A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family’s curse in this spellbinding debut.
Read an exclusive, extended early excerpt of The City of Stardust below!
‘She took a step forward, her brow pensive, her mouth a conspiracy of secretive emotion. Her foot lifted higher, higher – and then she was soaring, swallow-winged and beautiful, and altogether the most wondrous sight on that starry evening. For what was more natural than flight to these creatures of such peculiar whimsies? And it was our greatest regret that we plain mortals could not join her.’
– Hyacinth Watson, The Fairy Knight’s Daughter & Other Stories
Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
There is no easy way to the stars from earth.
– Seneca the Younger, Hercules Furens
Prologue
IN PARIS, A child goes missing.
A baby, to be more precise. One minute he is in his pram, making chubby fists while his mother wheels him around a grocery shop. For a moment – just a moment, she will insist afterwards – she glances away to examine her shopping list, certain she’s forgotten something, but unable to recollect what. The next, he is gone, whisked away by sure, confident hands. By the time his mother looks back at the soft place where her baby used to be, the perpetrator has vanished. In the heart-stopping seconds between her realisation and the scream that wrenches its way past her throat, she catches an unusual vanilla scent in the air.
In Vienna, the child is two and visiting an art gallery for the first time. She is lulled by a song that sounds like a memory from the womb, like a melody she has never heard, and yet has been hearing all her life. While her parents pause to admire a painting, she slips through a crowd of tourists to waiting arms and vanishes forever. There are phone calls to the police, then accusations and a lawsuit. The detectives dutifully check the security camera footage, only to find that it’s irretrievably corrupted. Someone mentions a woman who smelled like vanilla, but the detail goes ignored and the child remains lost.
In Prague, it’s a boy with eyes the colour of grey sea glass. He mumbles in his sleep, one amongst so many in this orphanage. A woman wearing a vanilla scent approaches him with her calculating gaze and her sure hands, her conscience untroubled by the crime she is about to commit. She can already see his life without this intervention: unremarkable, unloved, possibly traumatic. A life where there are no heroes or last-minute rescuers. No fairy-tale parents to whisk him back home, a prince mistaken for a pauper. In Prague, he will live and die a nobody.
But where she is going, he will be more than anyone will ever know.
She leans over his bed and whispers, ‘I hear you singing, little dreamer. And I come to answer the call.’
Marianne Everly is walking into a thunderstorm.
It’s a night that promises only disaster: lashing rain that rattles against the windowpanes as though the house itself has committed a crime; bruised clouds flashing with white fury; ominous puddles hiding their treacherous depths. It would be better, Marianne reflects, if she could have waited until the morning, with the sun and goodwill chasing at her back. But she can’t ignore the song thrumming through her bones, or the whisper that the time has come to say goodbye to her rambling house and its occupants.
Her brothers’ silhouettes frame the doorway, their expressions unreadable. Guilt, grief, anger – they have already run the gamut, and all that remains is the steady certainty that there is no turning back now.
Aside from the house, she’s leaving behind so little. A silk-bound book of fairy tales, the edges fuzzy with wear. A pair of bracelets that glitter with unusual lustre. An ancient and useless sword with a dulled edge, passed down from one fusty ancestor to another.
A daughter, too, if she wishes to be thorough.
Against the shadow of the house, her daughter’s light is on, though she was fast asleep when Marianne pressed a farewell kiss to her forehead.
For a moment, Marianne pauses, her gaze trained on the bright window. Maybe she hesitates because despite everything that has led to this moment, the call of her child is almost stronger than the call of elsewhere.
Then again, maybe not. Perhaps she’s throwing off the mantle of motherhood with relief, shedding a load she never wanted to bear.
Watching her in the rain, it’s hard to say.
The darkness closing in on her, Marianne Everly takes a worn key from around her neck, turns it in the air – and vanishes.
A curse can be many things. A wish left out to spoil in the sun, putrid and soft, leaving behind only calcified desire and oxidised envy. Or a poisoned chalice, a mistake tattooed across an entire family tree, with every generation promising, vowing to never sip until they do. Sometimes, it’s a deal and bad luck conspiring like old grifters closing in on an easy mark.
For the Everlys, it begins with stardust.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
YEARS FROM NOW, this is what Ambrose Everly will remember.
Not the rain sheeting down the windows, squeezing through every neglected gap, filling the Everly house with soft plinks as water drips into various bowl-shaped objects. Nor the white flash of lightning, which promptly short-circuits the electricity and sends him rummaging through the cupboards for candles and a book of matches. But the unbearable stillness, as though the house is holding its breath, waiting.
So Ambrose is almost relieved when someone bangs on the door like a thunderclap, though it’s short-lived. It can’t be anything but mere coincidence, but his gut still tightens as he pads down the long, dark hallway, past the ancestral portraits who eye him with glum indifference. So few people know that the house is even here, let alone feel welcome enough to knock. He opens the door, uneasy.
At first all he can see is the gloom, rain guttering from the roof ’s overhang. Then the world is briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning. A man in a leather jacket stands on the doorstep, soaking wet. His gaze is hidden behind tinted sunglasses, even though it’s pitch-black outside. Behind him, a violently orange sports car sits in the driveway, sleek and predatory.
‘You changed the locks,’ the man says.
‘Gabriel?’ Ambrose says, and then again because he can’t quite believe that the man standing in front of him isn’t an apparition.
‘We need to talk, little brother,’ Gabriel says grimly.
Ambrose doesn’t move. He sucks in a deep breath, trying to make sense of the scene in front of him. This should be impossible. It feels impossible. But here’s his older brother, gracing the driveway as though he’s never been away, even though it’s been over two years. Only the car is different, but it still carries all the hallmarks of his brother’s taste: ostentatious, loud, ugly beyond belief. A flashy middle finger to the world.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ambrose says.
Gabriel pushes his hair from his forehead, and glances behind him at the open driveway, as though expecting something – or someone – to appear. ‘We should talk inside.’
Sudden alarm flashes through Ambrose. ‘You think you’ve been followed?’
‘No, I was careful. But still.’
‘Then should you even be here?’ It isn’t supposed to come out as an accusation, but Ambrose hears the bite in his tone and winces.
‘It’s important,’ Gabriel says.
There aren’t many reasons why he would risk coming home, and all of them are alarming. The terrible anxiety in Ambrose’s gut surfaces again.
‘Okay,’ he relents.
As Gabriel steps over the threshold, the house sighs in greeting – a stray Everly, returned at last. Ambrose leads him down the hallway, past the numerous leaks, the faded wallpaper, the inches of dust covering unused furniture. To Ambrose, the house looks exactly as it did in their childhood, if a little shabbier, a little in need of love. But now that Gabriel’s critical gaze sweeps across the rooms, he’s suddenly ashamed of his failure as a caretaker, with all those repairs he’s never quite found time to finish. Then annoyance flashes through him; who cares what the house looks like? It’s not as if his brother has been around to lend a hand.
In the dark, Gabriel trips over something and swears. Ambrose picks it up – one of their niece’s dolls, outfitted with tinfoil armour and a sword made from cocktail sticks. He smiles fondly. There’s an entire set scattered around the house, and although Violet declares she’s too old for them, he still finds them propped up in unusual set pieces. Fairies in armour, knights bearing roses, a princess lifting her sword in triumph.
‘That belong to the kid?’ Gabriel says.
Ambrose straightens out the crinkled armour. ‘It belongs to Violet, yes.’
Gabriel gives it a long, hard look. But he doesn’t say anything.
The only place with the lights still working is the library, with its original oil lamps installed in brackets along the wall. Gabriel toys with the notepad on the desk as Ambrose lights them with the last of his matches. A warm glow illuminates the room, glinting off the foiled bands ridging the book spines.
Ambrose leans against the old wardrobe at the back of the library, trying to contain all his questions. They’ve never been the hugging kind of siblings, so he hangs back, his hands digging into his pockets. It’s been two long years since Gabriel walked out of the house, and although they agreed that this was for the best – although it had never really been a question which brother would stay and which would leave – he can’t help but feel a pang of resentment, too. Two years of making tinfoil armour, but also learning how to be a parent at the very worst possible moment, arguing furiously over bedtimes and meals, wrestling a semblance of education into their niece while his own studies languished – and Gabriel has borne none of it. But Gabriel had the lucrative job that would keep the house afloat, not a half-finished degree and vague aspirations to academia. And only one of them needed to stay. His brother catches him watching. ‘The kid, Violet. Where is she?’
