Page 52 of She Who Devours the Stars

The Vaelith proxy broke it, with the precision of a surgeon’s suture. “It is the opinion of House Vaelith that six months under the Eventide Athenaeum will allow the Nullarch to stabilize, or else demonstrate the futility of further effort. If she fails, we guarantee House intervention, up to and including final solution.”

Serevin, recognizing a win that didn’t cost him anything, nodded. “Done. Let the record show consensus.”

Pril scowled. She was already drafting her press release. “I want it clear that this is not an Accord operation.”

“That’s the point,” I said.

The underlings, released from duty, started packing up. Most avoided looking at me. A few, braver or more desperate, shot daggers in my direction as they left.

The Vaelith proxies lingered. The lead caught my gaze, held it. For a split second, I thought she might say something personal, but she just offered a micro-nod: not deference, not even respect, but an acknowledgement that the story wasn’t over. It would never be over.

At the edge of the room, a mythkeeper I hadn’t noticed before was watching. She was old. Not in years, but in cycles—her bones radiated the kind of weary contempt that only comes from outliving five different versions of the same bureaucracy. Her robes were raw, threadbare, the sigils burned half-off by some ancient conflict that no one remembered but everyone obeyed.

Her eyes, when they met mine, were full of cold awe.

I stared back, unflinching.

The mythkeeper didn’t bow. She didn’t need to.

She just stepped aside, clearing my way out, as if she’d always known I would walk through.

I left the Blacklight Hall, the chill still clinging to my skin. I let myself enjoy the feeling for a moment, then filed it away with every other thing I’d ever survived.

Next stop: Eventide Athenaeum.

And, if Fern didn’t kill me first, maybe we’d both learn something.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin

Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

Lioren Trivane had the worst taste in interior décor of anyone I’d ever shared headspace with, living or dead. His captain’s quarters looked less like the command nexus of a world-eating mythship and more like the backstage green room at a cosmic drag show, circa six cycles ago—minus the glitter, plus a few hundred kilograms of sentimental filth.

It was all here. The books, half of them “borrowed” from ancient Accord libraries and never returned. The boots, three pairs at least, still caked with the dust of planets that no longer existedin the current version of the spiral. An entire wall dedicated to jackets, each more unnecessarily dramatic than the last, the kind of stuff you’d wear only if you had both a death wish and zero self-awareness. Which, based on the security footage and the psychic afterburn in the seat cushions, tracked.

I wandered the space barefoot, wrapped in the most ridiculous of his coats. It was white synthfur at the collar, blue velvet down the sides, a bandolier of fake medals across the chest that would’ve earned a real officer a summary airlock exit. I wore it open, naturally; Lioren never buttoned up, not in any sense. I could still smell him, or the ghost of him, over the preservation field’s best efforts. It was sweat, ozone, and that weird mineral tang of someone who’d mainlined too many hyperion supplements as a kid.

The glass wall overlooked the void. Below, Pelago-9 unspooled in blue and orange, battered but alive. The planet looked smaller from up here, the scars of last week’s “incident” already half-gone, patched over by city lights and the furious labor of people who’d spent their whole lives pretending the universe owed them a break. The mythship’s orbit was polar, so every hour brought a new slice of sunrise or shadow. I timed my pacing to the line where the city’s lights met the planet’s edge. It made me feel like I was balancing on something, instead of just waiting to fall.

I threw myself onto Lioren’s old couch, the jacket flaring out behind me like a drama queen’s cape. For a second, I let myself imagine what it would’ve felt like to sit here, drinking something illegal and staring down the next apocalypse like you were owed an apology.

The door hissed, and Dyris Vaelith walked in.

She took one look at me, all sprawled out in a dead man’s coat, no pants, no shirt, a bandolier of fake medals hiding one nipple, feet on the mythglass table, and raised an eyebrow so high I thought it might snap off.

“That’s historically slanderous,” she said, in her driest possible tone.

I grinned, flashed some thigh. “He liked showing off his scars. I’m just respecting tradition.”

Somehow, she ignored the bait. Instead, she set down a sleek data-slab, turned off the room’s surveillance with a flick, and, after a deliberate pause, let herself collapse into the chair opposite me. Not dignified, not measured. Just a woman at the end of a string she’d spent a lifetime coiling.

For a minute, neither of us talked.

Dyris broke first, but not by much. “The Accord signed off,” she said. “You’re officially too big a disaster to kill.”

I lifted my chin. “And?”

She slid the data-slab across the table. “Six months at Eventide Athenaeum. Full Resonance Attunement track, under Accord and Vaelith observation. You’ll have freedom of movement, in theory. In practice, you’ll be the most watched mythic on the rim.”