Page 116 of The City of Stardust

She imagines long nights in Aleksander’s bed, carving out a future together. She pictures waking up next to him every morning for countless mornings, still marvelling at all the ways she knows him, and all the ways she’s yet to discover. And maybe one day she’d leave, or he would. Maybe not. The world she imagines, so beautiful and crisp in her mind’s eye, has room for complexities, after all.

In this world, she turns away from the doors that sing to her, from the stories that whisper ofelsewhere.

She is not Marianne. She won’t run. But she can’t ignore that wishbone-lodged longing, the siren call that she’s never been able to shake, even after all this time.

It’s a terribly selfish thing she says next, but she has to say it because to say nothing would be worse. “You could come with me. If you wanted.”

He looks at her, his grey sea-glass eyes unfathomable, and she lets him, drinking in her own vision of him. His curly hair is already growing out, teasing the nape of his neck. One day in the not-so far-off future, it’ll be long enough to pull into his stupid man bun again. She takes in his silvery scars, the faint yet premature lines of stressand grief on his forehead, the deep bow of his lips, the way he presses his thumb absentmindedly against the soft pulse of his wrist.

He doesn’t say anything at all. But she knows his answer, nevertheless.

They continue to linger. Even though the sunlight is fading in the sky, and there are so many pressing issues to return to, Aleksander can’t bring himself to cross over. Not just yet.

They stall for time with questions about the street around them. Though the streets are overrun with waist-high bushes and sky-scraping trees, it was probably once a busy thoroughfare. The ground beneath their feet has an unusually smooth texture from a thousand footsteps, wearing uneven stone away to a polished flatness. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the people who once walked here before them. But all he can hear is the sound of birds chirping and Violet, her hand clasped lightly in his.

“Do you think the stars will ever return?” Violet asks.

“If Ever opened the doorway. Then… possibly,” Aleksander says.

He hasn’t told Violet yet, but he’s pretty sure he can rebuild the doors. He hasn’t spent his time idly in Elandriel. It will take months of hard work, of complex problem-solving and setbacks and, yes, failures. And he will have to decide whether to open the doors at all. There is a reason why it’s so difficult to cross between worlds, and why Elandriel fell the way it did.

But he’s also read the stories about inter-world travellers, cooperation, the blending together of cultures and knowledge. The dream of a world that reaches out, instead of drawing itself in. And now he knows that there is more than a grain of truth in these fairy tales. He’s not prone to Violet’s optimism, but he’d like to try.

The end of the world looks a lot like the beginning of another, it turns out.

The light fades to a soft twilight, the moon emerging lazily from behind the clouds. They’re out of time.

“You go ahead,” he says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Violet slices the pad of her finger open. She presses her hand to the doorway and the edges of the door light his vision gold. Aleksander watches her go.

He is always watching her go. He sees her meandering along a river path with explosions of light behind her, walking down a pavement in Prague, striding across a dead city, courage in every step. And now, with moonlight glinting in her hair, she’s so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her.

Part of him yearns to run after her. It would be an easy choice—to follow her down whatever path she chooses. He’s spent a lifetime following in other people’s footsteps. And who is he without his scholar’s tattoo, his quest, his mistress? Who is he without Violet Everly?

Nothing, a voice whispers. But for the first time, the word sits companionably in his head, a curiosity. He says it out loud, and although there’s no one to hear him say it, the question lingers in the air all the same. For now, he decides he can live with it, as he learns to live without everything else.

To be nothing is to be remade, after all.

CHAPTER

Fifty-Seven

ON A FROSTYspring morning, the Everly brothers exit their ramshackle house. Gabriel adjusts his sunglasses to account for the sun’s bright glare, while Ambrose hauls a compact yet heavy suitcase to his car. It’s packed to the brim with all the books he couldn’t bear to leave behind. And although he’ll never tell Gabriel, there’s also the first fifty pages of a manuscript he’s been working on over the past few weeks.

So many places to go, he doesn’t even know where to start. He has an itinerary as long and detailed as the most comprehensive index, but the truth is, he’s thinking of abandoning it all to visit a few old friends. And there’s a Victorian collector’s library he’s heard about in Scotland with some ratherunusualproperties…

Ah well, best-laid plans, et cetera.

Gabriel pats the hood of his horrible orange car thoughtfully. “I would offer you a ride, but—”

“That thing is a menace,” Ambrose says. Then he pauses. “You’ll have a great time.”

“We’ll see,” Gabriel says uncertainly—an odd tone for his elder brother.

There’s a lot that Gabriel keeps quiet, but Ambrose hasn’t forgotten the letters that reached the house every year, the same handwriting across the envelope and the same address scrawled along the back.My dear Gabriel.It would be so wonderful to see you again.

“Marianne should have been here with us,” Gabriel says suddenly.

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