Page 100 of The City of Stardust

Violet watches the man carefully. Now that she’s certain he’s no longer astral, there’s something about the way he moves that reminds her of someone. She half closes her eyes and in his blurry silhouette, she realises who she’s seeing: Ambrose. It’s almost the exact same walk, step for step, full of a grace that belies the man’s size.

She tries to get up from the table. “Please, who are you?”

“A ghost, a wraith—nothing more,” he says dismissively.

“I meant your name,” she says.

He turns to her, his eyes blazing. “Who areyou, to demand my name?”

In two swift strides, he’s by her side. He presses a thumb to a cut on her forehead, still bleeding, and licks it. Violet is too stunned to be horrified. He examines his thumb with a clinical detachment, then looks at Violet again.

“Astral blood. Yes. No?” His face is suddenly inches from hers, virtually nose to nose. “Who was your mother?”

“Not an astral,” Violet says immediately.

He turns away. “And your father?”

This time, she doesn’t have an answer. For all her wondering about her mother, she hasn’t thought about her hypothetical father in years. Not since Ambrose became such a fixture in her life. She assumed her father was someone Marianne had picked up in Fidelis.

But an astral?

“The pool has been refreshed. Talent is strong.” He sees her expression. “It happens. We are not confined to who we love.”

He touches the silver ring around his neck.

“Though it is ill-advised to love an astral,” he adds.

Violet peers at him. Again, she has the feeling that something is tipping into place, even as the rest of her knows it has to be impossible.

A stupid name for a clever man.

“Who are you?” she persists.

He stares at her, the gold rings around his irises stark against his hazel eyes. “I am Ever Everly. The question is, who are you?”

Violet stares at him. She can’t believe it.

He blinks at her with his gold-ringed irises. “I asked you a question.”

You’re supposed to be dead, Violet thinks, at the precise moment Aleksander stumbles into the room. Their gazes lock. His eyes are bloodshot, as though he hasn’t slept in days. Without warning, he gathers her into a hug that sends every single nerve ending in her chest fizzing with pain.

“Finally,”he says, his voice muffled against her shoulder. “I thought you were gone—I went down to find you, but—”

Violet makes a sound halfway between a squeak and a wheeze, and he quickly lets go. Vaguely she remembers the decision to stab herself through the chest—a decision that seems insane now—then Aleksander’s shout, just before the explosion of pain. The rest is a blur, when it’s there at all: the sense of being carried; blood between her fingers that might have been her own, but could easily have been another’s; Aleksander’s voice in a litany of urgent pleading and panic.

The rest is only a deep, endless sleep that frightens her with its finality.

“You came back for me,” she says, dazed. “But the stairs—”

He glances away from her. “You were gone too long. I was worried.”

From the way he tenses, it’s obvious it cost him dearly to go down into the dark after her. And though she knows she shouldn’t trust him—or forgive him—she finds herself profoundly grateful that he’d come for her, not knowing what horrors might have awaited.

“My question still stands, stranger,” Ever says.

“I’m Violet,” she says, then hesitates.

How does she begin to explain herself to an ancestor that should, by all rights, be dust in the ground? There’s nothing in her fairy-tale book that prepared her for this.

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