Page 54 of The City of Stardust

“You told me she wouldn’t come looking for lost things,” Penelope says, every word dagger-sharp. “You said I would be safe. How dare you.”

He laughs again.What joy it will bring us to see you undone.

She steps forward, into the dark. “You’re mistaken if you think you will live to witness anything past today.”

We foresaw this day, as we do all things. And your time is coming, Astriade. We will relish it, whether we are ashes in the wind or motes in sunlight.

Penelope steps up to Tamriel, close enough to kiss. She strokes his ruined face.

“Oh, Tamriel. It’s been a long time since you were in conversation with anything but your poor, deluded self. I’ve read the skies; my future—myeternalfuture—is assured.” She smiles, baring her teeth. “The heavens change their minds, too, you know.”

She places one hand on his grey, scarred chest, right above his heart. He blinks slowly at her, just once. Knowing what she’s about to do.

We see a thousand dying lights,he hisses suddenly.We see a prison against the skies, streets buckling, a city aflame. We see a mortal man, loved and hated and O so precious to you, Astriade—

Her nails sink into his flesh. He gasps, shuddering as life itself leeches from him. His mouth opens and closes uselessly, and his hands claw at the air. Slowly, his skin turns dark grey, the texture of dry paper. His eyelids sag closed. He breathes in once, a harsh, inhuman sound—then stops.

His chest stills. He slumps forward, his chains clinking with the effort of supporting his body.

Penelope groans softly. Her fingertips are dripping with blood. But she is sated, for now. Delicately, she licks her fingers clean, as though it’s the end of a meal. In a way, she supposes, it is. She’s taken his lifeblood, his talent. The remnants of his vigour.

Finished, she surveys Tamriel’s corpse, his stinking mortality.

“Always eager to get the last word in, Tamriel,” she says. “You thought you were so clever, so invulnerable. A lifetime of protection, dear cousin. That’s what I offered, and I have kept my promise.”

She stays with his corpse long enough to watch the first flies settle in the blood on his chest. Then, grace itself, she rises, renewed strength flowing through her. Another parcel of time, bought and paid for.

But even as she climbs out of the hatch into the cresting sunrise, a thought worries at the edge of her mind. Violet was never supposed to come here. And whatever she learnt in the dark with Tamriel, she’s one step closer on the path to Marianne Everly. Mother or daughter, it doesn’t matter—they cannot be allowed to find Elandriel first.

Violet Everly is becoming a problem.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Eight

IN AN ABANDONEDhouse on the outskirts of some Austrian village, Yury falls into a deep slumber. He sleeps so little these days, but when the urge takes him, the compulsion is so strong, he can do nothing else except give into it. When he does sleep, the vials give him incredibly vivid dreams, and he often wakes up unable to tell the waking truth from his sleeping one.

Lately, he has been dreaming of hard reveurite scales protruding from his skin. The agony is as real as if it was truly happening. His necrotic skin sloughs off to reveal exquisite, tender flesh underneath. Then rock bursting through his veins, glittering plates overlapping like fledgling armour: pauldron, cuirass, breastplate enfolding him in a stony carapace.

The reveurite is transforming him into a miracle. Into someonemore than.

God, his thoughts murmur.Astral.

“Yury.”

He wakes to a man standing over him. He can’t see much beyond an outline, but he recognises his voice. The ingestion of reveurite is slowly crystallising his eyesight, his pupils clouded by cataracts.

“Aleksander,” he says, with intense relief. “You are here. I have run out—the last vial is—”

“You were supposed totalkto Johannes.” Aleksander looks away, and Yury hears the horror in his voice. “You weren’t supposed to kill him.”

“I… did not mean to—the fire—”

Heat against his face. Warmth unending.

“Because of you, the scholars are asking questions. Questions Penelope cannot answer without complications.”

“I just need—the vials—”

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