Page 63 of She Who Devours the Stars

I didn’t knock. The door recognized my pulse and opened on the first try, spitting me into a vortex of activewear, partywear, and three different strands of what Velline called “revolutionary genderfuck.” The air was humid with the scent of something warm and floral, layered over the ozone tang of distant machinery. I could taste last week’s lavender solvent and this morning’s rosewater primer in the back of my throat. The wall racks rotated slowly, haunted by drifts of lace and sequins and the occasional coat made from what looked like actual feathers.

At the center of the storm, Velline stood in combat with herself and a dress that would have killed a weaker woman. It was two-thirds ballgown, one-third exoskeleton: layers of silk threaded with carbon mesh, sleeves shot through with electric blue piping, bodice laced so tight it should have left a bruise on the wall. She wore it like she wore everything, with the full conviction that if the galaxy didn’t like it, the galaxy could die mad about it.

She’d kicked off one shoe and balanced on her bare heel, hands elbow-deep in the dress’s undercarriage, face set in a frown that could have shamed the designers of hell. She didn’t notice me at first. Or, if she did, she made me wait.

“Mom,” I said, hoarse. “I have an emergency.”

No answer. She was orchestrating a fight between two rival fabrics, and it looked like violence was imminent.

I tried again. “I look like a paint rat that lost a custody battle with a glitter bomb. I have six hours to fix it, or everyone at Eventide is going to know what rock I crawled out from.”

Velline’s head snapped up, dark eyes focusing on me like twin lasers set to “shred.” For a full second, she just stared, lips pursed. Then, suddenly, she went soft around the edges, like a cake that had failed to set, but in a way you didn’t mind eating anyway.

“Oh, darling,” she said, breathless with delight, “you’ve committed at least three fashion crimes just getting to this door. Honestly? I’m impressed you made it this far.”

She flicked her fingers, and the fabric she’d been battling slithered back into place. The dress reformed itself, defaulting to “magnificent” out of spite.

I flopped onto her fainting couch. Velline kept three, for “aesthetics and emergencies,” and sprawled full-body, limbs splayed like I was the final casualty of a soft revolution. My churro, half-eaten, left a trail of cinnamon dust on the black velvet.

“Make me beautiful,” I mumbled, not looking up. “Or at least dangerous enough to fake it.”

She moved to the sideboard and poured herself a shot of something green, which she downed in a single, professional motion. Then she leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

“You never care,” she said, voice low and careful.

I shrugged, tried to chew, failed to swallow. “I care now.”

She waited, gaze pinning me to the upholstery.

I made a face. “Tomorrow I have to stand next to Dyris. There’s going to be Accord people, Vaelith people, maybe even some mythic. If I show up like this, they’ll think I’m just some cosmic accident that tripped into power. I want them to look at me and think… of course it’s her.”

That last bit hurt to say, so I said it fast, hoping she’d be too distracted to catch the crack in my voice.

She wasn’t.

For a minute, Velline didn’t move. Then she straightened, set her empty glass aside, and pointed at me like I’d just admitted to a major crime.

“Up,” she commanded. “On your feet. Arms out.”

I obeyed. Not because I was afraid of her, though I was, but because some part of me wanted to be saved. Or, at least, reconfigured.

The dressing room adjusted instantly. Racks rotated. Spotlights dimmed, then reoriented to flatter my bone structure and hide the caffeine hives on my neck. A drone emerged from the ceiling with a tray of hair clips and microinjectors. The floor beneath me went cold, then warm, then leveled to absolute zero-G so I couldn’t escape if I wanted to.

Velline approached, her steps exact and deliberate, the way she always moved before a major reveal. She circled me once, twice, the corners of her mouth twitching. That wasn’t a critique on her face, but something dangerously close to delight. For the first time, I realized that this wasn’t punishment. It was a pleasure. She’d waited years for this, 19 of them, for her daughter to finally be willing to be seen.

“You’ve never been easy to dress,” she said. “Last time I tried, you burned off your eyebrows trying to ‘add drama.’”

I shrugged again, not trusting myself to speak.

She reached for my face, thumb gentle on my jaw. “Stay still. I have an idea.”

For the next half hour, I let her work. I let her brush and twist my hair, pin it into a crown of spikes and loose curls. I let her scrub the grime off my nails and repaint them, each a different shade of galactic black. I let her strip me down to skin and refit every inch with fabric she’d engineered for people with my metabolism, my moods. She didn’t speak unless she had to, and when she did, it was all technical jargon—stitch counts, color temperatures, “cheekbone narrative.” Every touch was exact. She was an artist, and I was her worst canvas.

At some point, the churro vanished. At some point, my old clothes did, too.

“Try this,” Velline said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle, as she swept a garment toward me with the gravity of someone handing over an heirloom sword. It shimmered in her hands: not just blue, but midnight alive and hissing, a furious liquid neon that moved like it resented being woven into textile. It felt, impossibly, predatory, as if putting it on would make my blood run faster or swap my bones out for knives.

She didn’t give me a chance to hesitate. Within seconds she’d spun me around and yanked the suit up my body, the lining cool against my skin, then hot, then cool again, like it was arguing with itself about how best to fit me. The fabric articulated at every joint and molded to my shape as if taking notes. She zipped me in. An electric jolt ran down my spine as the collar sealed tight at my throat. Not choking, but close enough that I could taste adrenaline.