Page 26 of The City of Stardust

VIOLET PACES DOWNthe hallway of a house she doesn’t know, surrounded by people she doesn’t recognise, from a world that she barely understands. She was upset before, when the scholars had talked about her mother with the kind of familiarity that she’d only ever dreamed about. But the hard, tight knot of anger in the pit of her stomach is growing with every step, pushing out any other feeling.

Ask your uncles. As though she hasn’t been asking them for years. All the secrets they’ve been so desperate to keep from her.

Violet finds them arguing quietly in a dark hallway, far from the revels in the main part of the house. Gabriel’s expression is thunderous, but it’s the shadows on Ambrose’s face that unnerve her the most. A second later, she catches it for what it is:fear.

“So that’s it, then,” Gabriel is saying.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Ambrose says. “We should never have asked Violet to come.”

“Then Adelia wouldn’t have invited us, and by the time we saw Penelope again, it would be too late.”

Ambrose pinches the bridge of his nose. “She was never going to give us more time, Gabe. We were lucky enough to get what we did.”

“We had to at least try—unless you have a better idea, little brother?”

“There must be something else we can offer her. If you would just give me a minute to think—”

“You’ve had more than a goddamn minute. You’ve hadnine years. And what the hell do we have to show for it?” Gabriel’s expression darkens further. “If we had talked to Violet sooner—”

“But you didn’t talk to me.”

Violet steps forward, unable to contain herself any longer. The fury that’s simmered in her all night roils in her veins. At every step, they have lied to her. But she had no idea how far it went.

If she’d never met Aleksander, if she’d never known about the scholars—would she have remained in the dark forever?

“You asked me to come, knowing that they would talk about Marianne. I wasbait, and you didn’t even tell me why.” Her voice breaks, and she’s all the more furious for it. “Marianne knew these scholars. So she went to Fidelis? Is that it? Is that why you lied to me—because you didn’t think I could handle the truth?”

Ambrose glances uneasily down the hallway. “Why don’t we talk about this at home. We can—”

Violet cuts him off. “Now. Or I’ll find someone else here to ask.”

Ambrose exchanges another desperate look with Gabriel.

“We were going to have to tell her eventually, little brother,” Gabriel says.

“Do you really want to know?” Ambrose asks quietly.

She swallows. “I do.”

They turn to her, so familiar she’d known them by their silhouettes alone in this dark corridor. But tonight, they seem like strangers.

“What does this have to do with Penelope?” she asks, a little more nervously than she intended.

Ambrose sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “As long as there have been Everlys, there has been Penelope,” he begins slowly. “But it’s more complicated than that. Our family are bound to her. We owe a debt.”

“Our blood,” Gabriel says, holding out his hand like an offering.

Violet has the brief but dizzying sensation of submerging into a dream. Of pinching herself and feeling the pain dissolve because there is no pain in sleep. But she remembers the way Penelope had looked at her, with such terrible hunger in her smile.

“Every generation, she takes the one of us with the most talent. The one who can manipulate the scholars’ star-metal,” Ambrose adds, seeing her confusion. “It doesn’t work for all of us. I haven’t got a drop of it in me—I wouldn’t be able to walk between worlds.”

“I can,” Gabriel says unexpectedly. “But Marianne was the gifted one of us—and too powerful for the scholars to ignore. Not when so much of their city relies on their damn talent.” He shrugs. “So Penelope trained her.Sheis supposed to be the next of us.”

“Penelope is older and more dangerous than any of us can fathom. There’s a lot we don’t know,” Ambrose admits. “But we made a pact. We promised each other—myself, Gabriel, and your mother—that the Everly line would end with us. The suffering would stop. Penelope would stop.”

“Then Marianne met your father, whoever the hell he was. Didn’t speak to us for two years, until she turned up on our doorstep with you,” Gabriel snarls. “She was always selfish, even when we were kids. Whatever she wanted, she took. And—”

“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, Gabe,” Ambrose says, a warning note in his tone. “None of our hands are clean.”

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