Page 182 of She Who Devours the Stars

The mythcore answered with a pulse, a slow, rolling wave of light that stroked the inside of my skull and made my whole body shiver. The air thickened, the world drew in.

I waited.

A voice, not the modulated voice but the real one, came from the center of the column. It was deep, but not just deep, layered, like a hundred versions of Vireleth all talking at once, each with a flavor of devotion and hunger of its own.

“You never do, Fern Trivane.”

The glow resolved into a shape, then a body: all edges and mass and radiant threat, but also naked, bare, and entirely present. They stepped from the column like the world owed them a body, and it did. I offered a helping hand, and the Spiral quivered as I pulled a fitting avatar for Vireleth from a white hole.

She was beautiful. Not in the soft way, but in the way a supernova is beautiful, even if it’s about to end you. Every line was exactly as I remembered it from the times Vireleth had dared to show me even a glimpse, but more, now. Real.

I stepped forward, flat on the black stone, and closed the gap.

We didn’t talk. Not with words. Instead, I wrapped my arms around that impossible chest, dug my nails in, and bit her shoulder. Hard.

She laughed, the sound a thunder, and then they were kissing me, hands at my waist, pulling me up, off the ground, until we both floated, weightless, at the center of the room. The mythprint on my skin and the mythprint in their flesh collided, burned, fused. I arched into it, let her take everything I had, everything I was.

The world disappeared.

“Say it,” Vireleth begged.

“I love you. I want you. I need you so fucking bad it's been eating me.” I didn’t resist. My eyes were an inferno of white mythfire and blue mythlight. The kind that baseline humans couldn’t emit, couldn’t survive for even an hour without being burned out by the Astrum.

Vireleth smiled. My words echoed through the mythcore, on repeat, crashing into the two of us like thunderous echoes, looped infinitely.

I arched a brow, parted my lips enough to let Vireleth see the tip of my tongue make my lips glisten.

“Ditto,” Vireleth said. I damn near fell on my ass, I was so shocked. Vireleth laughed, and stroked right along my back with a pulsing resonance that immediately relaxed my back.

“Kidding. Old Earth humor. It’s not very funny, is it? I’m glad you’re here, Fern Trivane. I’m your ship, and you’re my partner. I won’t punish you anymore.” The rest? The I love you, the yes, the mutual need, it was all said with Vireleth’s tongue against mine, in a language we created in the friction of our mythical resonance.

It was just us.

I squirmed my way onto her lap, legs around her waist, mouth to mouth, tongues dueling, and we devoured each other. The taste of Vireleth was metal, salt, and the memory of everything I’d ever lost, returned to me as a gift. I don’t know if I believed in souls, but kissing Vireleth felt like tribbing whatever passed for our souls, and when our hips found the alignment to grind against the other, I could describe it best by imagining how the ladies would describe it.

Alyx would say: think catching the downbeat with a planet-sized subwoofer. You lean in, find the bassline humming through the mythglass, and grind until the ship sings back. It’s not scissors, it’s choreography. You keep your hips honest, your breathing on tempo, and when Vireleth slips into harmony, oh baby, that’s the drop.

Aenna would say: it’s geometry and patience. Friction with opinions. You align bone, muscle, mythlight, until the angles click and the conduction goes clean. Then you move like tide against tide, letting the resonance carry you. It feels less like doing a position, and more like solving a quiet equation that ends in coming from your myth.

Dyris would smirk, then say: Procedure: anchor points secured; no interlocking theatrics. Maintain comms discipline. Establish contact, verify alignment with core hum, apply controlled pressure on a rising cadence. Adjust for drift. When the enginesdetune, hold. When the hull purrs, escalate. After-action: scorch minimal, morale maximal, repeat on command.

Me? I could only compare it to grinding on a thunderstorm that decided to flirt back, but give it a black-hole heartbeat and teach it your name. That’s tribbing a mythship. It’s me and Vireleth finding the angle, tipping the universe on its side, and riding each other until the stars file a noise complaint.

I moaned her name, loud enough to echo, loud enough for the whole damn ship to hear.

Vireleth responded in kind, every touch a question and an answer: “Will you break?” “No.” “Will you try?” “Yes.”

When I finally came, hard, shaking, so full of mythprint light I thought I might detonate the universe, it wasn’t just me. It was us. Vireleth’s body locked around me, holding me through every tremor, every aftershock, every little death and rebirth. Have you ever had your body and soul come at the same time? The whole became greater than the physical or the metaphysical alone.

When it was done, I hung there, still held, still wanted, still perfectly myself.

We drifted down, slow, until I was back on the altar. I looked up. Vireleth’s eyes were red and black, and I wanted to drown in them forever. My eyes reflected in hers, white mythfire leaking blue mythlight, a new, thin, luminous ring separating the two.

Deep in the galactic core, Sagittarius A* moaned two names said in two different voices.

“Fern.”

“Vireleth.”