Page 117 of The City of Stardust

His gaze is fixed on the house, but Ambrose can tell that his brother is far away, lost in a memory. Even now, he thinks he could squint and see Marianne barrelling out of the door, telling them to wait for her. Always the fearless leader of their trio. Would she have stayed, he wonders, if she knew how much grief she was leaving behind?

He still finds it hard to admit how much he misses her.

“Maybe now that Penelope’s gone, she’ll come back,” he says, though in his heart of hearts he doubts it.

“Pretty sure hell would freeze over first,” Gabriel says drily.

Ambrose sighs. “Probably.”

Though it didn’t stop him leaving a front-door key underneath one of the plant pots, or a letter on the hallway mat for her. Just in case she returns. Just in case.

“Is that everything?” Gabriel says.

Ambrose takes one last look at the house. He remembers the first time he’d returned here with Gabriel and Marianne, when the roof tiles were cracked and mossy, and the hedges were wild beasts of rampant overgrowth. An abandoned wreck, just one more line in a dossier of Everly assets. Even after decades of trying to wrangle the house into order, he’s still reminded of a slumbering dragon, untameable, as though the roof itself could peel apart into wings and take flight. Green shoots are already straining upwards from the flower beds.

“That’s everything,” he says.

Gabriel takes off his sunglasses and rubs his eyes. “Little brother, what am I going to do without you?”

“Oh, all kinds of terrible things, I’m sure,” Ambrose says.

They embrace tightly. Not goodbye forever—not like Marianne. But a goodbye, nonetheless.

“Violet says she’ll be back next year. So I’ll hold you to that,” Ambrose says, before sighing. “I hope she’s safe.”

“Worried? Surely not,” Gabriel says, then he sighs, too. “Wonder what she’s up to.”

Ambrose has a few guesses. The northern witches in their forest,the city by the effervescent sea. Or whatever she finds on the other side of those doors.

Despite his worry, he grins. “Adventure.”

With the inevitability of a tidal wave, news makes its way across the fractured network of the scholars. They converse with one another over once-in-a-lifetime meals at exclusive restaurants, in the winery of a newly restored château, cruising over the Atlantic in private aeroplanes. It’s the kind of news that needs to be imparted face to face—otherwise, it would be too easy to dismiss as gossip run wild. Even so, jaws drop at the revelation.She’s gone.

From the balcony of her Italian villa, Adelia Verne swirls wine around a glass. She takes a sip, and smiles. Perfection.

Not everything changes, not at first. There are still parties, still the same dance of secrets and influence and favours. Still threats, too, and the occasional mysterious disappearance, especially now that there is no one to keep them in check. Powerful players set long-held plans in motion, as they fight over the vacuum Penelope has left in her wake.

And maybe it’ll always be this way. Maybe the rot runs too deep.

It takes a rather long time to reach its destination, having been rerouted twice, but a letter finally lands on Caspian Verne’s desk over a month after its posting. Lately, he’s been drawn to a circle of menhirs near one of the Norwegian fjords. Local folklore is rife with elves who spirit away anyone foolish enough to approach the stone circle, and Caspian has more than a few theories to unpack before he’s finished here.

He’s pulling off his snow boots from a hike to the menhirs and back when he notices the letter on his desk. He examines it absentmindedly, his thoughts still amongst the stones. Then his attention catches on the handwriting, and that first line:I’m exploring the third option.

For five minutes, he reads the letter in absolute silence. Then again.

A smile breaks across his face.

In Fidelis, a handful of masters stand in the basement of the scholars’ tower, marvelling at the reveurite door. Most of them are newly minted; they wear fresh grief and smarting tattoos as evidence of how quickly the ground underneath their feet has shifted. There is no recovering the people they have lost, or the experience that vanished with them. The bloodstains on the floor will never come out.

But someone has to lead. There are too many questions, and no one left to answer them. So these masters—the ones who volunteered, against their misgivings, or perhaps with the hope of offering more balanced judgement than their predecessors—swallow their fear and stare down the door, with all the uncertainty and terror it holds. All its possibility.

Though it’s forever midnight in this basement, dawn is rising as, one by one, they slip through the door into a city of stardust.

In a faraway world, a woman with a heavy bag across her shoulders pauses to take in her surroundings. Her face is weathered and tanned from years of travelling under a hot sun. Although her hair is now mostly silver, there are still a few strands of hazel to match her eyes.

From a certain angle, she looks a lot like Marianne Everly.

She surveys the landscape, a distant look in her eyes. Perhaps she is recalling a rambling house and a little girl watching through an upper-floor window. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she is simply seeking the next marker of her long journey. But she pauses, all the same.

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