Page 99 of The City of Stardust

His nose is slightly crooked, his eyes a deep hazel. Broad-shouldered, with the robust strength of someone who makes a living with his hands. He’s not beautiful—in fact, far from it—yet there is something about him that gives her pause.

That feeling behind her heart is there again.

“They told me you stopped coming during the day,” he says, and his voice is the sound of wood crackling, or water hissing over coals.

He knows she’s been pausing here every night to look at his windows. Embarrassment floods through her, and to disguise it, she straightens to her fullest height, her wings shedding sparks. This is her fault, she supposes, for letting her curiosity get the best of her.

“I didn’t wish to scare off your customers,” she says, a little haughty.

He shrugs. “They are made of stronger stuff than that.”

For a long moment, they look at one another, mortal man and star. There is still time for all of this to change, time for another future to spool out in front of her. To sever the thread and sidestep a future of regrets and anguish, of a city in ashes. Of everything that happens next.

Then he holds out his hand—calloused and firm, dusted with freckles—and smiles at her.

“Ever Everly,” he says by way of introduction.

“Astriade, daughter of Nemetor,” she replies.

It’s the smile that undoes her.

“Would you like to come in?” he asks.

She takes his hand.

CHAPTER

Forty-Seven

ADEAD WORLD ISnever really dead. Even when the stars vanish in a great exodus, leaving an inky night that swallows the sky. Even when the sound of silence is a terrible thing to listen to in a city that once groaned with noise.

But it’s not quite silence, is it? There are the birds that soar over bare roof rafters, egrets and jackdaws and scruffy brown scraps that go by a multitude of names calling joyfully to each other. There are the nocturnal animals whose claws scrape over cobblestones, lifting their gazes to the two pale moons impressed against a violet sky. There are the trees that stretch upwards, overgrown and languorous, from leaf-strewn courtyards, extending gracefully through balconies and walkways. And below them, the ferns that unfurl in dark, damp corners that might still bear cracked tiles in parched colours, or spongey wooden slats engraved with toothy chisel marks.

Life, persistent and predictably stubborn, goes on. Close your eyes and the stars might not sing in this hushed city of dust and dreams, but there’s still singing nonetheless.

Even if there’s just one voice left.

Violet wakes with a dull pain lancing through her chest. She opens her eyes to a crumbling ceiling playing host to a variety of green plant matter. The light against the leaves is a soft purple hue—perhaps coming through a stained-glass window. Beneath her, a firm surface that could be a bed, but also the floor.

Gingerly, she sits up, becoming aware of the bandages around her torso, as well as the tightness around her chest every time she breathes in. It hurts like a weeks-old wound.

Did she do it? Did she cross over?

The door bangs open and Violet flinches. For a second she sees roiling smoke, wings, and her heart stops. Then the shadows settle into the background, as a man walks through the door, carrying an open book in one hand and a chewed pencil in the other.

The man’s head almost scrapes the ceiling, he’s so tall. And though he’s not what Violet would describe as a handsome man, his arms are corded with muscle. He walks with a leonine grace, in measured strides that swallow distance. His eyes are ringed with gold, unnaturally bright.Astral,she thinks and tries to scramble away. Then the pain in her chest flares and she gasps.

“Be still,” he commands. “The wound won’t reopen, but it will hurt.”

Apart from his eyes, there are no other indications of astral-hood. But there’s still something about his features that makes her scrutinise him more carefully. A dull silver ring dangles from a chain around his neck, an inscription wrapped around the inside of the band. It winks at her as he bends to examine her bandages and tuts.

“Foolish, foolish,” he says. “No need to spill so much.”

“Who are you?” she asks. “I have to know—where did I—”

He cuts her off with a stern shushing gesture, prodding at her wounds instead. He makes her submit to a lengthy examination, after which he must be satisfied because he hands her a threadbare shirt with as many colours as there are patches. As Violet pulls it over her head, it strikes her that she’s not cold. The air is humid and thick with the scent of greenery. And if it wasn’t for the strange violet hue of light, she could easily convince herself she’s been dumped in some tropical paradise.

The man potters about the room, half muttering and half singing as he sweeps and sorts. Violet uses the opportunity to take stock of her situation. From the look of the room, she’s in some kind of workshop, with long tables more suited to craftwork than a makeshiftoperating table. Dried herbs hang from the ceiling in bushels, and there’s an entire wall devoted to shelves of jars in every possible shape and size. While some are empty, others contain oddities, like a single leaf, or hundreds of glass beads, or glowing golden liquid that seems to swirl of its own accord. More than a few are murky, with no clues to the object suspended within. And everything is bathed in that hue of amethyst light, though she can’t pinpoint the source.

---