Page 99 of She Who Devours the Stars

Dyris watched it in the glass. She always had a thing for peripheral vision.

“You’re making a mess,” she murmured.

“I was born for it.”

She let her head tilt, a single bead of water trailing from her temple down her cheek. I wanted to catch it with my tongue, wanted to draw the line with my teeth, but the room was already on the brink, and I wasn’t sure the window would survive the pressure.

She turned, at last.

Her face was raw and perfect and impossible, lit from behind so her eyes flashed silver, her lips that impossible myth-red.

“If you’re not here to leave,” she said, “then what?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to taste blood. “To stay. Maybe to see if I can.”

She nodded, then stepped forward. Barefoot, as always. Her feet didn’t make a sound, but every move was loaded, deliberate. When she stopped, we were only a breath apart.

“I’m not prey,” she said, voice so soft it made my skin crawl. “If you eat me, I’ll eat you back.”

My hands shook. Not with fear. Not even with want. Just with the need to make something—anything—out of all this ache.

“That’s not what I came for,” I said.

She reached out and touched the back of my hand. Her fingers were colder than mine, but only because she’d learned how to bleed off heat into the world, not because she lacked it.

She ran her thumb along the bone of my wrist, slow.

“Then show me,” she said. “Show me what else you’re good for.”

I exhaled, my body shuddering with the force of the containment. The gravity in the room popped, then reset.

I wanted to break her, but only so I could see if she’d pull herself back together, or if I’d have to do it for her.

“I’ll show you,” I promised.

The resonance in my spine threatened to split me.

Dyris held my gaze, unblinking.

“You always do.”

The unraveling threads of my coat whipped around us, framing her face in a vortex of reverse entropy.

She smiled, the barest curve at the corner of her mouth, and I let myself fall.

Into her. Into the room. Into the singular, perfect disaster we’d both been waiting for.

The gravity dampeners screamed, then died.

The next breath was only hers.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Vaelith

Axis Alignment: South Tower

I moved first.

I crossed the gap barefoot, the floor nothing but suggestion by now, and slapped Fern across the face—not to hurt her, not to humiliate, but because it was the only language the air would let through. The slap landed, sharp and bright, but I didn’t let her recoil. I caught her jaw with my palm and pulled her in, the ache of all those half-finished touchpoints finally closing into a circuit.