Page 105 of The City of Stardust

“You lied to me,” he says, his voice breaking. “I would have done anything for you, beenanyonefor you—”

It shames him to even think it, but there was a time where, had he been told to steal a child, he would have done it unquestioningly and not looked back. For Penelope, he would have bloodied his own hands, drunk the vial, followed in Yury’s footsteps if that’s what she wished. Anything… and yet he can’t stand aside to let Penelope take Violet.

In this, he cannot,will notbe her blade.

“I gave you everything, Aleksander,” she snarls. “You were just an orphaned boy, no family or future to speak of.Igave you that future.Imade you what you are.”

And he almost believes it. Almost.

Maybe he really would have amounted to nothing. Maybe he would have spent a short life in misery, as she claims. But he might have thrived, too. And he’ll never know what that Aleksander would have looked like. Whether he would have committed so many sins to hold on to a future he so desperately wanted.

Whether he would have been happy, instead, with a glorious blank canvas before him.

“I keep my promises,” Penelope continues. “Always. And yet you accusemeof deception. Did you know that Ambrose Everly offered me a deal, ten years ago? And Ever Everly centuries before that?”

She starts to walk along the perimeter, and Aleksander follows, feeling as though something monstrous has slithered into his ribcage. Violet had vaguely mentioned something about Ambrose, and she’d told him the story of the great Ever Everly and the origins of her family’s curse. But he’s never considered it as a debt before, as though it’s possible to tally the weight of a soul.

“I just want to understand,” he says, and he hates how he sounds like he’s begging. But that’s exactly what he’s doing. If there was a chance that this was some awful mistake, or a problem to wrap his head around, a case of misplaced vengeance—

He would rather any reason, any excuse, than this cruelty.

“You have Elandriel. You can go home,” he continues. “Can’t I help you do that? I might not be your assistant anymore”—he chokes on the word—“but I’m still… I would do it for you.”

“Aleksander, I taught you better than that. You see this door?” She gestures to the largest doorway, the ruins barely holding together the echo of what it once was. “Once it is rebuilt,thatis where my home lies. And thanks to Everly blood, it has been locked away for the past millennia.”

Penelope stops at the edge of the dais, where the ground tips away into nothing. From here, they can see straight to Ever’s workshop, and the glassy lake behind it.

“I knew he lived. Because I gave my word. A soul for… everything.” She stares at the workshop, and he has the feeling that she’s seeing through time, to a history he has no knowledge of. “But look at this pathetic boundary he has set up. Look at how he cowers in his shell. Who do you think is at fault here?”

Aleksander’s hands are clenched so tightly that he feels a sharp sting in his palms as his nails draw blood.

“You wish to know the truth, my assistant. So I will give it to you.”

Suddenly he very much doesn’t want to know, would rather have asked anything else. But Penelope continues, relentless.

“Without an Everly soul, I will never be able to return home. That is what is owed, and that is what must be paid.” She looks up at the darkening sky. “I am astral, after all. And if they wish me to be devastation, so be it.”

CHAPTER

Fifty

ONE DAY GOESby, then another. Another.

The sun rises and falls against a permanently tinted sky. Ever Everly weeps and rants in his workshop, with all the frustrated fury of a poltergeist. When it rains, the water seeps in everywhere, beading on the porous walls. Long hours are spent tending to the makeshift farm that has thrived on abandoned land, or collecting water from a well in the courtyard. On the other side of the reveurite panes, a shadow stalks the perimeter, looking for a chink in its impervious armour.

They are safe. They are trapped.

Violet is slowly losing her mind.

Today, Violet is already awake and in the workshop before sunrise. She won’t spend another week here, waiting for the worst.

“You have to finish this,” she says, as soon as Ever walks in. “You have to undo the curse.”

Ever ignores her. But his conversation with himself increases in volume, which means he heard her. Violet pursues him through his chores, half a step behind him. He spends much of it rearranging the murky bottles that line his shelves, turning them this way and that as though it would make a difference to their contents.

After half an hour of this, Violet finally snaps. She snatches the nearest vial and flings it to the floor. The sound of shattering glass is unexpectedly satisfying.

“That was very rare gilt weed,” Ever says accusatorially.

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