shattered; all that you built will fall into dust; all that you gathered will be borne away by the storm. . . .”
“You said he was here,” Isabelle said. “Where?”
“I don’t know!” Madeleine said. He’d gone there, yes, twenty years ago; but the church was a ruin now, with barely any shelter she could see. “I didn’t say I had the answers!”
Philippe was standing, pale, disheveled, before the throne, watching the shadows pool together in the aisle between the ruined benches—a rising smell like rotten fruit, a cold, biting wind that seemed to flay them to the bone. . . . “It’s Morningstar’s dead apprentice—I don’t know who they were, but they died betrayed, and now they’re taking their revenge.”
“I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. She breathed in the last scrap of essence; tried to believe in the comforting warmth that spread through her belly and lungs.
“Morningstar betrayed one of his students,” Philippe said. “He loved and cherished them, and then gave them away to buy peace with Hawthorn, left them to rot in the cellars of the House. They died . . . angry.” He shivered.
No. Morningstar wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t . . . She thought of the leisurely footsteps, the warmth of hands lifting her; the slow, sure sound of his breath. He’d rescued her when he didn’t have to, had welcomed her to the safety of the House. “He wouldn’t . . . ,” she started, and then stopped. It was pointless. He might well have liked her, might well have shown favor to her—on a whim, a moment’s thought on his way to nowhere—but she’d heard enough during her time in Silverspires to know he’d been Fallen through and through.
Isabelle’s eyes were jewel-hard. “He did it for the House.” On the floor beyond the dais, the shape was becoming clearer and clearer: wings, an elongated face, hands that curled like claws . . . She knew, instinctively, that they didn’t want to be there when it finally became defined. But still . . .
Still, there was something about that shape; about the leathery wings, the hiss of snakes, the perfect circle . . .
“Of course. Isn’t that always the excuse? ‘For the House.’” Philippe’s voice was biting. He leaned against the throne, cradling his light between his hands. “Anyway, that’s what they want. The destruction of Silverspires, the deaths of all of us if they can manage it. The unquiet dead.” He laughed, bitterly.
The death of Silverspires. Violence begets violence, death begets death: a perfect circle around that single point, that unthinkable break in the skin of the world, pressed tight until blood welled up, dark and red and still quivering with the memory of a heartbeat . . . And Madeleine knew where she had seen the circle, after all; not in the medicine thesis, but in the Greek play Emmanuelle had been so painstakingly restoring. Orestes. Clytemnestra. Kin betraying, murdering kin. And what was a House, after all, but an overlarge family? “Not revenge. Justice.”
“That’s not different,” Isabelle said, forcefully, but Philippe stilled her with a gesture of his hands.
“What do you mean?”
“Erinyes,” she whispered. Justice for the murdered, the betrayed, the silenced; the unquiet dead, hungering from beyond the grave. “The Furies. That’s what they summoned.”
“And that helps? How do you stop them?”
“I don’t know!” Madeleine said. “It’s not even supposed to be possible!” Sentences from Emmanuelle’s books swam in her head, a jumble of information she could hardly keep a leash on. She knew about the Furies; every child in every House learned about them; but as a remnant of the past, of the things that were gone and could no longer be summoned.
How did you stop the Furies?
Spilling blood; granting them revenge . . . all things that seemed beyond them now.
But . . .
Morningstar had come there once, to stop them. To cast a spell, Ngoc Bich had said. A ritual of power, to safeguard the House.
There was nothing here—just broken stained-glass windows, the burned remnants of pews, cracked stone, and cracked columns—nothing that could serve as a shelter or as the basis for a spell.
Nothing aboveground.
The Furies were the past; the buried creatures from the history of Paris, so deep they were beyond the reach of Fallen and humans alike—and where else would you defend against them but underground—near the foundations of the House you’d sworn to protect?
Within the earth. Underground.
All churches had crypts, and how come she’d never heard of one in Notre-Dame?
