Page 79 of The City of Stardust

Obediently—because that is all he is now, a man whittled into an order yet to be given—he lies on his bed, as the sound of the forge falls away from him. In his head, the darkness looms, the shadows closing in. Yury roars in his cage, thrusting his hands into flames, ready to burn down the world. Golden blood spills over Violet’s face, her eyes wide with accusation. So much damage left in his wake, and he’ll never be able to undo it.

Alone in the room, he cries.

Ambrose knows when Gabriel arrives because the house is suddenly full of the sound of slamming doors. He waits in the library, listening to the storm descend on him. The doors fly open, and Gabriel strides through, his gaze burning behind his sunglasses. Ready for war.

“Gabriel—” Ambrose starts.

“Marianne’s gone. I knew it. All this time,wastedon her.”

Ambrose does his level best to stay calm, but Gabriel’s tone sets his nerves jumping. “I don’t know what happened, but—”

“We know damn well what happened.”

Ambrose closes his eyes. “As I said—”

“You still don’t get it. Marianne isn’t coming back,” Gabriel says, enunciating each word sharply. “As soon as she realised it was a lost cause, she fucked off! All that bullshit about keys and star-people. Her head infairy tales.”

“So you would rather have seen Marianne go with Penelope?” Ambrose snaps. “You would rather have let her die instead?”

“I would rather she’d told us the goddamn truth. That the great, infallible Marianne had failed. Then we wouldn’t have spent ten years chasing her for nothing!” He slams his fist on the wall and the books rattle on the shelves.

Ambrose watches him, weariness creasing his brow. Rationally, he’d known there was only ever a slim chance at victory; no one else has escaped, so why should Violet? But even in his nightmares, he’d never imagined it quite like this: the anticipatory dread of defeat andwhat that means, the house a tomb of pre-emptive mourning. And Marianne’s abyss of an absence. Even in his nightmares, Marianne would have been standing there with them.

“And now because of her… because of us…”

Gabriel looks up at Ambrose, the fight draining from him. He lifts his hands helplessly—Gabriel, who is never helpless, who’d strode in on that thunderous evening ten years ago ready to do anything to protect his niece.

His older brother has never looked so lost.

Gabriel sinks into a chair and puts his head in his hands. “What do we do now?”

CHAPTER

Thirty-Nine

VIOLET MANAGES TOavoid her uncles for an impressive two days. Two entire precious days—precious because time keeps flowing out of her hands like water into the ocean. But she doesn’t know what to say to them. She’s been furious for so long, she’s not sure how to let go. And maybe they’re angry with her, too. After all, she’s the one who ran away from home, who never replied to their calls or texts. Who let them worry as an act of passive vengeance, even though now she understands what they might have sacrificed for her.

Maybe there’s an unforgiveable line she can’t walk back from.

In the afternoon, she climbs out of her window and hauls herself up the drainpipe to the roof. She used to spend hours up here, yearning for the world beyond the thin horizon. And her mother, somewhere out there. Marianne Everly, who could very well be in this world or another—or dead, and Violet would never know.

Her hands ball into fists. Marianne Everly, who couldn’t take two goddamn seconds to tell anyone where she went, or what desperate secret she’d gleaned that had made her so willing to go. Johannes Braun’s voice pops into her head:she was never much concerned with being liked.

She yanks off her mother’s bracelets from her wrists and hurls them as far as she can into the field. They glitter in the air, just once, then vanish into the long grass below. Her wrists feel lighter without them. Emptier. She runs her fingers across the pale band of skin where they used to sit.

Seconds later, Violet tears down the flight of stairs and through the back doors, regret burning the back of her throat.

After hours of searching, she finds just one, the bracelet’s lustre half hidden under a layer of mud. She wipes it on her jumper and slips it back on her wrist, where the weight settles again. She knows she should let it go—but she can’t.

On the third evening, she finally ventures into the rest of the house, too hungry and restless to stay cooped up in her room any longer—and too cold to pace on the roof. The kitchen is pointedly empty as she makes herself a proper meal for the first time in days, but the house seems to thrum around her, waiting. She takes her time over each mouthful, and washes up everything, wiping down all the counters until the entire kitchen gleams. Then there’s nothing left to do but find her uncles.

Ambrose is sitting in his favourite chair in the third living room, the fire blazing merrily against the autumn chill. She can’t face what she’s about to tell him. But she owes him the truth of her failure.

“I’m back,” she says quietly.

He sighs when he sees her, then pats his second-favourite chair. She curls up in it, tucking her legs underneath her. Gabriel used to say she reminded him of a cat, and she would always stick her tongue out at him. She looks down at her hands, wishing they were claws.

“What happened?” Ambrose asks.

---