Page 107 of The City of Stardust

“We all owe debts,” he says softly.

“You don’t owe a debt to her! You don’t owe her anything! After what she did to you—and don’t tell me that wasn’t her,” she says, furious. “Don’t tell me you deserved it.”

All those scars on his back. The naked terror she’d seen on his face in the scholars’ tower, just for the want of a little light.

He shrugs, but she can tell even that casual gesture costs him. “And you deserve this?”

The silence stretches long between them.

She stares hard at the ground, willing herself not to cry or scream. She knows she is being monstrously unfair to Aleksander. It’s not his fault they’re in this situation, whatever he’s done to her in the past. It’s not her fault, either, but itisstill her problem.

Finished with the patch, Aleksander pushes the boat into the water and climbs in. Violet listens to the creak of wood, the kiss of waves against the hull.

“Do you know, I could kill for a cup of coffee right now,” she says.

Aleksander pats the seat next to him in the boat. After a beat, she clambers in, the boat dipping under her weight. Their knees bump together as she settles herself.

He fishes in his pocket and pulls out something slightly damp and fuzzy with wear, before handing it to her. A smudged card, almost falling to pieces, with ten stamps. One for every single week Aleksander unravelled an entire world for her, sitting at a table in a café.

“It’s on me,” he says.

She turns it over and over in her hands. How far it must have travelled, to end up here.

“I said you don’t owe me an explanation,” she says. “About the scars.”

It’s the closest she can manage to an apology. And it’s not enough, but he nudges her with his elbow in a forgiving way.

“I don’t,” he agrees. “But I would like to give it to you, if that’s okay.”

CHAPTER

Fifty-One

ALEKSANDER TAKES Adeep breath, willing his hands to stay steady and his voice to remain even. It is so easy to reach back and pluck the strings of memory. Because the door is always there, waiting to be opened.

This is the day Aleksander’s world fell apart. The lightning-strike split of before and after. He recounts it as though it happened to someone else—and in a way, he’s not wrong.

There is a long walk down a set of stairs, accompanied by the grim-faced night attendants with their loops of keys and hand-stitched vows of silence. There are the gates that have to be unlocked and the lamps that have to be lit, because to go down here is to be plunged into a void, from which there is little chance of return. The air tastes like metal and blood.

Aleksander listens to his verdict with a dry-mouthed, dead-weight fear. He is not a blade, being sharpened again. He is a blade, discarded. Unfit for purpose.

Penelope says he is nothing, and so he becomes nothing.

He doesn’t struggle when the night attendants tie his wrists to a metal frame, even though his whole body tenses at the preparations behind him. The sound of the whip dragged along the floor makes him suck in a tight breath. It licks through the air. It lands.

Then there is pain. Only pain.

Time passes. The scrape of the lock in the darkness is a terror he will never be able to describe. Sometimes, it is the night attendantsdispensing food. Sometimes, it is the soft slither of leather, and they dispense more justice instead.

He has no idea how long he spends down there. Only that when he is finally hauled upright, he can’t open his eyes against the light, and even then it flares painfully behind his eyelids. There is no firm hand to guide him, no one to tell him where he is, or how many people watch as he’s marched out of the scholars’ tower forever.

He hopes for a miracle. He hopes for death.

But he lives, and his body reshapes itself around his new circumstances, even if his mind keeps returning to the scholars’ tower. He works in the forges, where they have taken him in begrudgingly, because even outcast talent is still useful. And later, he shears the long curls from his head like the other forge bearers. His flesh heals and the pain fades, but the scars remain.

And then Penelope summons him to the tower, to offer him redemption. The rest—well, Violet knows all too well.

In the boat, he watches the water ripple outwards, casting waves on the other side of the lake. He can hear her breathing, the shudder that travels up her chest.

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