‘Asleep,’ Ambrose says, though truthfully he has no idea where their niece is. She probably thinks he hasn’t noticed her sneaking out of bed at night, but the house sings a symphony of creaks whenever she does. ‘What do you want, Gabriel?’
Silence. Gabriel stares out through the dark windows before closing the curtains, the rotten fabric fraying at the edges. Again, the feeling that something is tilting horribly sideways returns. Ambrose starts to pace, trying to shake the coil of uneasy energy from his limbs.
‘Look, I’ve done everything I can,’ he says. ‘She’s happy, she’s fed, she’s safe—’
‘Actually, little brother, you’re wrong there.’
Ambrose stops pacing. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Violet is no longer a secret. Whatever Marianne has done – whoever she’s talked to – she’s not been careful enough.’
Their sister’s name sits like a stone between them. Ambrose’s heartbeat rushes in his ears. Dread curls in his stomach.
‘Are you sure?’ he whispers, and Gabriel nods. ‘Fuck.’
Fuck.
What else is there to say? For years, he’s worried about the worst possible outcome, and now it’s here. Violet is no longer a secret. In his mind’s eye, a shadow descends over his fierce little niece, and he suddenly feels sick with fear.
‘Are you sure this isn’t your doing?’ Ambrose says, suddenly suspicious. ‘You must have slipped something in your travels, doing God knows what—’
Gabriel cuts him off. ‘If you think for one second I’d risk the kid’s safety—’
‘If you cared, you would have stopped this charade with the scholars years ago!’
Thunder rumbles overhead as they size each other up. Ambrose runs an agitated hand through his hair, his chest heaving with unspent anger. He tries to take several deep breaths, but all he can feel is the panic fizzing through his thoughts. What the hell are they going to do now?
‘She’s my niece, too. I care,’ Gabriel says, hard. ‘Besides, it’s not just about the money. How do you think I heard the rumours about Marianne? About Violet?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘I’m not too proud to do what must be done. Are you?’
Ambrose takes another deep breath, and this time it’s a little easier. For Violet’s sake, he has to get it together. Slowly, he begins to sift through the possibilities with a methodical logic, forcing the panic into the recesses of his mind.
‘We could send her away,’ he says, thinking aloud. ‘Somewhere out of sight. You have contacts – you could take her.’ Even though he hates to imagine it.
‘It’s far too late for that,’ Gabriel says darkly. ‘Tell me: who would you trust with Violet? Which of my “contacts” would risk their lives for us?’ He raises a wry eyebrow. ‘Hell, would you trust me?’
Ambrose falls silent. There’s no good answer to that question.
‘We would buy months at best, little brother. And we need more than that.’
Again with the little brother. It’s been a long time since Ambrose has felt young enough, naïve enough to be condescended to.
‘Violet deserves a life,’ he says. ‘Marianne would have wanted—’
‘Marianne fucked off and left her child here,’ Gabriel snaps. ‘I really don’t care what she wanted.’
‘She didn’t have a choice. She went for Violet. You know this.’
‘Do I?’ He glowers. ‘When someone looks like they’re running, that’s because they’re running. And leaving us to clear up her goddamn mess. As usual.’
Ambrose bites back a retort. Where Gabriel is concerned, Marianne is like a bruise, searing with pain at the slightest pressure.
‘So that means…’ He can’t bring himself to say her name, as though by saying it, he’ll summon the force from which he’s protected Violet for so long. ‘When will she get here?’
Gabriel shakes his head, his mouth a hard, thin line. ‘Sooner rather than later, I think.’
Ambrose thinks it over. There must be a solution he’s not grasping clearly. But his thoughts, usually organised like clockwork, fail him. His head swims with thoughts of Violet, of the long, dark shadow stretched over the Everlys. He needs more time to think. He just needs – time.
‘We’ll invite her,’ he says suddenly. ‘We’ll make a deal. You said we needed more time. So… we buy more time. For next steps, a plan. Anything.’
For Marianne, he adds silently.
He waits for Gabriel to shoot him down. But instead Gabriel rubs the back of his wrist, nodding slowly as he comes to grips with the idea.
‘She’ll ask about Marianne,’ he warns.
‘I know.’
Gabriel adjusts his leather jacket, fiddling with something inside the pockets. ‘And I can’t stay – I’m already late for a meeting with the Vernes. You’ll have to do the talking for both of us.’
‘I know that, too.’
After Gabriel leaves, Ambrose slumps on to the desk, his heart sinking at the sudden enormity of what he has to do. Never mind what the hell he’s supposed to tell his inquisitive niece. She’s forever asking questions, but it’s been a long time since he’s had any easy answers.
He stays up into the small hours of the morning writing letters, scrubbing down the dusty kitchen countertops, washing all the sheets he’s suddenly found time for – anything to take his mind from what will happen next.
Inside the old wardrobe at the back of the library, Violet Everly clutches her book tightly, her mouth pressed against her jumper to hide the sound of her startled breathing.
CHAPTER TWO
VIOLET EVERLY IS twelve years old, and dreaming of other worlds.
This usually involves climbing into the old wardrobe at the back of the library, and shutting the door in a whirl of cedar and dust. There she sits, with a thin torch between her teeth and a fat book spread across her lap, its thick and creamy pages layered in old-fashioned type and rich with glossy sentences. Every one of them whispering adventure.
The worlds spring up behind her eyelids: cities of gold and silver filigree buildings; lands of intertwining waterways with bright boats sculling through the water; a forest of witches, their skin shades of eggshell blue all the way to deepest twilight, constellations twinkling across their shoulders. All of this a siren song that she can’t quite shake.
It’s because of her desire to escape into a good book that she finds herself hidden inside the wardrobe, as Ambrose converses with a stranger in his midst. Then he says, ‘What do you want, Gabriel?’
Gabriel. Her other uncle is so rarely here, but whenever he visits, the rooms seem brighter, warmer, as though the house itself recognises the return of its wayward inhabitant. He never comes empty-handed, either, bringing gifts that are as magical as they are beautiful. Clockwork statues of princes and knights, fairies and queens, with intricate workings and gossamer wings stretched taut along thin wire. Or, once for her sixth birthday, a set of nesting dolls that never revealed the same object in its innermost hold. On his last visit, he gave her a dim light to read by, which never went out and yet never seemed to need batteries, either.
From eavesdropping on late-night phone calls, she gathers Gabriel does something vaguely illegal, but Ambrose is tight-lipped about the details. More than half of the travel books in the library belong to Gabriel. He must have been all over the world.
Adventure, Violet thinks, and a thrill ripples through her.
Then he mentions her mother, and she almost falls out of the wardrobe. Marianne Everly.
Her mother has long dissolved from her life, like so much salt in the sea. That is, she’s nowhere to be found, and yet she’s everywhere: the lingering perfume on moth-eaten coats; a slim gold watch abandoned on her vanity; the chair no one uses. Mostly, Violet imagines her in the blank spaces between paragraphs, or the invisible inhale before a sentence. Whereas her father is an entirely missing book – one that her mother holds the key to, if she holds anything at all. It’s a parent-shaped hole that Ambrose has tried to fill, in his own way.
After that, it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else. Besides, most of the conversation is frustratingly beyond her. A good half of it is muffled by the wardrobe, Ambrose’s footsteps on the creaky floorboards – and the sound of her own heart, pumping furiously in her ears as she tries to put it all together.
Only three days after her uncle’s mysterious visit, they receive another visitor. Instead of his usual rumpled jumper and jeans, Ambrose wears an ironed shirt and smart trousers to greet them, his shoes polished to a high shine. His hands twist around themselves nervously.
‘Come, Violet,’ he says. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you.’
The woman is sitting in the living room, perched elegantly in Ambrose’s favourite armchair. Her hair is a pale flax gold hewn in a soft bob curling at her ears, and her hands are perfectly smooth, unadorned by rings or callouses. Her clothes are nondescript, but they have a tailor’s expert fit and the material looks silky and expensive. The woman smiles pleasantly, offering her hand in greeting. The barest hint of vanilla drifts in the air.
Violet shivers and draws away.
‘Hello, little dreamer,’ the woman says, her voice as soft and unassuming as her appearance. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’
She offers her slender hand again, but Violet stays where she is. Behind her, Ambrose puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
‘She’s a bit shy. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any visitors,’ he says with his usual mild warmth.
