Page 102 of She Who Devours the Stars

The resonance outside the room reached a new pitch. Somewhere, a weather drone melted. Security systems in three countries pinged each other in blind panic. For seven minutes, the South Tower floated ten meters above its foundation, untethered, a miracle nobody could explain.

Inside, there was only us. She licked her fingers clean while I whimpered underneath her, my first orgasm almost wrecking me.

Dyris slid down my body, kissed my lips, tasted herself on me, and smiled with the wickedness of a girl who’d known hell and decided to keep it as a pet. It’s me.

“You’re mine now,” she whispered. “You don’t get to fall apart unless I say so.”

I tried to laugh, but my throat was full of want. “Don’t let go,” I begged.

She didn’t. She kissed my face, my chin, the hollow where my jaw met my neck, until the need in me was so great I thought I’d die if she stopped.

She didn’t stop.

She worked her way down, tracing the curve of my ribs with her teeth, licking the sweat from my belly, nuzzling my hips until I was shaking again. I opened for her, wanting nothing but to be filled, and when she slid her fingers into me again, I nearly screamed.

Her touch was ruthless. She curled her fingers, pressed her thumb to my clit, and moved with the confidence of a surgeon and the cruelty of a lover who’d already broken you and was just putting you back together for the fun of it. Her other hand pinched my left nipple so hard I saw blistering stars across my vision, a whole spiral arm of the Milky Way.

I came instantly. The pressure in my gut exploded out, all that white hole energy blasting through my body, out my mouth, out my skin, out into the mythic grid that bound the Accord together. I came so hard I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even remember my name.

The sparkling lights in my vision spelled a name, and that name was my whole existence.

I sobbed it into her hand as I came: “Dyris. Please. Dyris.”

She bit my thigh, right at the soft inside edge, and I felt myself go again, a wave so deep it shook the bedding field and knocked us both into freefall.

She pulled me to her, cradling my head to her chest, rocking me until my pulse slowed and I remembered the shape of my bones. She kissed my forehead, then my eyelids, then the ruined edge of my mouth.

When I looked up at her, she was glowing, literally: her skin sheened with sweat and light, her eyes shot through with silver threads, her face the face of someone who had found the reason the world was worth saving.

I saw an asteroid shower in her eyes. Ifeltan asteroid shower form above Eventide. We’d created a celestial phenomenon by fucking. No, Dyris had made a cosmic phenomenon, I’d lain there and gotten fucked with a ferocity that wasn’t punishment, but rescue in its most violent, honest form.

I shivered all over.

“You’re impossible,” I said, voice hoarse.

She smiled, then leaned down, whispering so softly I almost missed it.

“So are you.”

The South Tower drifted back down, settling into its old footprint with barely a jolt. The world outside spun on, none the wiser, except for the women waking wet and the weather systems still hunting for their storm.

We lay there, tangled, neither willing to let go.

If I’d died in that moment, I wouldn’t have noticed.

I’d already become something new.

The only thing I was hungry for now was her.

And maybe—if the world was stupid enough to let us—another seven minutes of peace before it tried to kill us again.

I pulled her down, lips to mine, and let the fusion take us both.

It was the first time in my life I’d ever wanted to stay.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Vaelith

Axis Alignment: South Tower