Madeleine closed her eyes, and called up power; scrounged every scrap of it from the rawness of her lungs, from the fragility of her bones—it coalesced within her, drop after drop, her limbs growing cold and heavy with its withdrawal.
The shadow was peeling itself free of the stone floor; unfurling wings large enough to darken the sun.
It was now, or never.
“Morningstar. Show me,” she whispered; and cast everything she had—not at the Fury, but at the throne on its dais—thinking of the darkness under the earth, the musty smell of the grave—willing the cathedral to give up its secrets. . . .
A thin line of light snaked from where she stood, zigzagging across the stone like a flame dancing on the edge of a paper. It passed from her outstretched hands into the throne; and then expanded outward, blossoming into a huge incandescent flower. There was a blinding light; an explosion that sent her, retching, toward the floor—as the sound of tumbling stones filled her ears.
“Madeleine?” Isabelle pulled her up—there were other hands, Philippe’s, propping her up. “We have to move.”
“The . . . Fury . . .” Every word seemed to leave a trail of blood in her mouth.
“Stunned, but not for long,” Isabelle said. “We have to go.”
Where? She tried to ask; but then there was no need.
Behind the dais—where there had once been graven tombstones covered in rubble, with faded litanies beseeching God to have mercy on sinners—there was now a huge, open space gaping like the maw of a monster; and within that darkness, the glimmer of steps, leading down into the bowels of the House.
* * *
IT was damp, and quiet; too quiet, like the day, ages ago, when he had crawled into the ancestral chapel and had stood before the altar, feeling the weight of the dead, of his death, like a yoke on his shoulders. There was little light, but the khi current of wood he had called up was enough to walk without stumbling. It wasn’t the darkness of the flowing shadows, though; but rather what was left when the sun turned its face away from the world, with not a hint of fangs or claws or snakes, and only a peaceful, almost contemplative silence.
Madeleine was a sagging weight between Philippe and Isabelle, her breath going fainter and fainter as time passed; her weight a hindrance. He feared they’d both let go, and she’d tumble down the stairs to Heaven knew where.
“They haven’t followed us,” Isabelle said, beside him.
Philippe shook his head. He’d half expected to see ghosts again, but even Morningstar wasn’t there. It was eerily unexpected. The khi currents there weren’t faded as they were in the rest of the House; they gently lapped at one another in a never-ending circle; and there was a vague sense of magic, nothing major. Just . . . silence. Waiting, though he couldn’t have told what for. “They won’t come. Not here.”
Isabelle took in a sharp breath, but did not ask him how he knew. “But they’ll be waiting outside, won’t they?”
“Of course.”
“Why are they trying to kill us?”
“I don’t know,” Philippe said. He pushed his shoulder upward, to readjust Madeleine’s weight. “I’m just the vessel, and probably even less than that.”
“But you knew what it was.”
“No, Madeleine did.”
There was silence, at those words. “Yes. She did.”
A further silence. He needed to speak up: it was now or never. “Thank you,” he said.
Isabelle turned, surprised. “Why?”
“For coming for me.”
“You mistake me.” Isabelle’s voice was cold, but her hands shook. “I came because Emmanuelle needed you. Because it was the only way.”
“You’re not a good liar,” Philippe said, before he could stop himself. There was no answer from her; not the explosion he had half dreaded. “You could have come on different terms. Selene gave me up, didn’t she? She thought I was dead. She thought I was guilty.”
“I don’t care about what Selene thinks.” Isabelle’s voice was low and fierce. “I know you wouldn’t—”
Wouldn’t he? He wasn’t sure. If it was the way forward; if it could open the way to Annam . . . He was honest enough to know he would do whatever was necessary. “I don’t have your scruples,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if she still had any.
“No.” Isabelle laughed, shortly and without joy. “You don’t. You’re fortunate.”
She was Fallen, and she would pull away from him eventually; she would take her cues from Selene and the House. And yet . . .
