Page 111 of The City of Stardust

“Come, little dreamer,” she says decisively. “I have big plans for you.”

He is eleven, and already faster, defter, stronger than the other assistants. His hands are permanently inked with reveurite dust. With every new milestone of manipulation, Penelope is there, watching him carefully.

Thirteen, and in an unfamiliar room. A bright-eyed girl stares at him with undisguised suspicion, a challenge in her glare. Though he doesn’t know it then, the challenge is this: dare you stand in the world on your own?

Dare you stand in the world withouther?

Twenty-one, and he is walking down a long dark corridor, to an abyssal room of pain. A room that will split his life in two, a wound that will never heal.

“Without me, you are nothing,” Penelope says, her teeth gleaming white in the darkness. “And so I will unmake you.”

Violet, head bowed in a church, a sacrificial saint. The shadows growl with hunger; the silver sword swings.

He slides out of bed, still naked, and watches from the safety of the dark balcony as Violet crosses the courtyard. She thinks he doesn’t know that she is playing the same deadly game with Penelope. What isthisworth, in the light ofthat? What will you sacrifice to save yourself?Whowill you sacrifice?

It’s a game he has never been very good at, but he knows the rules nevertheless. And he is a bargaining chip in Violet’s hand. They all are. Is he worth her uncles’ lives? Is he worth her own?

Give me Violet Everly, and you will be forgiven.

He cannot be the blade. He won’t be the blade.

Aleksander watches Violet disappear into the darkness, and he makes a decision.

Violet retreats to Ever’s workshop, a single lamp already burning. Candlelight twinkles off the various bottles and vials, the gleam ofunfinished metal. Lifetimes of knowledge gathered here, all to be wasted in the hands of one man.

She sits on the edge of the bench, her head in her hands. She can’t face lying down next to Aleksander again, to pretend that tomorrow will be the same. Tomorrow, the clock will finally run down, and Penelope will exact her justice, in whatever form that takes. In whatever Violet decides.

She watches the wax burn low on the candles. Sand through an hourglass.

“They called me a clever man,” Ever says.

He stands in the doorway, a shadow save for the glow of his golden-ringed irises. He doesn’t even pretend he hasn’t been watching her. But then Violet knew he’d be there, keeping an eye on his precious wall. And the astral beyond it.

“They called me the man who walked with gods,” Ever continues, shaking his head. “At the time, I thought it was a fitting punishment. She could not leave unless she killed me on that altar.”

“And she wouldn’t?”

Ever looks at her bleakly. “By the end… we hated—oh, how we hated. But we could not kill each other. And for that, we hated ourselves, too.”

He tilts her wrist, so their forearms are parallel. The same veins running through their wrists, the same lifelines on their palms. Violet thinks of all the Everlys who have bled out in the name of Ever Everly and his hatred.

“I was young,” he says quietly. “I was angry.”

For a while, they sit in silence, amidst the chirp of nightlife. Violet closes her eyes. Here is her bloody truth, beyond myth and fairy tales: the Everlys, cursed by themselves. A doom of their own creation.

For a moment—just a moment—she feels a twinge of pity for Penelope.

“Could you kill her now?” she asks.

Ever hesitates. “I have not seen my wife in a long time.”

Hiswife. Of course. The silver ring that hangs from the chain on his neck.

“I loved her, you understand,” he says. “More than anything. More than the world. Even when I hated her, I loved her. It can be a terrible thing, to love so deeply.”

Violet twists her remaining bracelet around her wrist, the reveurite sparkling gold in the candlelight. It is all she has left, but how heavy it weighs on her. Maybe this is what truly makes them Everlys: the same fault line of memory and longing, compounded by stubbornness. Their fatal flaw, passed from generation to generation.

“I had a daughter, too,” he says, and now his voice takes on the timbre of memory, his gaze far away. “Her name… I don’t remember her name. Her smile was her mother’s. But her eyes—they were like mine, from before.” He shudders deeply. “I did not know she survived.”

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