Page 79 of She Who Devours the Stars

Combat Resonance Training came after. It was the only class that didn’t bore Fern into self-mutilation. She loved it, not because of the violence, but because it was the one arena where the rules were clear: you either held your ground, or you didn’t.

The instructor, a retired mythic with a jaw rebuilt from three different alloys, walked us onto the practice floor and lined us up in pairs. The lesson of the day: “Controlled Discharge.”

“Today,” the instructor said, “we’re not testing your power. We’re testing your restraint. Understood?”

Fern nodded, but her eyes didn’t agree.

She was paired against a practice dummy with the structural integrity of a riot wall. The rest of us got the standard foam-and-polymer mannequins, programmed to simulate resistance and then shatter if you overdid it. She faced hers like she already knew its secrets.

“In your own time, Ms. Trivane,” the instructor said.

Fern gave a two-finger salute, then snapped her hands forward.

The dummy didn’t just break. It ceased to exist. One millisecond it was there; the next, it was a cloud of perfectly spherical, prismatic droplets, each spinning so fast it made me dizzy just to watch. For a second, the entire room froze, every eye locked on the glittering aftermath, until Fern waved her hand and collapsed the droplets into a single, flawless taco shell, which she caught midair and took a bite from.

She turned to the instructor, mouth full, and said, “I was hungry.”

The instructor blinked. “We were trying to evaluate your restraint.”

Fern wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then shrugged again. “Didn’t feel like holding back.”

You could feel the mythic field stutter, as if even the AI couldn’t decide whether to log it as an infraction or an upgrade.

Somebody in the back clapped. It might have been me.

#

After class, I found myself trailing Fern as she stalked the corridors, all movement and nervous energy and the faintestwhiff of ozone. I kept my distance, but I knew she knew I was there.

She stopped at a vending node, punched in a code, and waited for the machine to decide whether it wanted to live or die. It spat out a can of Fizz, which she cracked open, then offered the second can to me without looking.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s not laced. Unless you want it to be.”

I took the can, felt the chill in my hand, and waited.

She downed half her drink, then let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snarl.

“They think it’s about power,” she said, almost to herself. “They think if they measure it, name it, pin it down, it’ll stop mattering.”

I took a sip. It tasted like what the color blue would taste like if you turned it up to eleven. “You’re not wrong,” I said. “But you don’t have to burn every bridge on your way out.”

She grinned, all teeth. “I like the fire.”

We stood in silence. Somewhere down the hall, the System reset the lights, then stuttered, then reset again.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said.

I tried to play it cool. “Neither are you.”

Fern finished her Fizz, crushed the can, and tossed it over her shoulder. It ricocheted off the wall and landed in the recycling slot without a sound.

She looked at me, really looked, for the first time.

“Hungry?” she said.

I wanted to say yes.

But the words stuck in my throat.