Page 73 of The City of Stardust

CHAPTER

Thirty-Six

THE CHURCH HASalmost entirely cleared out by the time Violet and Aleksander make it up the stairs. Violet staggers to the nearest pew and collapses in it, heaving breaths that should really be sobs. Noise like static rushes in her ears. Even though she can see where Yury’s dagger sliced through her dress, she can’t feel anything. Not yet.

The door to her mother is gone. She still has its splinters in her hair. Such an ordinary thing, for such an extraordinary place.

All lost, now.

Aleksander sits down next to her, murmuring so as to be unheard by the last stragglers. He’s still holding his mask, blue silk tinged with red. A painful-looking cut draws along one cheekbone.

“Whathappeneddown there?” he wants to know. “What the hell was that?”

Violet tries to explain it to him, but her thoughts feel fragmented, stuck on one particular loop of Erriel’s face. The reveurite shard, sinking into her throat. The agony that had churned its way through her head.

“All she would talk about was sacrifice,” Violet says. “Sacrifice and doors and…” She presses the heels of her hands to her forehead. “He killed an astral.”

Aleksander gives her a sideways glance. “Astrals are—they’re like gods. They don’t exist on this plane.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you.”

She almost has to swallow back a laugh. Aleksander, who makes magic out of reveurite, who walks across worlds and alongside a star, doesn’t believe in astrals.

“They’re just fairy tales.” Then he sees her expression. “Violet, you can’t be serious.”

“Then whose blood do I have on my face?” she snaps. “What the hell did I see down there, then? Go on, tell me, since you so obviously know.”

Aleksander looks down at her hands, curled into fists. Her right knuckles ooze fluid from a burn, where her skin had made contact with Yury’s.

“I believe you,” he says. “It’s just that… Yury—I never thought they would be likethat.”

Violet wishes she could say the same. The same insatiable hunger, the same horrific beauty. She thinks of Tamriel in his chains, and wonders if there’s a reason that both he and Erriel were shackled rather than set loose in the world.

She wonders how long Yury will last in the courtyard, living out his days on a fractured island of world. No longer man, not truly astral. She shudders.

The last person drifts out of the church, leaving it deathly silent. Aleksander gets up and starts to pace along the aisle. All Violet wants to do is sleep for days, but he seems to possess a manic energy that belies their circumstances.

“So did you find her?”

Violet frowns. “Who?”

“Marianne,” he asks, with an urgency in his voice that surprises her.

“What? No, I—”

“Or the key?” he asks. “Did you find the key? Before Yury—”

Suddenly, Violet stops to stare at him. She’s mentioned searching for her mother, and maybe once she’d brought up a key. But the way he says it…

“Aleksander,” she says slowly, standing up, “what were you doing in Vienna?”

He runs a hand over his head, his eyes everywhere but her. His mouth is an ugly hard line. But it’s a rhetorical question—she already knows the answer.

He was waiting forher.

It’s then that she realises they’re not alone. A blonde woman stands behind the altar, her back to them. Her head is tilted upwards, towards the Gothic rose window, in apparent contemplation. She’s as still as a saint.

“You’ve been on quite the journey, Violet Everly. A last Hand of Illios! Truly, you surprised me.”

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