Page 30 of The City of Stardust

Heart in his throat, he reaches for it.

There is a jagged crevasse on the fringe of the mountain range that rings Fidelis, unsoftened even by snow. To come here is strictly forbidden; the ruins are dangerous, and more than one life has been lost to the icy abyss, as crumbling paths give way. What remains clusters on precipitous cliffsides that sheer off to a steep drop wreathed in fog. Every so often, a building falls into the crevasse, succumbing to time at last. Beyond—nothing except the horizon. It’s as though the ancient city remains were cleaved in two, leaving absence where land should exist.

Penelope stands on the remnants of a bridge, staring at the edge where it crumbles into oblivion. Underneath her feet, the stone has been worn smooth by time. The wind howls around her, glittering with the porous haze between one world and another.

The city is on the precipice of change. She feels it like pressure in the atmosphere, squeezing down on them. The people of Fidelis have grown complacent in their little refuge, replacing history with legend and then fairy tale. There is nothing left to remind them who they once were: travellers, warriors, worshippers of the gods that walked amongst them. Nothing to remind them of their true home, so close and yet so far from this pale imitation. If she closes her eyes and outstretches her palm, she can almost imagine the whole of the half: the city that it should be, and not the fragment that it is.

Then there is Marianne Everly.

Marianne, who stole decades’ worth of research, and vanished like a thief in the night, taking the last possible answers to a centuries-old problem with her.

A key. Such a small thing, and yet how Penelope’s life has unravelled because of it.

But Penelope has spent generations watching the Everlys fight and die for one another. She knows what would drive a mother to leave her child, and what would compel her home. And if the Everly brothers still remain in the dark on her innermost secrets—well, that is no terrible thing.

Let Violet be the bait that brings her mother out of hiding, along with her research. Let Penelope devour them both.

Marianne Everly may have turned her back on Fidelis, and the promises she made.

But she cannot outrun a god forever.

In the alleyway behind the café, Violet waits for Aleksander. He’s supposed to be here by now. Maybe he’s running a little late. She runs her hands nervously across the brick wall, thinking of her fairy-tale book with the street names she’s worked so hard to memorise. Every time she closes her eyes, her mind conjures up a city before her, leaning on everything she’s gleaned from her conversations with Aleksander.

She deliberately doesn’t think about Ambrose and Gabriel. She’s ignored Ambrose’s half-hearted attempts to apologise when theyboth know very well he isn’t sorry at all. Gabriel has already left, either too cowardly to face her, or too indifferent to stay.

The sky shifts from a glorious winter blue to pastel orange and pink as the last of the day’s sunlight washes away. The moon rises slowly, stark against the darkness. Violet paces up and down to stave off the cold.

Pink to violet to indigo. Violet starts to shiver, but she keeps waiting. Even at midnight, as she reluctantly starts to wheel her bicycle out of the alleyway, she keeps an eye out for a tall silhouette—Aleksander rushing from whatever has kept him so occupied.

But he never arrives.

CHAPTER

Fifteen

THE NEXT DAY, Violet waits for Aleksander to meet her at the café, but he doesn’t appear. Or the day after. She starts to worry that maybe she said something—or that she’s somehow misconstrued their friendship. He isn’t beholden to her, after all. He might easily have changed his mind again.

And there’s so little she knows,reallyknows about him.

On her lunch break, she sits at the table she’s come to think of as theirs—with the excellent view of the river—and morosely pours sugar into her coffee. Outside, it’s pouring with rain and the window is foggy with condensation.

A shadow falls over her table, as a tall, slim woman sits down opposite her.

“Hello, little dreamer,” Penelope says. “My, haven’t you been busy.”

Penelope might not be wearing a chiffon dress winking with jewels, but Violet recognises her immediately. She glances around to make sure no one else is listening. But the café is bustling as ever, and no one even thinks to look their way. Her muscles coil with tension.

“Where’s Aleksander?” she asks immediately.

Penelope doesn’t answer. Instead, she surveys the scene around them, toying with a milk stirrer. Not for the first time, it occurs to Violet that Penelope looks exactly as she did the day she walked into the Everly house. Immutable.

“I see why he liked to come here,” Penelope says. “It has a certain charm, I suppose, in its ordinariness. It must be an easy place todiscuss all sorts of things. After all, what’s one singular secret amongst so much gossip?”

Worry flutters in Violet’s stomach. “Where is he?”

“He won’t be returning, I’m afraid.”

“Then why—”

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