Page 108 of The City of Stardust

“Now you know,” he says.

It doesn’t absolve him for what he’s done. The before Aleksander, who believed the worst possible outcome was to be an assistant forever, is gone. But having admitted the worst to Violet, he feels, impossibly, a little lighter.

He stands up, the boat rocking precariously. Before he can change his mind, he peels off his shirt and dives head first into the lake. The water closes over him, pure and sweet.

CHAPTER

Fifty-Two

FOR THE RESTof the day, Violet lingers by the lakeside. She watches Aleksander add the finishing touches to the boat, marvelling at how deft his hands are. He’s still dripping wet from his unexpected dive into the lake, and his shirt clings to his back.

If only she’d known. She would have been kinder. She wouldn’t have asked so much of him. She would have fought for him, in that church.

She falls asleep to awful dreams of dark rooms and Penelope’s smile, terrible to behold.

Halfway through another sequence of nameless horrors, someone shakes her awake. Violet rouses slowly to Aleksander’s hands on her shoulders.

“There’s something I want you to see,” he says. “Are you up for a midnight walk?”

Violet would very much like to stay in bed, but she nods anyway. Five minutes later, they’re both in the boat, Aleksander steering them gently into the city.

Every house lies dark behind their windows, their walls muddied by shadows. Instead of making their way up to the dais, Aleksander veers left, through a series of narrow alleyways. The last one looks like a dead end, but Violet notes the almost imperceptible gap between two enormous ferns, and a dark hallway beneath. She glances at Aleksander, but for once, he doesn’t seem fazed by the long stretch of pitch-black corridor.

“Come on, we’re almost there.”

The hallway inside is cramped and freezing, but a thin shaft of light appears at the end. Someone has carved out an enormous dome, and every word echoes. Though half of it has caved in, she catches thin spindles of moonlight flashing through precise holes in the ceiling. She blinks, and sees stars.

Aleksander sweeps his torch over the room, and reveurite glitters back at them. It bursts from the ground in the centre of the room, like a splash made solid, almost as high as the ceiling. It’s more reveurite than she’s ever seen.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asks.

“I do,” she says quietly.

Though it feels like lifetimes ago, she’s never forgotten the boy with the fuzzy collar and grey sea-glass eyes. A galaxy at her kitchen table.

He sets a dark marble down in the middle of the room, right in the centre of the splash. As soon as it makes contact with reveurite, it lights up, dazzling them both. Violet throws one hand over her face, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

When they do, she gasps.

“Oh, Aleksander,” she breathes.

The marble projects pinpricks of light over the dome, perfectly aligning with the sky painted on the remains of the ceiling. Every star is accounted for. Galaxies cluster overhead, light blown wide into constellations. Golden sparkles rain from the ceiling like falling stars.

Aleksander fiddles with the marble, and the pinpricks shift, revealing an entirely different sky dappled across the ceiling. Different constellations. Differentworlds.

Violet wanders through the projection, letting her hands play over the light-galaxies, which trail like phosphorescent waves in her wake. Aleksander leans against one of the reveurite pillars, close enough to touch Violet. Against the light, his face is shadowed, unreadable.

Something in her heart seizes, and her hands fall to her side.

“I’m sorry,” she bursts out. “What I said to you—I shouldn’t have. I was—You know how much my uncles mean to me—”

Aleksander lets out a strangled laugh. “You, apologising to me?”

Suddenly, he stops and falls to his knees, as though staggered by a blow. Firefly stars hover around them in suspension.

“Aleksander—”

He cuts her off. “I betrayed your secrets. I told Penelope everything. I let you believe we were friends, that I was worth trusting—that I was worth anything at all. I had the goddamned sword in my hands, Violet! And yet I still couldn’t act. Because of me, you nearlydied. Everything I’ve done…” His palms curl into fists. “It’s unforgivable.”

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