He gives her a small nudge, and she reluctantly crosses the living room to shake the woman’s hand. But instead of shaking, she clasps Violet’s hand in both of hers, her thumbs pressed into Violet’s palm. After a moment, she releases Violet and claps her hands, delighted.
‘Well, you are your mother’s daughter,’ she says, then turns to Ambrose. ‘She’s the spitting image of Marianne at that age. And just as talented, no doubt. What a fortuitous discovery. To think you have been holding out on me for so long. All those birthday cards I never got to send.’
Ambrose’s forehead knits, but before he can say anything, a small figure sidles past him to stand behind the woman. A boy, slightly older than Violet, with dark curly hair brushing the nape of his neck. His eyes are the colour of grey sea glass, almost translucent. He holds himself stiffly in old-fashioned clothes: a faded red woollen waistcoat, threads unravelling at the hem, over a shirt gone fuzzy at the collar with age.
‘Ah, my assistant.’ The woman gestures to the child behind her. ‘This is Aleksander.’
The boy watches Violet suspiciously, as though she’s the one standing in his living room. She glares back.
Ambrose diverts her attention. ‘Vi, why don’t you give Aleksander a tour of the house? Wouldn’t that be nice? Penelope and I have a lot to catch up on.’
The woman smiles at him with perfectly straight teeth. ‘We certainly do. Aleksander?’
As quietly as he came in, the boy detaches himself from Penelope, with the heavy air of an older child forced to babysit. It’s the absolute last thing Violet wants to do, not when she knows that she’s the topic at hand. Not when she could creep up to the second floor, remove the two loose floorboards Ambrose is forever threatening to fix, and drop into the tiny crevasse above this ceiling, where the conversation would float up to her in perfect clarity.
Violet flashes a dark look at Ambrose.
He leans down and whispers, ‘Go on, Vi. Please.’
It looks like answers will have to wait. With a long-suffering sigh, Violet leads the boy out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Ambrose is not an old man – far from it. In fact, for years it seems as though he’s slipped into a kind of physical stasis, even as he drifted past his thirtieth birthday and is now slowly creeping towards his fortieth. But today he feels weary with responsibility, and underneath it all, a terrible panic at the mess he’s found himself in.
Such carefully laid plans, undone in an instant.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Penelope says, as Ambrose sits across from her in the living room. ‘I was beginning to think you were hiding from me.’
‘This is the Everly house,’ Ambrose says with a shrug that sits on the knife-edge between bravado and stupidity. ‘Where else would we be?’
No need to tell her that the house was an abandoned wreck twelve years ago, buried deep in English countryside. That none of them had wanted to stay in a childhood home when the childhood was so bitter. As the youngest, Ambrose had been the last to leave, and the first to vow that he’d never return – yet here he is, anyway. There’s something terribly ironic about returning to raise Violet, climbing back on to that wheel of destiny he’d been so desperate to escape.
Between their absence and its dilapidated condition, it’s been practically wiped from the map. Certainly removed from any correspondence, archives or detritus the Everly brothers could get their hands on. As long as Ambrose kept quiet – as long as Gabriel conducted his business elsewhere, as long as Violet didn’t leave the house – who would suspect they were hiding a child here? Penelope couldn’t seek what she didn’t know existed.
Until now.
He can just about claim a desire for peace and quiet if she pushes – but they both know how much solitude can look like secrecy.
Penelope taps her fingers on the edge of the armchair. ‘You owe a debt, if you’d care to remember.’
‘So you say,’ he says carefully. ‘But I don’t recall asking any favours.’
He’s on thin ice speaking to her this way, but he can’t let go without a fight. Maybe it’s because this is the first time he’s seen a glimmer of peace, for all that he’s had to while away time in this house. Maybe he just doesn’t think his family deserves to be served up to a monster.
‘I’m not negotiating, Ambrose,’ Penelope says with infuriating calm.
‘The Everly name owes a debt. Not me,’ he says.
‘And aren’t you an Everly?’ she asks.
‘Don’t pretend that this is the same, that—’
‘Ambrose.’
She doesn’t have to say his surname for him to hear it echoing close behind, the way it has his entire life. Stubborn like an Everly, brave like an Everly, doomed like an Everly. But an Everly nonetheless. If only he could reach into his ribcage and pluck the Everly out, tender and intangible as dreamstuff. If only he could erase that part of himself for good – which is to say, all of him.
He would do it without hesitation, if he thought it would save them.
‘Fine,’ he spits out, ‘but that doesn’t mean—’
‘Then you are indebted, as is your niece. I could simply take the girl now, if you’d prefer,’ she continues. ‘Violet is quite as good as her mother, I assure you.’
His stomach lurches at the thought.
‘We can find Marianne,’ he says quickly. ‘Gabriel is looking for her as we speak.’
He is just buying time, he tells himself. As much of it as he dares. And if that puts Marianne at risk, if they find themselves at these crossroads two months from now, with mother and daughter weighed up on the scales and no way out—
He’s not a gambling man, but here he is, putting every last coin on his sister to be smarter than their clumsy machinations. Forgive me, he thinks desperately.
‘You’re very confident in him. Are you sure he isn’t hiding her?’ Penelope asks softly.
‘Yes,’ Ambrose says. Then he adds, ‘We don’t even know why Marianne left.’
Which, of course, is a lie. But he practised this in front of the mirror, saying it until the words felt like meaningless syllables. Until they became their own kind of truth.
‘Violet’s just a child,’ he continues, stretching out the lie. ‘She’s worth nothing to you.’
Penelope’s smile widens, and Ambrose feels the ground shift underneath his feet, the tilt of the knife-edge sliding them all towards disaster. Yet neither of them say the word strung between them: Violet is worth nothing – yet.
Penelope stretches out the pretence of civility by taking a sip from her cup of tea, and every second is agonising. ‘Very well. I will make a deal with you, Ambrose Everly. I’ll leave Violet alone if you find Marianne. But I won’t wait forever.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Ten years is a sufficient amount of time, don’t you think?’
‘Ten years,’ he echoes. ‘And you won’t harm Violet in the interim?’
‘I see no reason to,’ Penelope says.
‘That is…’ He swallows. ‘Generous of you.’
Ambrose notes, the way he always does, how ageless she seems, like a rose stretched to fullest bloom and then frozen in unnatural beauty. Like a glass just before it shatters.
‘We have a deal,’ he says, forcing the words out.
She holds out her hand and he takes it quickly. He’s made enough devil’s bargains in his lifetime, and he has no desire to linger over this one. But her fingers tighten on his. Pain lances through his wrist, racing up his arm. The lights gutter, then vanish, as shadows gather at his feet.
He sinks to one knee, then the other, the breath punched from his lungs. But Penelope’s hand remains a vice. Someone – perhaps him – gasps a shameful, ‘Please.’ His mind short-circuits, every thought tuned to red, roiling agony.
Then Penelope lets go, and he collapses to the ground. The chill of the wooden floor is merciful against his throbbing skin. He drags in lungfuls of breath, unable to do anything else. His face is damp with tears. When he finally musters the strength to lift his head, Penelope is watching him coolly, no longer smiling.
‘You should have told me about the girl, Ambrose.’
After a beat, he climbs unsteadily to his feet. The lights are still on; outside is the same gloomy grey day. But the ghost of a burning ache flickers through his veins.
‘Ten years,’ she says. ‘I trust you won’t forget.’
Ten years to find Marianne Everly. It sounds like all the time in the world, and none at all.
CHAPTER THREE
VIOLET AND ALEKSANDER walk in painful silence down the long corridor, through the great hall with its cavernous fireplace, and towards the kitchen. It takes them past the wall of stuffy portraits and chipped busts depicting generations of Everlys, and Violet catches Aleksander eyeing the unique décor with a measure of derision, which she does her best to ignore. She used to make a game of matching the portraits’ features to hers: a defiant, pointed chin from this ancestor; hazel eyes from that one; an upturned nose from a particularly snobbish grandfather. And then there is the curse, imprinted on her in invisible yet permanent ink, like every Everly before her.
She believes in curses like she believes in stories. For a curse is just another kind of story, dark and toothy and razor-edged. It’s the unspoken tale singing its way through her family history: once a generation, an Everly walks into the dark, compelled by the shadow beside them.
