Page 52 of The City of Stardust

Closer.

Violet is so close that even in the dark, she can see the scars across the astral’s torso, the open wounds still weeping across his ruined body. It’s easy to see how he might have been something close to a man once. Sudden pity washes over her.

Touch our flesh, O star-child, and see what you will.

Ignoring the squeamish feeling in her gut, Violet presses her palm against his chest. Something pulses, violently rippling across the room, and she goes flying backwards. Her head cracks against the wall.You lied, she tries to say, but the words feel like slurry in her mouth, and her jaw stubbornly refuses to move.

Then she notices the woman standing in front of her. At first she thinks she’s having an out-of-body experience, watching herself relive the last moment of her life. But then Violet notes how long the woman’s hair is, the slightly different posture, the unfamiliar clothes.

It’s her mother.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Seven

MARIANNE EVERLY STANDSin front of the astral, utterly fearless, as though the time to worry about losing limbs has long passed. Violet stares at her, transfixed. It’s been almost twelve years since she last saw her mother. She’s spent so long trying to conjure her and yet here she is, right here. Violet reaches out her hand, desperate to touch her at last—

She catches a glimpse of her mother’s face and her hand falls back. Marianne Everly now would be older, her face wearing a decade and change. Yet this version looks even younger than Violet, her face soft and round, hazel eyes bright with determination. Her bracelets glint on her wrists. With a shock, she sees her mother’s stomach, taut and so very pregnant.

This is a memory. Only a memory.

“I seek an audience, Tamriel,” she says, and Violet’s heart aches for a voice she hasn’t heard in years. “Will you listen?”

Over Marianne’s shoulder, Violet can see the astral—but not as he looks in her present. Not a creature at all, but a naked man, golden-skinned and beautiful. Eyes the silver of starlight, black tattoos banded across his chest in an unfamiliar script. His shredded wings are still feathered, white down stained gold with his blood. But his legs hang at the same awkward angle, the bone smashed to pieces.

“Marianne Everly,” he says, his voice unexpectedly soft. “We hear your name on the wind. Will you free our bonds?”

“I can’t, and I wouldn’t. I’ve heard of you, too, Tamriel. I know what you did to end up here.” She straightens her shoulders. “By my birthright, I claim the law of exchange. A truth for a truth.”

Tamriel narrows his eyes. “We could refuse.” Then he sighs, and the expression on his face is so human that Violet is ashamed of her fear. “But as you are kindred, we will not. We await your question, star-child.”

She hesitates, and for a second she looks every inch as young and uncertain as she is. “How do I break the Everly curse?”

Even as she says it, the vision starts to bubble, Marianne’s words muddying in the air.

“Wait—” Violet says.

The memory changes, twists like a knife. Violet blinks and her mother is still in front of her, opposite Tamriel. But this is no youthful portrait, or distant memory. There are lines etched on her face, grey shot through her hair. She looks older than Violet recalls, with a bitter weariness that settles heavily over her features. And Tamriel looks as he is now, blood and sinew, almost unrecognisable as a man.

Violet bites back a gasp. This is no decades-old memory. This is recent, mere months.

“I need an audience with the last Hand of Illios. The last worlds-walker. How do I get it?”

You ask much of us, Marianne Everly. We might suspect you are mocking us, if you were so foolish as to do such a thing. He looks at her shrewdly.Why?

“Is this your exchange?”

He smiles and Violet shivers, seeing nothing human in it.Yes. It is a great truth we offer you at our own cost, and so you must offer one in exchange.

It’s Marianne’s turn to smile, and Violet’s shocked to see the same viciousness etched on her face. “My great truth is that I will find what Astriade wants most in the world. And I will take it from her.”

Astriade. Violet thinks of the card she was dealt, warning of calamity, the blonde-haired astral who clutched at the sword in her chest. It can’t be who she thinks it is, and yet—

Tamriel bursts into whispered laughter, his entire body shaking. His wounds weep fresh blood, his chains rattling like music instead of manacles. And although it must be agony to move, his laughter is slow to subside.

We look forward to that day. He shakes his head in amusement.Very well, Marianne Everly, we will grant you your boon.

A blur of cityscape shimmers in the air, turrets and waterways. The astrological clock of Prague, St. Vitus Cathedral and its spires blur past, wreathed in rain. Then the vision closes in on a church, tucked into a corner of an otherwise unremarkable street. An archway, shimmering with golden light. The outline of a woman on a rock wall, light seeping through the cracks, hands pressed on either side.

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