Page 70 of The City of Stardust

She crashes to the floor, pain shooting up her jaw as her chin collides with hard stone. Her teeth rattle in her skull.

A man lurches forward, still masked from the party. Something glimmers in his hand. A shard of reveurite, sharp as a dagger. He points it at Violet, the tip wavering inches from her. She scrambles backwards, but there’s nowhere to go.

“Who dares broach our sanctuary?” Erriel says.

“I come for a boon, cousin of mine,” the man says, and points a long, skeletal finger at Violet.

Behind the mask, the man’s eyes are heavily shadowed, and there is a peculiar metallic smell, like something burning. When he speaks, his words roll in his mouth, as though it’s painful to talk.

Erriel tilts her head to the side. “Cousin? You are mistaken.”

He slides off his suit jacket and wrenches at his shirt. Buttons pop as he shucks it to the floor like a second skin.

“See,” he whispers. “I am just like you.”

His bare chest ripples with hundreds of scars, dappling his skin like feathers. Mottled black creeps up his torso, wrapping itself around the ribs that jut outwards. But something else is pulling outwards from his skin, too: spikes like sharp petals, glimmering with the telltale sheen of reveurite. One of them is broken, a jagged line that oozes dark and viscous, to match the shard in his hand.

“You’re not well,” Violet says, trying to placate him. “If you would just—”

“I saw you in New York. I hunted you down in Vienna,” he says. “But I was too late. I was always too late. And what I had to do… The sacrifices I made…”

Johannes Braun. An awful terror slides though Violet’s stomach.

“I am sick, yes,” he says, “but I will be well again soon.” He closes his eyes, swaying on his feet. “I have had the dream, cousin. I hear the song. I hear… glory.”

Erriel brings her staff to the ground, and it cracks like a gunshot. The light from her spear burns, and Violet has to shield her eyes from its glare.

“You are an abomination,” Erriel hisses. “No mortal creature walks the earth like you. You are no astral.”

“A debt is owed,” he slurs. “I will be a god.”

Then he slashes the shard across Erriel’s throat.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Five

ASCREAM CLEAVES VIOLET’Sthoughts in two.

Erriel’s mouth makes a small “oh” as the man rips out the reveurite shard. Golden liquid spills from her throat, staining the floor. The light around her shudders, throwing a corona around them.

The man peels off his mask stiffly, revealing a face black with gangrene, his lips hypothermic violet. Frost clings to his eyelashes. He shivers convulsively, waves of pain crossing his face.

“A debt… owed.”

We are undone! We agonise!

Erriel’s wings fold in around her as she sinks down, colour seeping away to a terrifying mortal flush. Her staff falls out of her hand. It hits the floor with barely a whisper, dissolving into sparks that quiver across the ground—then vanish.

The silver door splits with a jagged screech. Spidery fissures gather in the rock.

The way to Marianne, disappearing.

Violet darts towards the door, but the man swings the shard towards her, slashing at her sleeve. Pain wells sharply on her arm.

“So long… since I have been warm,” the man whispers, first in English and then in another language Violet doesn’t recognise.

Erriel looks up at her, her golden irises fading to dark.We are so cold, Violet Everly.

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