Her ancestors stare down at Violet in grim disapproval. And she doesn’t blame them. If she was braver, stronger, she would have already ditched the boy to eavesdrop on the conversation between Ambrose and the blonde woman. Instead, she leads him into the kitchen where he drops sullenly into an empty chair.
‘Um, I hope you had a good journey. It’s, uh, raining today,’ she says, in a valiant attempt at conversation.
When the response is stony silence, she tries a different tack. ‘Is that your mother? Penelope?’
The boy snorts, as if the question is too stupid to be asked. ‘No.’
‘Where are your parents, then?’
‘I don’t have them,’ he says stiffly.
‘That’s ridiculous. Everyone has parents.’
‘Fine,’ he shoots back, ‘where are yours?’
‘My mother’s on an adventure,’ she says proudly. ‘And one day I’ll join her.’
To the effervescent sea under the sun. To the northern witches in their deep forest homelands. Her skin tingles at the thought.
Aleksander looks dubious. ‘Adventures are for fairy tales.’
‘Well, she went on one. When I was ten – but she’ll be back.’
She knows it. Sometimes her belief is so strong, she’s surprised the force itself doesn’t whisk her mother back to their doorstep. The thought makes her pause, as she listens out for the click in the lock, the sound of her mother’s voice ringing through the house again. She says she’s too old for fairy tales, but if she just believes hard enough, wishes enough—
Aleksander snickers. ‘Yeah, right.’
Violet snaps back to the present. ‘I’m not lying!’
They glare at each other, fury working its way under her skin. What does he know, anyway? If she wasn’t on her best behaviour, she’d settle this the way they do in her favourite novels: hand-to-hand combat. No mercy – nothing but the firm hand of justice. But as it is, she ignores the boy and makes herself a cup of tea, slamming the cupboard doors with as much anger as she can muster.
‘You’re awfully loud for someone so small,’ he remarks coolly.
‘Well, you’re just as rude as I’d expect from someone with no parents,’ she snaps.
As soon as she says it, she knows she’s gone too far. She expects him to retort with something equally cruel, but he’s silent. When she glances away from her tea-making, he’s staring at the wall, his jaw set, his eyes bright with a telltale liquid glimmer.
Begrudgingly, she asks him if he wants a cup of tea, too. He nods.
They sit at opposite ends of the table, watching each other over their mugs. Rain tap-taps on the skylights above. Violet picks at a whorl on the wooden table, guiltily avoiding his eyes.
‘Want to see a trick?’ the boy says suddenly.
She glances up. He fiddles with a small, iridescent black marble in his hands, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. He places it flat on the table, then rolls it over to her, where it catches in the whorl. When she picks it up, it’s strangely warm and incredibly beautiful, layers upon layers of sparkling dust within.
‘Solid, right?’
She rolls it back to him. ‘Yeah.’
He gives her a quick, shy smile. ‘Watch this.’
His concentration slides from her to the marble, and suddenly the air crackles. He takes the marble, puts it flat in his hand and squashes. Then, he pinches it and pulls.
The marble expands in his hands to a fist-sized sphere, with the translucency of a soap bubble. An entire solar system spins on the surface. The black fades to a deep purple, and glittery light shines outwards, projecting constellations on to the walls. Violet can count them all: Orion’s Belt, the Plough, Cassiopeia, the North Star.
It’s utterly impossible.
It’s magic.
The divot in his forehead increases as the sphere expands, lighting up the dim room. Violet sucks in a breath when she sees that it no longer sits in Aleksander’s hands, but hovers above them. He flicks his wrist, and the constellations suddenly shift into unfamiliar stars, with unfamiliar planets, moons lazily rotating around them. Violet reaches out to touch the thin membrane.
‘Aleksander.’
The sphere shatters into dust, glittering on the table.
Aleksander startles, guilt written all over his face. His hands are covered in black grit, fine as sand.
Penelope stands in the doorway, and for a second she looks furious, a thunderstorm of anger. But the second passes, and she’s back to the calm, impassive woman from the living room. Behind her, Ambrose strides in, then stops at the mess.
‘What—’
‘Aleksander and I must depart,’ Penelope says, sounding sincerely regretful, even though Violet knows it’s a lie. ‘It’s been so lovely to visit, though – and far too long, Ambrose. We will have to come again.’
She smiles, close-lipped. But when Aleksander gets up, his hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists.
‘Say goodbye to Violet,’ she says. ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again.’
Aleksander looks up at her, and his brittle, disinterested expression returns. ‘Goodbye, Violet.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says. And when Penelope turns to go, she mimes holding the sphere, then gives him a thumbs up.
Aleksander smiles faintly at her as he’s pushed out the door.
That evening, Violet doesn’t go to the library. Instead she cuddles up against Ambrose in one of the smaller living rooms, the low ceiling making the room feel comfortably snug. She can’t stop thinking about the marble shattering, the boy suddenly so terrified.
‘It’s like she was wearing a mask,’ Violet says. ‘Like the person we saw wasn’t her at all. Who is she?’
Ambrose stares into the fire, one hand clasped around a glass of whiskey. His brow is furrowed, as though he’s forgotten something.
‘Penelope… has known the family for a very long time.’ He looks down at her sharply. ‘What did her assistant show you?’
Violet purses her lips. ‘Nothing.’
Ambrose laughs softly. ‘I remember when that was nothing, too.’ His hands shake as he sets down his glass. ‘Vi, what you saw in the kitchen stays between you and that boy, understand? He should never have shown you in the first place, but it’s too late for that now.’
‘I swear I won’t tell anyone,’ she says, her eyes big and serious.
Ambrose sighs. ‘Oh Vi, if only it was that easy.’
It’s the middle of the night, but Violet is wide awake. Night settles around her in a hush of anticipation – the witching hour, luminous with possibility. She sits cross-legged on her bed and sets her hands in the same position as Aleksander’s had been. A marble, plucked from the dusty games drawer, rests in her palm. She frowns, trying to concentrate. She mimics his movements: the precise way he’d lifted with his fingertips, how he had pinched and pulled. She holds her breath, so full of wanting.
And for a second, she thinks she catches that same charge in the air.
For a second, her thoughts whisper magic.
But the marble stubbornly remains a marble. No galaxies, no otherworldly stars. Just her and the shadows in her room, closing in.
CHAPTER FOUR
A WHISPER IS CHASING across the world.
A woman in Italy hears it, and that night, she locks up her house. She bundles her children into the car, along with as many belongings as she can pack. When they ask where they’re going, she only accelerates down the twisting countryside roads, grim determination reflecting back at her frightened children in the rear-view mirror.
The whisper reaches a jeweller in Seattle, who promptly faints after scanning the letter. He keeps trading – what else can he do? – but buys a gun, storing it carefully underneath the till point. Six months later, he’s discovered dead in his back office, slumped over his desk with the gun still in his hand. The police assume suicide and close the case, even though his wife insists they were being watched by a woman who could vanish into thin air.
In Osaka, Gabriel Everly overhears the whisper as he sits alone in a café, dusk falling across the horizon. He closes his eyes, holding on to it for a painful moment, before releasing it back into the world. The next evening, he’s in a different city, in a different country, and only then does he feel the tension in his shoulders give way.
The whisper gathers pace like a boulder careening downhill. It passes through telephones and hidden letters burned after reading, encrypted emails and clandestine meetings by candlelight. And somewhere in between, it crosses to a different world, carried on a breeze to a city of snow and starlight, where it has already been circling for quite some time.
Where is Marianne Everly?
CHAPTER FIVE
MUCH AGAINST HER wishes, Violet grows up, rocketing from a short, half-feral child to a taller, half-feral teenager. She reads every book in the library twice over. She explores the length of the attic, traversing the narrow beams with an overconfidence that leads her to one day plunge a foot through the ceiling. She ventures outside to their overgrown garden, where she builds – and later on, tears down – a complicated fort of frayed ribbon and twigs. But she never leaves the confines of the Everly house. Not to go to school – ‘Why bother when I’m such a good teacher?’ Ambrose says with an unconvincing smile – not to see friends, family, or the world that seems forever pressed up against the border of their garden wall.
Instead, every year, first with furious hope and then simply with fury, Violet waits for her mother to walk through the door. A letter, a phone call, semaphore flags on the roof – something to let her know that she hasn’t been left behind to gather dust with the rest of the house.
On her fifteenth birthday, Ambrose finds her outside shredding the leaves of their enormous wild mint bush, her jaw set and her face red with the effort of not crying. Her hands are stained green, her eyes shimmering with unspent tears.
