Page 158 of She Who Devours the Stars

My shadow stepped forward, slow and deliberate, then stopped just out of arm’s reach. It was taller than me, broader, but it moved with my rhythm, my history. It raised a hand in greeting, then let it fall.

I couldn’t breathe.

The world bent in, all the air gone sweet and sharp.

“Is this the part where you try to kill me?” I asked, not sure who I was talking to.

The shadow shrugged, grinned, and said in my voice, but not mine, That depends. Are you going to give me a reason?”

I laughed, or maybe I sobbed. It was hard to tell.

The shadow turned, walked five paces ahead, then turned back to face me, arms wide.

Zevelune smiled, stepped aside. “After you.”

I followed my shadow into the last stretch of the Ruins, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t not.

And as I walked, I muttered, “I should have kissed Dyris harder. More.”

The Ruins heard me.

So did the shadow.

And both of them smiled.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Trivane

Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

I knew I’d been ambushed the moment the corridor door locked behind me, but by then it was too late.

Velline was in rare form. She wore a dress that could have punched out the sun, fuchsia boots up to her thighs, and a belt studded with the kind of hardware that might double as anonlethal restraint system. She was a head shorter than me, but she radiated the presence of a star on a bender. Her arms were full, three garment bags, two spray bottles, and a pair of heels sharp enough to gut a moonrat.

She herded me down the corridor with the casual efficiency of a riot cop. “We’re going to have fun,” she promised. “You just hold still and let Mama do the work.”

I tried to protest, but my body was still running on backup systems, and the words came out lazy. “You don’t have to—”

She overrode me. “Hush. You’re not talking yourself out of this. Not today, not ever.” She spun me by the shoulders into a massive double door, which hissed open to reveal the full, terrible glory of the wardrobe archives.

It was like being force-fed through a fashion wormhole. Racks and racks of every possible silhouette, texture, and color, arranged by logic I could only assume was gene-coded into the Meldin line. There were suits. There were sequined capes. There was a wall dedicated to boots, organized by heel height and occasion for violence.

Velline dumped the bags on a low couch and turned on me with the gleam of a woman who’d finally cornered her prey. “Strip,” she said, and for a second, I thought she meant it. Then she rolled her eyes, snatched the zipper on my jumpsuit, and yanked it down with surgical speed.

I should have fought. I didn’t.

She stripped me to the skin in under twenty seconds, all while narrating the process for some invisible audience. “I always dreamed Fern would let me do this. But she was a slippery little bastard, never sat still, never wore anything I picked out, always five seconds from setting something on fire. You, though? You’re perfect. You’re the still point.”

I grunted as she shoved me onto the couch and started in on my hair. “Not really my thing,” I said, but the protest sounded hollow, even to me.

She massaged some viscous gel into my scalp, then raked it back, twisting and pinning it so tight my eyes watered. “Pain is a sign it’s working,” she said. “You want to look like you’re worth the trouble, you have to suffer a little. That’s the Meldin tradition.”

She layered foundation onto my face in swipes so aggressive I half-expected her to draw blood. “Good cheekbones,” she muttered. “Sharp jaw. I always said Fern needed someone with a strong chin. And look at you, silver and ice and all that attitude. Gods, it’s like I ordered you from a catalog.”

I sat, motionless, letting her go. My mind drifted: Fern, laughing in a cargo bay, shoving me into a crate because “nobody would ever look for me in the kale aisle”; Fern, mouth slick with hot sauce, daring me to say something mean; Fern, standing too close, never flinching.

Velline finished my face, then moved on to the nails. She filed, buffed, painted. “I’m not doing your toes,” she said. “That’s for weddings.” She cackled, then paused, and for a second her hands trembled on mine.

“Fern never let me do this,” she whispered, low. “Never let me… finish.”