Page 43 of The City of Stardust

One drink couldn’t hurt. She knows to be careful.

“Sure,” she says, breaking into a smile. “I’d love to.”

Aleksander leads her to a tiny restaurant away from the tourist hotspots, cosy and intimate. He orders a bottle of wine in perfect German and they sit at a table close to the window, rain gathering on the windowpane. Violet studies him surreptitiously as she sips from her glass. He seems totally at ease here, with no sign of stumbling unfamiliarity. Confidence suits him, she thinks.

In the early evening light, she searches for other changes. Like his visibly rough hands, which had been so soft and smooth before. The graze of stubble over his throat. She knows she shouldn’t stare, but she can’t stop looking at him, waiting for the dissonance between her memories and the man in front of her to slide into one cohesive whole.

“I can’t believe you cut your hair,” she says mournfully.

A strange expression flashes over his face, but it’s gone before she can decipher it. He fixes his gaze on her. “So what areyoudoing here?”

“Backpacking,” she says, which isn’t totally a lie. “Seeing the world. I’ve never been to Vienna before.”

“Vienna is a beautiful city.” He leans back in his chair. “Did you go into the Kunsthistorisches Museum?”

“Not today,” she says. “Maybe tomorrow.”

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence. In the café, there was barely time for them to draw breath, never mind watch the seconds tick past. But that was before she really understood what it meant for him to work for the scholars—and Penelope.

Aleksander looks at her as though he can hear her thoughts, clear as glass. His smile fades, and for the first time, it occurs to Violet howsharp he looks without his soft, elegant curls. He closes his eyes briefly, his long dark eyelashes stark against pale skin, then glances away.

“You should know,” he says, more to the window than to her, “that I’m no longer Penelope’s assistant.”

Violet blinks. “Really?”

He looks down at his hands. “It happens.”

But if Aleksander only wanted one thing, it was to work with Penelope. Can a year really have changed him that much?

She glances at his forearms, covered by a shabby jumper, where the scholar’s tattoo would be. “But I thought—does this means you’re a scholar now?”

His entire face tightens. “No.”

“Then why—”

“Why do you think, Violet? I got caught stealing the key,” he snaps.

Violet flinches. Horror, spiked with guilt, washes over her. She knew there was a chance it might have gone wrong, that something would hamper Aleksander’s effort. But Penelope had made it sound as though it had never been his intention to steal the key for her in the first place. And even though there was every reason to doubt, she’d believed her.

She’d known that there would be consequences, yet she’d pushed anyway. For her mother. For herself.

“I should never have asked you,” she says abruptly. “It was too much.”

His expression finally softens. “At that point, I would have taken you anywhere you wished.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she takes another sip from her glass. But a flush crawls up the back of her neck.

“Anyway,” he continues, slightly calmer, “when I went back to the café, they said you’d quit. So I never really had the chance to catch up again.”

Violet tries to imagine what her ex-colleagues would have said to him about the way she’d left. In the early hours of the morning, she’dposted her apron and keys through the front door, along with her resignation. Her phone had buzzed incessantly that day, until she’d blocked the number. She’d felt bad about leaving them like that, but in that moment, time had felt like sand running through her fists; two weeks’ notice seemed absurdly wasteful.

“I hope you got your free coffee, at least,” she says.

To her surprise, he gives her a quick smile. “You know what? I completely forgot.” He pulls out the stamp card and flashes it at her. “I still have it.”

They lapse into silence again, listening to the rain patter outside.

“Can we start over?” Aleksander says suddenly. “I promise I didn’t come here to behave badly. Did you ever find your mother? You were looking for her, right?”

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