‘I’m making tea,’ she says stubbornly, even though with the amount she’s plucked, they’ll be drinking it for weeks.
Gently, Ambrose pulls her away from the plant. ‘Violet—’
‘She’s not coming back, is she?’ She tears out another handful of leaves. ‘And you won’t tell me where she is, or even why she left. This is the curse, isn’t it?’
Violet’s not so young anymore that she fully believes in the curse the way she once did. Once she thought it was literal, and spent weeks waiting for her own shadow to rise up and claim its place next to her. Now she knows the spectre for what it really is: death. The afflicted Everlys are forever youthful in their portraits. But whatever the curse truly is, it takes one Everly per generation. And her uncles are still here; Marianne Everly is not.
Ambrose blinks, startled. ‘Violet, why would you say that?’
‘Is it?’ she asks insistently.
He sighs and rubs his forehead, a sign that Violet recognises as him working up to a lie. ‘I don’t know where she is. Truly. Or why she left’ – and there’s the lie, right there – ‘but she’ll come back, I promise.’
Somehow, this promise feels worse than the lie. And he does not, she notices, refute the curse.
Every so often, Gabriel drops in on the house, and though he never stays for long, his visits are always memorable. He teaches her how to punch – ‘Thumb over fist, kiddo!’ – how to move like a shadow, how to play darts like a pro. One birthday, the lesson is accompanied by a set of lock picks, despite Ambrose’s protests.
Violet’s not sure these qualify as gifts, exactly, but there’s a kind of thrill from prying open her first lock, or walking down creaking floorboards without making a sound. Yet there are also times when her uncles hole themselves up in the library, leaving Violet to amuse herself. Days when she’s certain she hears her name muffled behind its closed doors – or that of her mother. She suspects Ambrose is afraid that if he answers her questions, she’ll disappear like Marianne – on a black, starless night with rain sheeting down the windows, never to return.
Sometimes, she thinks he’s right to worry. Because adventure, it turns out, is a dangerously seductive word. It reaches underneath Violet’s ribcage and pulls, like a cosmic string attuned to a compass point elsewhere. She spends hours cloistered in the library, poring over a map in its appropriately sized atlas folio splendour, until her vision bleeds faint blue latitude and longitude lines. She collects city names like other people collect spare change, letting the words linger in unfamiliar satisfaction.
She imagines, too, what it would be like to be that person heaving the bag over her shoulder, her diary stuffed with tales of the delights and dangers on the road. The stories she would bring back, wonder itself captured in her scrawled handwriting. A dozen languages on her lips, a hundred histories at her fingertips, every sight unforgettable.
See? Seduction.
Ambrose tells her it’ll fade as she gets older. But that peculiar time when magic fades and cynicism sets in never happens, so there’s always a part of her waiting for something.
Two weeks after her seventeenth birthday, she’s curled up in a threadbare library armchair, idly toying with her bracelets, when she hears a pummel of footsteps. To her shock, Gabriel strides past the doorway – which is impossible, because as far as she’s aware, he’s supposed to be in some far-flung country, oceans away from the Everly house. She hasn’t seen him in almost a year, and the last time for only an afternoon, at that. It never occurred to her that he might be dropping into the house to see Ambrose, avoiding her entirely.
Quietly, she unfurls from the chair and steals after him.
She almost loses track of him twice as he makes his way through the labyrinthine corridors. He’s wearing a three-piece suit, his jacket slung over his shoulder. Then he pauses in the hallway, and she has to cover her mouth to stifle a gasp. He would look like he’s on his way to a dinner, were it not for the black eye and split lip. Blood stains his crisp white collar in a vivid red spatter.
Violet knows then that she was never supposed to see this.
She quickens her pace. Gabriel might tell her where he’s going if she can catch him on his way out. Might tell her why he’s covered in blood, or why he’s here at all.
Her footsteps are barely a whisper on the floorboards. But a whisper is still noise, and Gabriel is the one who taught her that trick. So when he vanishes between one room and the next, she’s disappointed but not surprised he’s managed to elude her.
She’s about to head back when a gleam of light catches her eye. At the end of the long, dark hallway, a door stands slightly ajar. A chilly blue glow spills from it, casting shadows across the floorboards. It’s supposed to lead to an unused guest room, and on every other day, it does.
But not tonight.
In the sliver between the door and the frame, a city sprawls below, as though Violet’s suddenly standing on the edge of a vast cliff. Snow falls in heady fat flakes, clustering at the edge of the doorway. Rooftops sparkle white, illuminated by honey-coloured lamplight. Stars, brighter and more numerous than any she’s ever seen, in constellations Violet has no name for. And the sonorous song of the mountainside rolls across the clifftops, a hum accompanied by the pop and judder of shifting ice.
It can’t be real. Yet ice rimes the floorboards, creeping into the house. A breeze sends snowflakes skittering towards her, with a cold that snatches the air from her lungs.
Violet, the wind murmurs.
She takes one step, then another—
The door slams shut, as if someone’s tugged it closed from the other side.
Violet freezes, precious seconds ticking past. Then she reaches for the doorknob and yanks it open. The dark, dusty guest room stares back at her. When she steps back, the snow has already melted, soaking into the floorboards.
She thinks of the boy and his marble, wandering galaxies dancing in the air, a woman who wore her smile like a weapon. Her mother, and the mystery wrapped in every syllable of her name.
A voice whispers adventure.
Aleksander, too, receives a gift of sorts on each of his birthdays.
For his thirteenth birthday, it’s punishment for showing the Everly girl the trick with the reveurite marble. Twenty lashes with a birch whip. Reveurite is the metal of the gods, Penelope says softly, as he’s led away to a cold, dark room. Not to be toyed with, and never to be manipulated in front of the ignorant. Really, the punishment should be more severe. But he isn’t just anyone’s assistant, and so Penelope is merciful. This is what she says, and he believes her, even as the first lash descends and he bites down hard on his lip to stop himself from crying out.
On his fifteenth birthday, Penelope takes him to Paris. She drops him in the city with no money, no way of contacting her and no map – just the name of a café. Seven hours later, he arrives, exhausted, hungry and wet from the constant drizzle. Penelope glances at her watch.
‘You must do better, Aleksander,’ she says.
Over the following days, there are new cities and new destinations, until the cityscape feels like a second skin. He memorises street maps, tracks the flow of pedestrians into city centres, learns to pickpocket phones and ask for directions in over a dozen languages. On his twentieth drop-off, he finds Penelope within an hour, and she smiles approvingly, a gift all on its own.
He is almost seventeen when he falls into a heady romance with another boy. There is awkward fumbling and later, hasty undressing in the depths of the archives when they should be studying. For a month Aleksander is unfocused, distracted by the shape of the boy’s mouth, the feeling of another’s hands on his skin.
It’s during one of these secret trysts that Penelope herself comes to fetch Aleksander, five minutes late to a forgotten meeting. There is punishment, of course, for his missed attendance. But Aleksander discovers that he’s not absent of learning, for here is the new lesson: shame.
Two weeks later, the boy is caught stealing a scholar’s key to elsewhere. A crime beyond crimes, sacrilege, treason. The keys are the only door to the outside, the only way Fidelis can bring in vital resources that they simply cannot recreate in the city. Aleksander listens with the dead weight of horror, imagining – as the other scholars must surely also be doing – Fidelis without its precious link, its crucial imports.
A city in ruins, which is no city at all.
The boy protests his innocence, but the charge is clear. Aleksander bows his head quietly as the boy is escorted from the scholars’ tower, expelled forever. The next time they pass each other on the street – Aleksander in his scholar’s robe, the boy in agriculturalist overalls – they walk past, with no acknowledgement of the other, were it not for the studious way they avoid each other’s eyes.
Aleksander throws himself back into his studies. There are no more distractions. Which is a good thing, he tells himself, given how much there is to learn.
He studies the history of Fidelis until he can recite it by rote. He memorises long-dead languages, piecing together fragments from fragile manuscripts. In a dim classroom amongst a dozen other assistants, he moulds reveurite with his hands into self-perpetuating cogs and pulleys for the engineers, or fine strands to weave through airship rope, giving it preternatural strength. Then there is mathematics, chemistry, astronomy. On his own, with Penelope as his uncompromising tutor, he learns the languages and cultures of elsewhere, building on the foundations of his excursions with her. Other days, he spends hours with her identifying fellow dreamers on wet elsewhere streets, trying to ascertain the telltale golden glow of talent that surrounds every scholar of Fidelis.
