Page 110 of The City of Stardust

“So this is the curse,” Violet says.

“Adebt, Violet Everly. And do I ask for too much? Am I unreasonable to expect what I’m owed?” She spreads out her hands like scales weighing judgement. “And here I am, treated with such achoice. Asacrifice of the new and the old. Besides, I would not drag innocents into this debt of yours.”

“But you killed all those people.”

Penelope lifts her chin. “That is not debt. It is survival. I’m sure you understand that, at least.”

But Violet shakes her head. Even an entire world away, she still wakes up in the middle of the night with blood seared across her vision, nightmares that leave a scream stuck in her throat.

Penelope arches an eyebrow. “We are not so dissimilar, you and I. You have tried your utmost to refuse your fate—consorting with criminals, theft, impersonation, bribery—and you would do yet more. After all, would you be here if it were otherwise?”

“You killedchildren,” Violet says. “You can’t justify that to me.”

“Because of you, Johannes Braun is dead. Tamriel is dead. Erriel is dead. Aleksander will bear his scars forever, because you persuaded him that you were too important for our rules.”

Violet bites her lip.

“I will offer you a deal,” Penelope says. “If you do not present yourself to me at dawn, I will return to your house. I will start with your uncles. Then it will be your café friends. Then every scholar who ever helped you, every traitor amongst our ranks. Oh yes, I know all about Caspian Verne and his band of renegades.”

Violet doesn’t rise to the bait, even though she knows this is no bluff. The door is on Penelope’s side of the city, wide open for her to use. Violet is here, tonight, precisely because of that.

“And if I go with you?” she asks.

Penelope eyes her coolly. “Then I am done. I will leave them all unharmed. Aleksander will rebuild the reveurite door for me, and you will be sacrificed on its altar. I will return home.” She closes her eyes briefly. “Long have I awaited my brethren.”

Violet flinches at Penelope’s use ofsacrificed. But she tries to move past it.

“Forever,” she says firmly. “No more terrorising my family.”

“Terrorising, is it?” Penelope arches her eyebrow. “Note that your family line could have ended generations ago. Note that I could havesought revenge. Instead, I have only taken an Everly from every generation, no more, as was within my right.”

A god’s sense of justice, Violet thinks, is a terrible thing to behold.

“But yes,” Penelope continues. “I will forget the Everly name.”

“And Aleksander stays out of this,” she says. “You’ll leave him alone.”

“It’s up to him whether he leaves with me. Even you cannot control the tides.”

“He won’t go with you.”

Penelope laughs. “You are a fleeting occupation. A wilful act of rebellion, nothing more. I can offer Aleksandereverything. When there is nothing left to distract him, who do you think he will turn to? There is no one else who understands him better.”

“And yet he left you.”

Penelope’s mouth curls into a snarl. Shadows around her flare. It all vanishes just as quickly, but Violet has to steel herself not to back away.

“A distraction, Violet. But he will come with me in the end.” She pauses. “Still, for the sake of our deal, I will not force him. You have my word.”

“On all of it?”

“I always keep my promises.” Penelope smiles in the darkness, her eyes glittering. “There is a cost to survival, Violet Everly. It is just a matter of fine-tuning the price.”

Aleksander pretends not to notice when Violet climbs out of bed in the middle of the night, though the hollow absence next to him is impossible to ignore. His body is damp with a sheen of sweat; he’s not used to sharing a bed with anyone, and the additional warmth is startling. There was a time when he thought that an extra body would protect him against his nightmares. But really, it’s just added a new dimension to the gauntlet of horrors his mind runs through on nights like tonight.

His dreams are always fragmented, snapshots of his life played out with hyperreal intensity, while his stomach churns with tension. Because he knows where it all leads. He always knows.

Aleksander is seven, and walking into the scholars’ tower for the first time. Penelope’s hands are on his shoulders, steering him forward. The thrill of possibility clutched in his small fists.

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