Page 78 of The City of Stardust

She opens the door to her bedroom, half expecting it to be covered in spiderwebs, but it’s all exactly as she left it.

She thought that when she got here, she would break down and cry, safe in the sanctuary of her childhood. Instead, she drops off her belongings and heads to the library. After the changes in the rest of the house, it’s a relief to see the room mostly intact, without the layer of dust that seems to coat everything else. Here are her books, her childhood graffiti—V. E.chiselled clumsily into the hidden side of the bookshelves—and her precious wardrobe.

Her entire world, once.

There’s no way she can possibly fit into the wardrobe, but she still climbs in, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her knees poke over the edge, making it impossible to close the doors.Who even puts a wardrobe in a library?Aleksander once asked her, when she told him about it.

Other memories drift to the surface. How the wardrobe’s walls had pressed in on her, and then the house, a prison as much as a sanctuary. The outside had seemed so exciting then, full of possibility.Adventure. Except now it’s the walls of the world closing in on her. The world being just one woman, and yet the world, nevertheless.

In her stories, there would be an answer like a lightning bolt. A cure for the curse, a sword for the monster, a crown for the prince. Perfect and all-encompassing in its simplicity. Long live the king and his happily ever after.

She had her answer—before Aleksander snatched it from her hands.

Betrayal is its own sort of lightning bolt.

Here is the lightning bolt: scorched, struck—dissolving back into the air whence he came.

Early morning—so early, in fact, it practically qualifies as night—Aleksander wakes up on his wooden pallet, every muscle in his body aching. Next to him, a dozen other forge bearers sleep on their own pallets, loaded down with hay to soften the hard slats underneath. A couple of them are children as young as ten, but already strong and hardy, permanently streaked with ash, their hair shorn down to the scalp to inure them against mishaps, until they’re deemed skilled enough to avoid setting themselves on fire. Most of them are closer to Aleksander’s age, finishing apprenticeships so that they, too, can run their own forge. Or work as skilled craftsmen, coaxing reveurite into everything from the crystal lamps lighting Fidelis to the crushed powder used in the tattooists’ inks.

Aleksander will never be one of them. Too untrustworthy to ascend beyond apprentice, the forge masters claim, even though he works as hard as anyone else, even though he’s talented enough to craft delicate filigree with his bare fingers. He catches the smallest of impurities in the metal; he stokes a fire to the perfect temperature; he can hold a reveurite object and chart its history from touch alone—and it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Disgrace has settled on him like an invisible yet permanent shroud.

In the dark, he splashes himself with tepid water, but by the time he’s dressed, he’s already sweating from the heat of the forge. For the next three hours, he shovels coal and wood into the sweltering fire, feeding the flames until his face burns. Sweat stings his eyes; soot gathers on his skin, in his hair.

As the sun rises, the rest of the apprentices scurry into action: chopping more firewood; fetching coal; ferrying messages to the rest of the city, including the scholars’ tower. At seven, the forge master comes in to check on the morning’s work and to consult her star charts for reveurite harvesting.

At eight, Aleksander’s finally relieved of his job, though by then the fire is a roaring creature, already sated. He splashes his face with more cold water, ash running into his eyes. And then it’s time to sweep the floor, check the metal stocks, chop wood outside until the previous day’s blisters pop. All the while, golden sparkles flicker uncontrollably in his vision to the point of nausea, reveurite dust everywhere.

They eat in shifts, and it’s a small mercy that he can always claim the earliest one. By then he’s ravenous, and luckily the food is always good, always plentiful. It’s one of the few times he’s reminded that this is a job, and not some endless punishment specifically devised for him.

Afterwards, it’s back to the forge. He draws water from the springs, polishes metal fittings for the craftsmen, more sweeping, more fetching of food. Water. Wood. Ash. Repeat until it’s time for dinner. And then again, until the sky is inky black and peppered with stars, and Aleksander’s so tired he can barely think straight.

Then again. And again. For a year, he has lived like this. Endless, relentless misery.

What is he if not a scholar? Here is his answer: nothing.

Until the day Penelope summoned him to the cliffside gardens surrounding the scholars’ tower. He went, trepidation in his stomach, feeling sick though he’d yet to eat for the day. He hadn’t seen Penelope in months, much less spoken to her. What would she do with her blade, shattered beyond repair?

She turned to him, her eyes so full of sorrow that it made him want to sink to his knees. And she offered her bargain.Find out what Violet Everly is doing. Watch her carefully. And come back to us. Come home.

Violet Everly. He hears her name and thinks of coffee, sunlight on his shoulders, curiosity burning like wildfire. A curse, a key, a dark room.

He hasn’t spent a year hating her. But it might have been better if he had.

In New York, he watched as she furtively wandered through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lingering on an exhibition. It wasn’t an artist he knew—art not being one of Penelope’s chosen areas of study for him—but the way she’d looked at the portrait of a woman in a black dress, with such intense focus, made him wish he did. And for the first time in a long time, he’d wanted to say hello, to have her turn and ignite him with her curiosity.

Not that he could. But hewanted—

He caught her early in Vienna, stepping off the train with sleepy wonder at the city sprawling out in front of her. Outside the Kunsthistorisches Museum, he’d waited and wondered, his heart in his throat. Penelope told him to find answers, so he would ask.

He was so intent on that tiny slice of window that he didn’t notice her come down the stairs, defiant in the pouring rain. The way she’d said his name, a question curled in her mouth.

It was only when she’d asked about the scholars that he’d found the hard kernel of resentment waiting for him. Where were her scars? How had she failed to notice the inexorable changes that stared at him every time he looked into a mirror? And how had she escaped unscathed, when he hadn’t?

Anger rose like a tide, swallowing everything.

He should never have gone to Prague.

In the forge, he works until his bones ache, until stars of exhaustion burst behind his eyelids. He hammers out sheets of metal. He hauls firewood inside. He sweeps the floor until it shines. His pallet bed remains untouched, the sheets folded into precise corners.Finally, the forge master snatches the broom from him and commands him to rest.

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