Page 179 of She Who Devours the Stars

Behind the counter, a man of uncertain age and even more uncertain sobriety threw dough in the air, caught it, and shouted “HELL YEAH!” with every successful catch. He wore a patch that read “Pizza Todd.” The owner and operator of the Starlit Crust. The Patron Saint of Pizza. He was rolling in it now, each pie smelled a little holier than the last.

I grabbed a slice, still hot, and let the cheese burn my mouth. It hurt, but I didn’t care. A little cheese burn was nothing after the awful first date Zevelune took me on.

“Hot, huh?” said a voice, low and honeyed, right behind me.

I turned. Dyris. Leopard print, mesh, and an aura so strong it made everyone within ten feet reconsider their sexuality. She wore the “Sexretary” title now, big and bold in my AR. Sexretary Dyris Trivane. She seemed to enjoy the way it made Vireleth hiccup every time she walked through a sensor field. She reached for a slice, caught my wrist, and bit the cheese off my thumb.

“Gods,” I said, half-laughing, half not.

“I outrank them,” she replied, and licked the sauce off her lip, deliberately, and with hard eye contact.

We moved through the crowd like a localized phenomenon, too bright, too loud, and too mythic to touch. Every conversation tilted our way, drawn in by gravity, then swerved hard as people remembered I was the girl who made a black hole moan and Dyris once talked an entire insurgency into disbanding just by talking at them. Someone bumped into her and apologized like it might be their last act. She smiled. They ran.

Dyris, in that moment, radiated the quiet menace of a woman who could reverse planetary spin if you spilled her drink, and me? I was the narrative hazard in the room. The cosmic oops. The myth that the universe tried to delete and failed, and now had to pretend it was planned.

We found the next cluster: my mother, Velline, holding court at a round table with Dax, Alyx, and two randoms who looked so deeply unready for my family’s energy that I almost felt bad for them.

Velline was mid-story, her hands flying. “And then this absolute unit—” she gestured at Dyris, “—breaks through the Ruins, lands like a meteor, and, boom, has my baby in her arms! Did you see the footage? The shoes? She never even scuffed the shoes. If I wasn’t already in love with Dax, I’d marry her myself.”

Dax, three beers in and counting, raised a glass. “To never doubting Dyris again. Not after that. Goddamn Sexretary.” He wiped his mouth, then looked at me, eyes full of that pride/terror mix dads only get when they realize their kid is both immortal and impossible to parent.

Alyx nursed a neon blue drink, watching Dyris with an intensity that bordered on religious. “So, this is the bar now,” she said, dryly. “Cool. Fine. I love pain.”

One of the randoms leaned in and whispered, “Was she always like this?” to no one in particular.

Velline heard. “She was worse,” she said, voice going soft for half a second. “But also perfect. And also very, very stubborn.”

Dyris grinned, then draped an arm over my shoulder, pulling me in. “You get used to it,” she said. “Or you run. Either way, it’s entertaining.”

I snorted, rolled my eyes, but didn’t try to escape the hold. Instead, I let my head rest against her for just a second, breathing in the scent of sweat, ozone, and the illegal perfume she’d pilfered from the Accord’s confiscation locker. My mythprint buzzed against hers; the pressure was nice, grounding.

Aenna stood at the edge of the light, glasses fogged, hands tight around a plastic cup. She was trying to disappear, but the resonance at her wrist kept flickering, pulsing every time she risked a glance in my direction. The red started at her cheeks and just… spread.

I pointed. “You’re not hiding, you know.”

She shrank into her hoodie, but her voice was steady: “I did the math, and you’re the only person here with a higher resonancethan the Myth-Oven, so you get first dance.” She lifted her cup like a shield. “Also, you owe me a dance. For science.”

I grinned. “Name your song.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Anything but Solance’s mixtape. My ears are still bleeding.”

The music, as if on cue, shifted, first a throb of ancient Old Earth pop, then a sweep of choral vocals so rich it made the air vibrate. Solance, never subtle, injected her signal into the mix, her voice a layer beneath the melody, humming “You’re not alone” in a dozen registers.

I shot a look at the nearest wall panel. The AR overlay showed Solance as a rotating icon, heart-shaped and pulsing, with the text: “THIS IS THE GOOD PART. GO.” I flipped it off. The icon winked back.

Aenna, precious Aenna, might not have been winning any dance offs any time soon, but she knew how to put my heart in my teeth with a slow dance. In hindsight, the bare chested mythcoat left me and Aenna pressed together with only her sundress between us. It was the strangely erotic, and brought back the memories of her, me, and our centuries locked together in the Spiral. When the song died, Aenna fled, red faced.

Dyris pulled me back toward the “dance floor” before I could follow her. At least fifty people had already claimed it, most in various stages of happy, drunk, or both. Someone had set up a mirror array at the far end, which was doing a great job doubling the number of bodies in play.

The song changed again, and the floor broke into groups: some kind of line dance on the left, a writhing mosh on the right, and a solo battle happening in the middle between a toddler in spark shoes and the pizza delivery guy from earlier.

Dyris nudged me, grinning. “You going to show them how it’s done?”

I shrugged. “Only if you back me up.”

She laughed, then swept into a move so smooth and impossible I lost a second just watching. She pulled me in, spun me, then let me go with a shove that sent me right into the solo battle.

The pizza guy, “Mike” per the name tag, paused, sizing me up. He smirked. “You’re the Nullarch, right?”