Three days before he turns nineteen, Aleksander wakes in his narrow cell of a room, one of many on the mid-level floors of the scholars’ tower. The comforting noises of home echo around him: the gurgle of hot water pipes; the energetic snoring of a fellow novice next door; mountain birds calling sweetly to one another above the early morning mist. A melody he’s heard all his life, but one he never tires of.
He’s always awake by dawn, waiting for a note to be slipped under his door. Written in Penelope’s elegant script, this one says: Pack your things. We leave within the hour.
Hastily, he pulls on a clean shirt and trousers, patched at the knees. The cuffs have been let out, and then let out again, but they still skim his ankles, giving him the peculiar yet accurate look of someone who has shot up very quickly, and perhaps may grow forever. Like the other scholars, he has let his hair grow to his shoulders, tying it back with spare bookbinding ribbon.
He makes his way through candlelit hallways and up the impressive staircase that seems to extend infinitely in either direction. Even beyond the archives’ prodigious memory, there has always been the scholars’ tower, casting its long shadow over the rest of the city. A pillar of knowledge for those blessed with the combination of wit, talent and perseverance to study in its halls. To Aleksander – especially in this golden hour – even standing here feels like an act of reverence.
His feet slip easily into the worn indents on the stone, where thousands of other scholars have stepped before, treading the staircase smooth. Penelope’s rooms are the highest in the masters’ wing, a privilege of her position. Though the air is cold, Aleksander is sweating by the time he reaches her study.
Penelope is waiting for him inside. ‘I expected you sooner.’
He hears the cut of disappointment in her voice. ‘I’m sorry, Mistress.’
He considers asking where they’re going, but immediately thinks better of it. Instead, he follows her through her study, towards a door at the back. There might once have been a room beyond, but now Aleksander stands in front of an open archway, the city of Fidelis spilling outwards below him. It’s far from the first time he’s been privy to this view, but it takes his breath away every time. Dawn skims the mountainside, casting a rose-gold glow over snow-topped roofs and precarious stairways, bridges swaying in the breeze. From here he can see the forges blazing like stars to the west, where the craftsmen wrestle with reveurite on their anvils. And to the east, up on the peaks, jagged ruins with sawtoothed silhouettes.
Fidelis: home of the scholars; of myth and wonder; of all that he loves. The cradle to other worlds. He’s lived most of his life here, and he’ll never understand how anywhere could even begin to compare.
Penelope offers him her hand. ‘Shall we?’
He takes it, making sure to look straight ahead and not to the sheer drop below. They step up to the rim of the archway, toes curled over the edge. The wind tears at Aleksander’s clothes, pulling his balance out of joint. But Penelope looks serene, as always. Her key is already out, the air glittering with an otherworldly light.
Courage, he tells himself—
They step into the open sky.
In the library, there is a locked drawer that Violet has not yet discovered. Late at night, when he’s certain his niece is elsewhere, Ambrose unlocks it and pulls out a battered notebook with intense, looping handwriting, and Marianne Everly scribbled over the first page. Inside, rows of names line the notebook, most of them in Marianne’s scrawl, and only the last few in his own. Some of them are underlined, or pinned in place with a question mark, but many more – too many – have been crossed offas dead ends. It’s taken years to unravel Marianne’s cypher, and longer still to work through the names on her list. True, Ambrose can’t chase Marianne to the ends of the earth from this house – not when he’s responsible for Violet. But if his elder brother is the arrow, then Ambrose is the bowstring, gathering energy, directing Gabriel’s efforts.
‘She’s still out there,’ Gabriel had told him quietly, on his last visit.
Ambrose has tried to send so many messages to her over the years, in the hope that they would reach her. Three years ago, one of them did. The response was a letter with no return address, not even a signature. Just two words, in handwriting Ambrose would recognise anywhere: I’m close.
If there is anyone who can break a curse, it’s her.
If anyone can escape their fate, a treacherous voice whispers, it’s her.
Ambrose runs his hand through his hair. There are strands of premature silver woven into sandy blond, and when he looks into the mirror, his father’s face leaps out at him before his reflection settles as his own. And he’s not the only one who’s changed. Violet is growing up too, the years passing between blinks. Every birthday, he feels a renewed terror for her, and Penelope’s face looms under his eyelids.
Ten years to find Marianne Everly, then five, then two. His sister has left ghostly imprints of herself all over the world, but still she refuses to appear.
They are running out of time.
Once a year, Penelope descends into the underworld to visit a monster.
No assistant to look after, precious little light to see by. The underworld smells like hatred and pain, like suffering stretched taut across centuries.
For a while, she and the monster study one another’s faces in the gloom.
We await your question, star-daughter.
‘Tell me,’ she says softly. ‘What do you know of curses?’
CHAPTER SIX
VIOLET EVERLY IS twenty-one years old, and dreaming of other worlds.
Mostly, she dreams of a world where coffee orders are simple – black, white, latte, cappuccino – and not ‘two shots, hold the froth, soya but only this brand of soya, small but in a big cup’ when the queue threatens to stretch out of the door. A world without customers complaining their panini is overpriced, or the rose biscuits taste more like lavender, or that the sugar is too sweet. A world which, dare she dream it, might not involve her working in this godforsaken café at all.
Her co-worker, Matt, squeezes past her with two coffees and a teetering plate. ‘Look alive, Biscuit!’
He alone had been absolutely tickled by her name matching one of their signature floral biscuits. By the time she’d cottoned on, most of the staff and even some of the regulars were calling her Biscuit, and she was too tired to argue it. Because you’re sweet, he explained. Would you rather be Burnt Coffee Grounds?
Maybe!, she wishes she’d said. At least Burnt Coffee Grounds sounds like she’s seen something more than the inside of this café.
As a teenager, she’d envisioned herself as a historian in some grand library, holed up with mountains of books in barely legible handwriting. Then she’d toyed with archaeology when the library hadn’t felt big enough to hold her ambitions. Anthropologist, travel writer, journalist, diplomat, translator – it didn’t matter that she hadn’t quite settled on a choice yet. For a wild, thrilling moment in her life, it seemed the future was opening up to her, and everything had felt possible.
How easily it’s been taken from her.
It would be different, she reflects, if she knew that there would be more than this. That she could still go off and become any one of those people. But it had all come crashing down when she was seventeen, a few months after she’d seen Gabriel in his bloodied suit. When she learnt the magnitude of what Ambrose had sacrificed on her behalf when he’d decided to keep her at home. So she’d received an education, yes. But no qualifications. No exam results. Not even half a chance to pursue a degree.
‘Why?’ she’d begged.
Ambrose had given her a long, meandering and utterly unconvincing explanation. But even if she’d believed him, the damage was already done. So she’s tried to let it go. She has.
But she’s never forgotten the door leading to the city, the snow, the song of the mountainside. A secret that she’s held even from her uncles, for fear of its unravelling. And she finds herself lingering in the same dark hallway, her chest brimming with the unplaceable feeling that something vital’s slipped through her fingers.
Matt snaps his fingers next to her ear and she jumps, slopping milk over her hands.
‘Christ on a bicycle,’ she swears.
‘I’m told we share a resemblance.’ He jerks his head towards one of her tables. ‘Pay attention, Biscuit. You’re up.’
She’s halfway across the linoleum, menu in hand, when she notes the man sitting at her table. He sits with his head bowed, focused on his hands clasped in front of him. Golden afternoon sunlight kisses his skin, the line of a tattoo barely visible above his collarbones. His profile is all sharp lines, bladed from the bridge of his nose all the way through to his jaw – the bone structure of a Grecian statue. His dark curly hair is pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck. Unfairly pretty, she thinks.
Suddenly, she’s conscious that she’s been working all day, sweat wicking through her shirt, that she smells like stale coffee, and that there’s an unidentifiable stain – probably jam – just underneath her collar.
The world is desperately cruel sometimes.
Reluctantly, Violet approaches, praying for invisibility – and at least in this, the gods oblige. The man doesn’t even look up as she sets the menu down, and she turns to leave. But despite herself, she steals another glance over his shoulder to see what he’s so focused on. With surprise, she realises that his hands aren’t clasped together, but holding some kind of metal object. Then he does something she remembers so clearly it runs like a lightning bolt through her head.
