Page 67 of The City of Stardust

“You must make an offering,” the man in the gold mask says.

The blade has already been wiped clean, and it gleams on the table. Violet hesitates, but only for a second. Then she slices the pad of her ring finger, and sharp pain blooms just long enough for her to squeeze out a drop of blood over the raised stone. Though it shouldsink into the porous rock, it rolls over the smooth surface and into the shallow channel, away to some subterranean destination.

Violet is unceremoniously ushered out, as the next scholar presents their hand to the gold-masked man. She has no choice but to mill around until most of the scholars are back at the party, their act of ritual already forgotten. The musicians start up a waltz, the tune echoing off the mountainside. Briefly, she laments the scholars’ fundamental lack of interest in their surroundings. Maybe this place is already well traversed for the scholars, a marvel dismissed as ordinary, but she can’t stop admiring the way the starlight glints off the floor, or the carved marble ivy twining up the pillars, as though stretching towards the sky.

Another world—and she’d crossed the threshold without a key, with barely a thought. How many other doors exist like this one, jealously guarded by the scholars? Or else abandoned, forgotten? She could take half a step and vanish to somewhere else entirely, out of Penelope’s grasping reach.

It’s a tempting thought.

With one careful eye on the crowd—the man in the gold mask is talking to a woman halfway across the courtyard—Violet slips back underneath the archway. She glances overhead, and the dappled pattern of feathers is the same as in Tamriel’s vision.

There, at the back of the cave, is the image of a woman carved into a wall, a light held proudly above her. Violet recognises her from the asteros cards: Erriel of the lost.

This has to be it.

Just as the vision had showed her, she places her hands on the wall, breath held. The rock grinds underneath her fingers. A narrow staircase unfolds, slippery with moisture, leading into darkness.Doors within doors,she thinks wondrously. She checks to make sure no one’s watching before she takes off her shoes; the last thing she wants to do is fall and break her leg.

Aleksander follows her. “I’m not sure we should be here.”

“I just need a moment,” she says.

Tamriel’s vision hasn’t been wrong so far.

“Violet, wait—” he says.

She’s already halfway down the stairs, but Aleksander’s footsteps behind her have stopped. She turns back on the staircase, puzzled.

“Aleksander?”

He stands frozen at the top, his face alabaster, as he clutches the banister with white-knuckled force. She glances behind her, but there’s nothing—only the darkness. Step by step, she makes her way back up to him and places a hand on his shoulder. His body is rigid underneath her palm.

“Look at me,” she says, pulling his gaze away from the dark staircase.

He breaks off from the staircase and leans against her, his forehead brushing the top of her head. She grasps his arms, steadying him. To anyone observing, it might look like a lovers’ embrace, stolen in the dark. But Violet recognises what it really is: fear.

Aleksander takes in a shuddering breath and she feels it tremble through her body. “I can’t go down there. I can’t.”

It’s just the dark, she almost says. But she remembers the darkness in Tamriel’s basement, and how tangible it had felt, like a living thing wrapped around her. How she’d spent the next few nights sleeping with the light on because it felt safer than waking up in the middle of the night to that strangled terror.

“I’ll go,” she says instead, handing him her mask. “It’s okay.”

It’s her quest, after all.

Reluctantly, she leaves him at the top of the stairs and descends again. The hewn stone walls shine with condensation, the channel running down alongside the steps. With the sluggish remains of the scholars’ blood, it unnerves her. It’s entirely possible that the blood is just symbolic, scholars playing pretend at sacrifice and ritual.

We would take but a morsel.

Maybe Aleksander knows something of that terror, too.

By the time her foot hits the bottom, the darkness is impenetrable, and the noise of the party has completely vanished. She feels her way forward, step by step, her heart pounding in her ears. Something rustles. A breeze—or a heavy breath. She fights the urge to scream.

“Hello?” Her voice reverberates as though she’s standing in a stadium.

A blinding light erupts, and sparks shower down. She throws her hands over her head to protect herself, but they land like kisses of sunlight on her skin. Her eyes readjust slowly to the outline of a woman. Enormous wings flare outwards, puncturing the darkness in golden shafts of light.

“Well met, Violet Everly,” the astral says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Yury watches Violet descend the staircase, his eyes shielded by a black mask glittering with onyx beads. No one has noticed the interlopers in this masquerade, too occupied by gossip and champagne. But he has, and wonders how anyone else can ignore how obviously they don’t fit in.

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