Page 11 of The City of Stardust

Her co-worker, Matt, squeezes past her with two coffees and a teetering plate. “Look alive, Biscuit!”

He alone had been absolutely tickled by her name matching one of their signature floral biscuits. By the time she’d cottoned on, the staff and even some of the regulars were calling her Biscuit, and she was too tired to argue it.Because you’re sweet, he explained.Would you rather be Burnt Coffee Grounds?

Maybe!, she wishes she’d said. At leastBurnt Coffee Groundssounds like she’s seen something more than the inside of this café.

As a teenager, she’d envisioned herself as a historian in some grand library, holed up with mountains of books in barely legible handwriting. Then she’d toyed with archaeology when the library hadn’t felt big enough to hold her ambitions. Anthropologist, travel writer, journalist, diplomat, translator—it didn’t matter that shehadn’t quite settled on a choice yet. For a wild, thrilling moment in her life, it seemed the future was opening up to her, and everything had felt possible.

How easily it’s been taken from her.

It would be different, she reflects, if she knew that there would be more than this. That she could still go off and become any one of those people. But it had all come crashing down when she was seventeen, a few months after she’d seen Gabriel in his bloodied suit. When she learnt the magnitude of what Ambrose had sacrificed on her behalf when he’d decided to keep her at home. So she’d received an education, yes. But no qualifications. No exam results. Not even half a chance to pursue a degree.

“Why?” she’d begged.

Ambrose had given her a long, meandering and utterly unconvincing explanation. But even if she’d believed him, the damage was already done. So she’s tried to let it go. She has.

But she’s never forgotten the door leading to the city, the snow, the song of the mountainside. A secret that she’s held even from her uncles, for fear of its unravelling. And she finds herself lingering in the same dark hallway, her chest brimming with the unplaceable feeling that something vital’s slipped through her fingers.

Matt snaps his fingers next to her ear and she jumps, slopping milk over her hands.

“Christ on abicycle,” she swears.

“I’m told we share a resemblance.” He jerks his head towards one of her tables. “Pay attention, Biscuit. You’re up.”

She’s halfway across the linoleum, menu in hand, when she notes the man sitting at her table. He sits with his head bowed, focused on his hands clasped in front of him. Golden afternoon sunlight kisses his skin, the line of a tattoo barely visible above his collarbones. His profile is all sharp lines, bladed from the bridge of his nose all the way through to his jaw—the bone structure of a Grecian statue. His dark curly hair is pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck.Unfairly pretty, she thinks.

Suddenly, she’s conscious that she’s been working all day, sweat wicking through her shirt, that she smells like stale coffee, and that there’s an unidentifiable stain—probably jam—just underneath her collar.

The world is desperately cruel sometimes.

Reluctantly, Violet approaches, praying for invisibility—and at least in this, the gods oblige. The man doesn’t even look up as she sets the menu down, and she turns to leave. But despite herself, she steals another glance over his shoulder to see what he’s so focused on. With surprise, she realises that his hands aren’t clasped together, but holding some kind of metal object. Then he does something she remembers so clearly it runs like a lightning bolt through her head.

He pinches it, andpulls.

The galaxy over her kitchen table. The boy with his dark curly hair and fuzzy collar.

She sucks in a sharp breath—just in time to meet his curious gaze.

Sea-glass grey.

“It’s you,” she says.

She takes a step back, colliding with another co-worker bearing an armful of empty plates. When she gets to her feet, the man is already halfway out of the door. She darts forward, heedless of the other customers watching her.

There have been so manynear missesandalmosts. She refuses to let one more opportunity slip away from her. It was him. It washim.

“Biscuit,” Matt calls after her.

“Back in a sec!” she shouts.

Violet glances up and down the road, and catches the edge of a figure disappearing into the alleyway next to the café. Heart pounding, she takes after him, wind snapping at her apron.

The alleyway is empty. The man’s gone.

Her stomach sinks at the knowledge that once again, she’s just missed another glimpse of the extraordinary. To come so close, and then no further.

Her hands wring her apron helplessly. It’ll always be like this. The café, the customers, the empty Everly house, and these fleetingechoes of the other life she might have had. But no more than that. And it’ll never be enough.

Then she spies movement out of the corner of her eye—and what she’d originally mistaken for a shadow coalesces into the silhouette of a man, sitting on the low wall. Her heart restarts in her chest, cautious joy racing through her veins.

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