He pinches it, and pulls.
The galaxy over her kitchen table. The boy with his dark curly hair and fuzzy collar.
She sucks in a sharp breath – just in time to meet his curious gaze.
Sea-glass grey.
‘It’s you,’ she says.
She takes a step back, colliding with another co-worker bearing an armful of empty plates. When she gets to her feet, the man is already halfway out of the door. She darts forward, heedless of the other customers watching her.
There have been so many near misses and almosts. She refuses to let one more opportunity slip away from her. It was him. It was him.
‘Biscuit,’ Matt calls after her.
‘Back in a sec!’ she shouts.
Violet glances up and down the road, and catches the edge of a figure disappearing into the alleyway next to the café. Heart pounding, she takes after him, wind snapping at her apron.
The alleyway is empty. The man’s gone.
Her stomach sinks at the knowledge that once again, she’s just missed another glimpse of the extraordinary. To come so close, and then no further.
Her hands wring her apron helplessly. It’ll always be like this. The café, the customers, the empty Everly house, and these fleeting echoes of the other life she might have had. But no more than that. And it’ll never be enough.
Then she spies movement out of the corner of her eye – and what she’d originally mistaken for a shadow coalesces into the silhouette of a man, sitting on the low wall. Her heart restarts in her chest, cautious joy racing through her veins.
As she approaches, she waits for him to leap up and sprint away. But he doesn’t run, and this time he meets her gaze with a frank inquisitiveness that leaves the back of her neck burning.
‘May I?’ she asks, and he inclines his head.
She sits down next to him on the wall, partly to see the object in his hands better and partly in the hope that his body will block out the brutally cold wind. A glint of silver flashes between his fingers.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Aleksander?’ When he startles at the sound of his name, she continues, ‘We met once, a long time ago. But you probably don’t remember.’
Why would he? He must have seen a thousand more interesting things than an angry twelve-year-old girl and her uncle. A fierce wind blows over them and she hugs herself.
‘You’re shivering,’ he says.
Gallantly, he offers her his jacket, and she accepts. It smells strongly of soap, but also unexpectedly, the faint sweetness of charcoal.
‘And I do remember you, Violet Everly.’ A faint smile pulls his mouth upwards. ‘How could I forget? And now here you are. Out of all the cafés in the world.’
Like fate, reaching for her hand. And how nearly it had slipped from her grasp. A quiet thrill goes through her.
‘I didn’t mean to take off like that,’ he adds. ‘You just surprised me, that’s all. It was going to be hard to explain the bird.’
Violet tilts her head to the side, confused, and carefully, he opens his cupped hands. The crude shape of a bird appears on his palm, its wings half moulded as though struggling to escape its metal confines. He passes it to her and she tilts it in the light. Its feathers glitter dimly, like it was forged by moonlight and not Aleksander’s slender fingers.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she says. ‘And you made that? With magic?’
He coughs, masking what Violet suspects is laughter. ‘It’s reveurite. Star-metal, or god-metal if you want to be theological about it. Not magic.’
‘It looks so real,’ she says, handing the bird back.
But he shakes his head. ‘Keep it. This is nothing,’ he says, although he sounds pleased. ‘You should see the forge masters in Fidelis.’
‘Fidelis?’
She’s certain she’s heard that name before. It rings against a deeper memory, one she can’t quite place. She opens her mouth to pursue the question, but another frigid breeze rolls over them and he rubs his hands together. Possibly he’s already regretting his act of gallantry, she thinks.
‘Biscuit!’ someone yells, and Violet flinches.
Aleksander’s eyebrows raise. ‘Biscuit?’
‘My, um, co-workers have this – well, it’s not really a joke, but—’ She tries to gather herself. ‘Do you want to come back in?’
He beams at her, and she feels an unexpected glow of pleasure. ‘Lead the way.’
When she returns inside, Aleksander in tow, Matt gives her a pointed look of intrigue that she ignores. She settles Aleksander on to her favourite table by the window and reluctantly hands back his jacket.
‘I finish in half an hour,’ she says. ‘If you can wait?’
He smiles at her. ‘I can wait.’
The next thirty minutes move at a crawl, and with every one of them, Violet is torn between the desire to check Aleksander’s still there, and the fear that if she does look, he’ll be watching right back. She busies herself as best as she can, wiping down counters and pouring away the dregs of coffee. As soon as Matt flips over the sign to Closed and locks the door, Violet sets two cups and matching slices of cake on Aleksander’s table, pulling a chair towards him.
‘So tell me,’ she says, desperate to keep him here, to hold on to the moment for as long as possible. ‘What do you get up to when you’re not hanging out at cafés?’
Over the table, Aleksander tells her about his travels. He names cities, countries as though he simply steps between them, and every anecdote is filled with the kind of marvels that she’s only ever read about. If she feels a stab of envy, it’s only at how much he’s seen, and how little she has to offer him in return.
‘And… I’m training to be a scholar,’ he confesses, like it’s a secret she’s not meant to have.
She starts to ask what it means, a question shaping her lips. But he’s already racing ahead with his own, and it falls into the back of her mind. At his insistence, she tells him about herself, the eccentric and sometimes irritable customers at the café. She even tells him about the Everly curse, for want of a story that feels equally fantastical to his own – though they both share a wry smile at the fairy-taleesque details. They have both, she’s noticed, avoided using the word magic again, but it’s impossible not to feel it shaped between them, in every question she’s asked, and all the ones she hasn’t.
‘And your mother?’ he asks. ‘Is she still on her adventure?’
The air in her lungs freezes. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Complicated how?’
Her hands go to her bracelets, one of Marianne’s few possessions Violet’s claimed in her absence. How could she possibly begin to explain? Marianne seems to haunt every one of her uncles’ hushed conversations, and yet Violet still has no idea where she went or why, if she’s even alive—
She forces a smile. ‘Just… complicated.’
For the first time, she catches something in his expression like unease. But it’s gone in the next second, and she wonders whether it was just a trick of the light.
He drains the last of his coffee and sets the empty cup down. ‘I’d better go. It was lovely to meet you properly, Violet Everly.’
Violet has the sudden panic that if she waves him goodbye, she’ll never see him again. And the soap-bubble dream of today will burst, leaving her with nothing in her hands but those tantalising echoes. She knows there’s more – so much more – to ask.
‘You should come again,’ she blurts out. ‘To the café.’
God forbid Aleksander show up at the Everly house. If Ambrose and Gabriel are entitled to their secrets, she’s more than earned her right to keep this one.
He smiles at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Here, then.’ She hands him a small card – ten illustrated coffee cups, with the first two already stamped over in blue ink. ‘If you keep coming, you’ll get a free coffee.’
He looks at it and smiles. ‘Then I guess I’ll have to come back, Violet.’
That evening, Violet coaxes her rusty bike across countryside lanes as she makes the familiar, meandering journey home. She turns into the driveway, and as always, something knots in her stomach at the sight of her home, with its Gothic turrets and overgrown rose bushes climbing the gate. Not for the first time, she wishes it could be enough.
Ambrose, as usual, is at the kitchen table, trying to read a sheaf of handwritten documents and patch an old jumper at the same time. As soon as Violet enters, he shuffles the papers underneath the jumper, out of sight. Irritation prickles over her skin.
‘Good day?’ he asks. ‘Anything exciting happen?’
She shrugs, feeling the half-guilty thrill of a lie. ‘Not really.’
Leaving Ambrose in the kitchen, she heads to the library. It’s still her favourite place in the house, a treasure trove of books and curios gathered over generations of Everlys. A rusty sword hangs precariously along one wall, framed by a dozen family photos and scraps of artwork from some obscure Victorian artist. She used to spend hours imagining the knight that bore it, and the places he must have seen.
Now Violet pulls down atlas after atlas, flipping through the pages she used to pore through as a child. Something that Aleksander had said is still worrying at the recesses of an old memory, wreathed in dust and the crinkle of old paper. Nothing jumps out at her – and yet she knows she’s heard that name before. Fidelis. When she whispers it to herself, it tastes like spun sugar, like snowmelt and starlight.
Eventually, she comes to her favourite book of fairy tales, bound in green silk, with foil decorations stamped in burnished gold. It was the last gift she received from her mother, and it’s the most precious, her mother’s dedication scrawled in her handwriting.
For Violet – may the stars sing for you one day.