She had come back for him. Had argued with Madeleine for him; had casually swept aside all of Selene’s suspicions and doubts as if they meant nothing; and had stood for him over standing for the needs of the House. That counted for something, surely? Surely she wouldn’t turn into another Morningstar or Asmodeus . . .
They reached the bottom of the stairs, hearing their steps echo in a space that was far vaster than the little they could see. Philippe tried to call more wood to him, but there was nothing there; just that breathless, expectant pause after someone had spoken; an answer, waiting to be uttered.
“There is something,” Isabelle said. She shifted so abruptly that Philippe almost didn’t react in time, and Madeleine slid down halfway to the ground. He caught her, the muscles in his arms burning.
“I can’t see—” And then he didn’t need to strain, because the soft radiance from her skin increased a thousandfold; not slowly like the rising of the sun, but with the speed of a shutter removed from a lamp; from darkness to light in heartbeats. He closed his eyes; it was almost too much.
When he opened them again, he was alone with Madeleine; Isabelle was a few paces ahead, moving toward the center of the room.
Like the church above, it was a room of pillars and arches; smaller and more intimate, the arches pressing down on the ground with the weight of the earth, the smell of damp and rot almost overbearing. It was not large, and most of it was filled with graves: the stones of the floor were meticulously laid out, each with a name and a prayer, and letters whose gold had flaked away with time.
In the center . . .
In the center was a stone bed, not unlike the one he’d been pinned to in the dragon kingdom—except that this one was occupied already, by an ivory skeleton lying in the darkness with its arms crossed over its chest, one hand over the other, as if protecting its rib cage from depredations.
“Isabelle?”
She didn’t turn. “Can’t you feel it?” she asked.
It trembled in the air: a touch of heat, a butterfly’s wings of fire, caressing his cheeks; an irresistible attraction to the locus of power in the center of the room. Bones. Angel bones.
He was halfway to the stone bier before he realized he’d left Madeleine. He turned back. She was lying in shadow, on the folded edge of his cloak—at least he’d remembered to wrap her in something, to keep away the damp—and then it had hold of him again, was reining him in like an unruly horse, pulling him to the center of the room.
Power. Magic, all that he had ever wanted, with the prickly incandescence of a thornbush. It would hurt if he grasped it, but once he did so the world would be at his feet; he would dispel the pall over his heart with a wave of his fingers, would go back to Indochina in less than the time it took to draw breath; would make Asmodeus scream and writhe as he had done with a mere look. . . .
Chung Thoai’s sad, regal face swam out of the morass of his thoughts. It’s stronger than you, he said, shaking his head, his chipped antlers shining in the darkness.
The Dragon King hadn’t referred to the bones, of course; but still . . . Still, a part of him stood, trembling; remembered what it had felt like to be hungry and not eat, to be thirsty and not drink; to feel power in every bone and sinew, and not use a drop of it.
This.
This was weaker than him.
When he opened his eyes, he stood mere inches from the stone bier, watching the bones. They looked old, though that hardly meant anything: slight and fluted, with the reinforced rib cage clearly visible; fused in odd places, a skeleton that was almost, but not quite, human, with the ridges, tapering off, that had once marked the beginnings of wings. A Fallen; but then, there had never been any doubt of that. There was no visible wound, no indication of how their owner had met his end. Merely magic, burning raw and naked, a fire he dared not touch.
“Isabelle—”
He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her: engrossed, as he was, in the power that emanated from the bones, reaching out to touch them. “Isabelle,” he said. “Wait—”
Her hand had already connected. Fire leaped from the bones into her; so that, for a moment, she stood with vast wings billowing behind her, wreathed in smoke that shouldn’t have been.
A noise, like a soft patter of rain: the bones were crumbling one after another, falling onto the stone table: mere dust, not angel essence, just the remnants of something that had died long ago.
“Isabelle.”
Slowly, she turned, her lips stretching in a familiar, arrogant smile; and in that moment, looking at the power that streamed from her like water, he knew exactly who the bones had belonged to.
Morningstar.