Page 70 of She Who Devours the Stars

I wrote it down in the margin, drew a little sugar nebula devouring a row of planet-shaped candies, and for the first time in my academic career, I wished the assignment had been longer.

Thread Modulation: Alyx Vieron

Axis Alignment: Lecture Hall 7, Eventide

I barely made it to the aisle before the Vellari twins boxed me in, all six feet and zero personal boundaries apiece. You could always tell Vessa and Vex from the rest of the inbred myth-dynasty accidents by the way they moved: perfectly mirrored, every step a calculated flanking maneuver, like even walking down a hallway was a two-front war. In any other context, their synchronization would’ve been impressive. In a place like this, it was just predatory.

I tried to pivot, but Vessa leaned in, hand against the wall, blocking any chance at a clean exit. Her other hand toyed with the hem of my jacket, fingers never quite making contact but close enough to mess with my sense of volume. She smiled, too wide, all teeth. “You were staring,” she sing-songed, voicepitched to carry across the still-cooling lecture hall. Half the class pretended not to notice. The rest took notes.

Vex was already on the other side, twirling her braid with lazy contempt. “Full-on drooling,” she added, head cocked to maximize the smug. She wore her blazer open, badge half-unclipped, as if daring anyone to call her on the dress code. You could see the scar under her jaw where her last roommate had tried (and failed) to make it stick.

I didn’t dignify it with a full response. Just an eye roll and a tighter grip on my datapad, voice set to default. “Don’t flatter yourself. I have better taste in tragic mistakes.”

It was a good line, but the heat had already started its creep up my neck, a slow-burn betrayal that the twins read with predatory delight. They didn’t even have to look at each other to coordinate the next move: Vessa’s hand dropped to her hip, mirroring mine, while Vex leaned in close, her breath a calculated threat against my cheekbone.

“Careful, sweetheart,” Vessa purred, “look too long at a myth and you get burned.”

Vex doubled down, her words low enough to bypass my eardrums and hit somewhere behind my eyes. “Or pulled into her gravity well and vaporized with the rest of the bugs.” She punctuated it by flicking a bit of dust off my shoulder, like she was doing me a favor. Probably thought she was.

I opened my mouth to bite back, already locking in the rhythm and tone for maximum humiliation—but the words never left my throat. The air behind the twins shifted, chilled a full two degrees as another presence cut in. Flat. Bored. Irrefutable.

“Fuck off,” Fern said.

No drama. No raised voice. Just stated like a fact, with all the emotional charge of a shipping manifest. She stood at the far wall, propped against a bulkhead panel, arms crossed and face unreadable—somewhere between bored and thoroughly done with the existence of everyone in this postcode.

The Vellaris froze mid-movement. For all their reputation, they weren’t suicidal. Not after last week, when Fern’s mythprint had splattered across the morning briefings and half the school’s rumor net. Vessa looked like she wanted to challenge it, but Vex caught her sleeve, tugged twice. Protocol. The twins exchanged one of those micro-expressions that only they understood, then retreated—slow, deliberate, no sign of fear, but not a trace of bravado left in their orbit.

They vanished around the corner, muttering about schedules and “legacy obligations,” leaving me alone in the sudden quiet.

I stayed put, pulse hammering steady but too high, watching as Fern watched the twins disappear. She didn’t even look at me until the corridor emptied. When she did, it was with the same indifference she’d shown the entire process, like she was waiting to see whether I’d collapse into a puddle or just float off the floor.

“Starlit Crust,” Fern said, voice perfectly even. “You know where it is?”

The pivot threw me. “The… pizzeria?”

A faint nod. Fern’s lips parted, tongue flicking across the lower one with zero self-consciousness, and she said, “People cry about the cheese.” Her gaze wandered off, not searching, just following the internal trajectory of some impossible thought. “I’ve never had pizza.”

She licked her lips again, slower this time, like she was trying to taste the idea before the reality could disappoint her. The whole move was absent-minded, devastating, and entirely withoutcalculation. My own thoughts tripped over themselves: first on the implication (Fern had never had pizza? Seriously?), then on the way she made a simple sentence sound like a religious confession.

I blinked. “I… I can show you.”

Fern’s mouth twisted up at the edge—a hint of a smile, more genuine than anything I’d seen all semester. “Deal,” she said.

She pushed off the wall and started walking. I followed, because of course I did, all systems inside me rebooting in sequence.

We left the lecture hall together, Fern a half-step ahead, and I realized that if I wasn’t already in trouble, I was about to be.

Thread Modulation: Alyx Vieron

Axis Alignment: Starlit Crust, Eventide

The walk from Academy proper to Starlit Crust was supposed to be ten minutes of enforced awkwardness, but I barely got past the first quad before things escalated into farce. The instant we hit the perimeter—formal academic space bleeding into commercial district—four security drones peeled off their charging stations and started shadowing our trajectory. Two at ground level, wheeling along the walkway in a slow, menacing tail; two more at elevation, drifting overhead in a formation that said “surveillance” but also “try something and die.” They weren’t even subtle about it. The lead drone’s lidar swept me twice, running a full spectrum profile that pinged on my jacket zipper and the blue micro-tat below my eye.

Beside me, Fern walked with her hands buried in her coat, gait loose and unhurried. She didn’t so much step as float, the sidewalk always half a second behind wherever her gravity wanted her to be. If she noticed the drones, she didn’t care.

I noticed. Hard not to, when the security system built for riot control had just rerouted to escort a snack run.

“Uh,” I said, letting my braid fall forward enough to block the leftmost drone’s direct line. “Is this… normal?”