Half of the foil has rubbed off and the deckled edges are soft with age, but Violet loves it all the more for its worn beauty. Every story is set in a different imaginary city, with hand-painted maps and beautifully precise details. Suspiciously precise, now that she’s re-examining it.
She flips through until she finds the one that she’s after. It’s more illustration than map, showing a city perched high on a mountainside. She’s always loved it for the way the streets seem to twist around themselves, with fanciful names like Tullis Gate-Arch or Etallantia Sky Way. Her hands touch the top of the page, where the name of the city is hand-lettered in delicate serifs.
Fidelis.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN THE ALLEYWAY next to the café, Aleksander checks to make sure no one’s watching before he pulls out a reveurite key from under his shirt. He holds it out in the air, feeling for the slight resistance that marks the boundary between worlds. It’s easier with a door and a keyhole, but Aleksander is well-practised now, and the thin membrane parts easily for him. A flash of blue light, a whirl of metallic noise, and then he’s standing inside Penelope’s quarters, half a step from the open archway and the view of Fidelis. Outside, snow is falling in fat, heavy flakes, visible against the honeyed lights of the city below.
From a hook next to the archway, he retrieves his assistant’s robes and pulls them on over his elsewhere clothes. Better if they were full scholar regalia – dense black embroidery on black silk, with a thicker fur lining of his choosing, and whatever vestments he wants underneath – but it’s only his position that keeps him from being forced to wear the simpler novice robes, which he is nearly too old for, anyway.
As he reaches for the door, he hears the sound of one of Penelope’s gatherings in full swing. His stomach tightens; he’d hoped to catch Penelope on her own. Dread winding through him, he opens the door. The conversation dies as he steps in, and five scholars turn to stare at him in accusatory silence.
‘Aleksander,’ Penelope says brightly. ‘We were just discussing the resourcing for this winter. Please, join us.’
Yet another task tacked on to a scholar’s remit: procuring suitable resources and lines of business across both worlds, to accommodate the limitations of this one.
Aleksander swallows nervously as he takes an empty seat by the window, observing the group that has graced Penelope’s study this evening. There’s the stern Verne matriarch Adelia; Katherine Hadley and her wardrobe-sized bodyguard, Judas; the Matsuda twins, identical in floral suits. Even Roy Quintrell is here, sporting his ridiculous velvet jacket, which by all rights should have been decommissioned into a less offensive cushion cover years ago. He senses their eyes on him, sweeping over his rumpled hair, the awkward hunch to his shoulders. Judgement flashes across their faces, even though none of them have the authority to directly challenge Penelope’s invitation.
Stupidity, though – definitely.
‘But this is rather important,’ Roy says peevishly. ‘Surely your assistant should make himself scarce? If I had an assistant—’
Penelope’s smile is still in place, but her eyes sparkle dangerously. ‘What would you have me do with him, then?’
There’s a gleam of panic in Roy’s face as he tries to backtrack. ‘I wouldn’t dare presume – no, of course not—’
‘Then be quiet and take notes,’ Adelia says.
The conversation turns to the harvest shortfall – a little worse than the year before, despite the new ingenuities the greenhouse workers have come up with – and what foodstuffs will need to be replenished midwinter by the elsewhere lines of supply. Likewise, the ageing water pipes, which will need to be replaced before next year, and the quantities of copper required. Then the intake of new scholars; who amongst the families’ new generations proves the most adept. Rumours of a scholar auctioning stolen artefacts elsewhere to the highest bidder.
Penelope listens to them all carefully before dispensing her commands. But Aleksander can’t help note the scholars’ occasional disapproving glances towards him. As if he can’t be trusted with the specifics of Fidelis’ resourcing. Even though these scholars no longer live in Fidelis, and barely travel back from their comfortable elsewhere lives. Scholars in little but name – except that the name is, of course, everything.
And Penelope was supposed to be on their side. She was supposed to pick one of the families’ heirs – in this case, Adelia’s insufferable grandson, Caspian – on whom to impart glory, wealth, and most importantly, the secret of longevity that some scholar lines are so blessed with. And no doubt they have all envisioned taking Penelope’s place as head of this room – as if such a thing could even be possible.
Anyone else would be ushered in with welcoming arms, but not Aleksander. Other assistants aren’t hand-picked by Penelope. Other assistants aren’t outsiders chosen by one of the most powerful people across both worlds. Other assistants didn’t fuck up Adelia Verne’s plans.
The sun has long vanished from the sky when the scholars finally say their goodbyes to Penelope and exit through the archway. Aleksander allows himself to raise one satisfied eyebrow at Roy, who shoots him a dirty look as he leaves.
Then it’s just Aleksander. Not awkwardly lingering to ask Penelope’s favour, or to beg advice, or to simply catch a few wayward sparks of glory. But here because he belongs. Which is more than any of those people can say, no matter how much the other scholars dislike him.
Penelope gestures to her cupboards, and Aleksander hastily pulls down a bottle of wine and two glasses. He fills hers first and sets it on the table next to her. He waits until she’s had her first sip before pouring for himself.
Penelope leans back in her chair. ‘How was she, Aleksander?’
He doesn’t need the name to know who Penelope’s asking about: Violet Everly. In as much detail as possible, he outlines their meeting. How he’d purposely walked into the café, looking for all the world like it was nothing but coincidence that had led him there.
‘She seems… normal,’ he says.
It had been risky to use reveurite in public, with so many observers. But he had to make sure that Violet would recognise him. And, truth be told, he wasn’t entirely prepared for her response, or the way she’d said his name, like she’d been waiting for him to walk in.
It’s you.
He thought it would take more prompting on his behalf, too, to know the girl from the Everly house. But even before he’d felt her gaze on him, even as she handed him the menu, he could tell it was her. The same burning curiosity, the same wonder when he’d shown her the reveurite bird.
‘I’m not sure she knows anything of the scholars or even Fidelis,’ he continues cautiously. ‘She wouldn’t tell me about Marianne.’
‘Well, that’s to be expected. It’s only your first time. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to build trust.’
‘And Fidelis?’
Penelope shrugs. ‘Tell her whatever you wish. You said she liked the idea of magic? Use that. Anything it takes to get her to talk about Marianne.’
Aleksander sets his glass down on the table, his heart in his throat. ‘Mistress, I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I’m not – I’m very grateful, always, but—’ His hands touch the spot on his arm where his scholar’s tattoo should be.
Will be, one day. Whatever the other scholars may think.
‘You wish to know what the point of all this is.’ Penelope taps the arm of her chair. ‘Aleksander, they may be the best scholars of their families, but they’re human, too. They fear what we all fear: change, old age, irrelevance. Their family names vanishing into obscurity, their wealth and talent diminished. You remind them that, as much as they wish, the world moves on – and they may be left behind.’
Aleksander is pretty sure none of those fears are quite as acute as the thought of failing to gain the scholar’s tattoo, but he says nothing.
‘You are an unknown quantity. Not from a family of note – or any family at all, for that matter. Just one more abandoned child, destined to some miserable existence, with nothing to suggest your capability for greatness – except your talent. It’s why I chose you, when I could have had any number of mediocre yet tolerated assistants,’ Penelope continues, and Aleksander feels just a hint of smugness at Caspian being described as mediocre. ‘They will come round to you eventually, given enough time. They just need a little persuasion.’
‘Persuasion,’ he echoes.
Persuasion is money. Casual threats. Or an offer of something of extraordinary value that coin can’t buy. But Aleksander is beholden to the scholars for his finances, he’s no threat to anyone, and if he had anything of value to offer them, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
‘Put it out of your mind for now. Was there anything else that Violet mentioned?’ Penelope prompts.
‘We talked, and I asked as much as I could. But…’ He frowns. ‘I don’t understand, Mistress. If the Everlys are a scholar family—’
Penelope cuts him off. ‘The Everlys aren’t scholars, and never will be. Befriend Violet Everly by all means, and learn as much as you’re able, but remember that she has no place in our world. Am I clear, Aleksander?’
‘Yes, Mistress,’ he says.
Later that night, as he settles on to his uncomfortable mattress, he keeps returning to Violet Everly. The echo of his name in her mouth replays in his mind. Aleksander. Bright and heedless, like a clean spring sky, with no regard for who he might be: an assistant no one wants, threat and disappointment rolled into one.
In another life, they might have been friends. In this one, she’s a means to an end. Nothing more.
He promises himself that he’ll remember this, the next time they meet.