Page 104 of The City of Stardust

For the first few hours of the day, he simply sits alongside the doors, trying to tap into what the craftsmen must have felt before they embarked on this mission. For theywerecraftsmen, not astrals; he can see the delicate chisel marks on the stone, and a dappling he recognises as fingerprints from manipulating the reveurite. Tiny marks on each block of stone that would have once signalled which great master worked on it. He brings a notebook to make sketches and jot down notes, which he does meticulously.

But he also presses his hands against the ruins, trying to sense if there’s anything left that could tell him about where these doors once went, and if they might ever lead there again. He tries to imagine what the craftsmen must have been like: real flesh and blood people, with the brilliance to create inter-world travel, and the human hubris to assume it would be a gift to the city. Did they know who they were making the doors for? Did any of them have an inkling that this would be the start of everything, and also its end?

Truth be told, sometimes he doesn’t look at the doors at all. Sometimes he spends the heat of the afternoon underneath the cool shade of the knotty trees that have crept up from the lower tier, spreading wide fronds like welcome hands.

In Fidelis, amidst the scholars or the forge bearers, he’s never been alone. There’s always been some new task to concentrate on, something to berate himself over, or practise until his hands bleed. He has spent his life moving forward in pursuit of one goal: to be a scholar. To wear the proof on his skin that he is worthy.

But he failed the test. And he’ll never become a scholar now.

So it is a terrible weight of wanting that he carries with him up to the dais, to prod and examine in a way that would have simply been too painful in the scholars’ tower, where he’d watched everyone else with such bitter longing. Despite everything he’s learnt, the secrets and the lies, the damning cruelties it would have taken for him to rise to scholar and beyond… He will never regret giving that child back; he regrets what could have been. What the scholars could have made of him, if they’d lived up to the façade they presented.

He thinks about Violet, too, wondering if he’ll ever have the courage to share the extent of his shame—although whether it’s courage or selfishness, he’s not sure. He’s still dangerous to her, after all.

What do you want from me, Aleksander?Everything, he should have told her.

By the time Aleksander decides to pack up, the sun is setting, throwing prisms through the reveurite pane. He leans back and takes a big swig of water.

“Hello, Aleksander.”

Aleksander doesn’t whip around, even though every single fibre of his being demands it. He finishes his drink, takes a deep breath, and turns.

Penelope is on the other side of the reveurite boundary, her figure smudged by the pane. She looks surprisingly small against her surroundings, but she is wholly herself, as Aleksander has always known her. No shadowy wings, no claws. He expects her to scream at him, or—worse—to look at him with the cold fury that promises retribution for his errors. But she only smiles at him gently.

“Magnificent, aren’t they? Thousands of years of knowledge and craftsmanship, all brought together in a unifying edifice.”

He swallows. Even though he’s just drunk an entire bottle of water, his mouth is dry.

“Mistress,” he acknowledges.

Even now, he can’t call her anything else.

“They were extraordinary,” she continues. “The crowds, the merchants, the exchange of language and culture. I think it is fair to say that we were a destination unmatched.” She turns to gesture behind him, to a wide expanse of desert beyond the city’s borders. “That is where the scholars’ tower once lived. That is all we could save.”

Penelope walks along the barrier as though it’s a promenade. As though she could simply walk through if she chose.Hecan choose. It only took him a few days to understand the mechanics behind the barrier: a simple but effective infusion of reveurite and intent, fed by blood and centuries-strong willpower. But it’s a will he’s not bound to.

He could let her in, if she asked.

“Come closer, Aleksander. I wish to see your face.”

Automatically, he walks towards her. Only halfway across the dais does he realise what he’s doing, and by then, it’s too late to stop. He’s so close to the boundary he can hear the crackle of living energy coursing through the reveurite. Even through the violet glow, Penelope looks exactly as she’s done for every single day of his life: no laughter lines, no grey hairs shining through blonde—without the wear and tear of the world.

“This was not here when I left,” she says, almost but not quite touching the reveurite wall. “It is an abomination.”

“Can you blame him?” Aleksander says quietly.

He thought he knew fear. But this is centuries of deep, unyielding terror in physical form. He tries to imagine what would make him so desperate.If you went into that cold, dark room and never came out.

“You are hiding an atrocity behind your walls. And you are going to have to make a decision, my assistant.” She smiles so warmly he wonders if his ears are deceiving him, and they’re having a different conversation altogether.

“You could let us go,” he says, though even as he does so, he’s aware of how monumentally stupid he sounds.

“Oh, Aleksander,” Penelope says softly. “We are inextricably bound. I, alone, saw the great man you could become. No one else grasped your talent. No one else believed in your potential.”

This is so hard to disagree with because it’s true. He remembers the first time Penelope had taken him up to her quarters, and served him herself with tea and a hot meal. He remembers the way she had guided him through the notoriously complex archival system, how she had shielded him from the wrath of the other scholars. Every little kindness, every moment he’d felt the glow of her approval, he recalls.

“Do you really wish to return to nothing? Over a girl?”

In his mind, a fissure opens, swallowing him whole.

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