Page 29 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

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 existed in 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.”

I stared at her, then at the slab, then at the planet spinning below. “Is that supposed to be a threat, a bribe, or an insult?”

“Yes,” Dyris said, perfectly flat.

I snorted and let my head loll back. “They really think a myth academy is going to teach me anything I can’t break in a week?”

“They think,” she said, “that it’ll give you somewhere to aim your entropy that isn’t a major population center.”

I rolled the sleeve of the coat, picked at one of the fake medals. “What the fuck is an Athenaeum?”

Dyris’s mouth twitched. “Imagine a finishing school, but for weaponized legend. Add two centuries of unresolved faculty trauma, and a security budget larger than most navies.”

I thought about it. “Sounds like hell.”

“It is,” she said. “But it’s the one place the Accord won’t try to assassinate you. At least not directly.”

That got a real laugh out of me, ugly and echoing. I kicked my legs over the armrest and lounged, daring her to pretend we weren’t on the same side of the cosmic joke for once.

“Let’s say I go along,” I said, “and play nice with the mythics-in-training. What’s your angle?”

She didn’t answer right away. For a second, I thought she might actually lie to me, but then she looked straight at me, not through me, and the weight of all the words she’d ever swallowed radiated off her skin.

“I don’t want you erased,” Dyris said, so soft I almost missed it. “Not by them, not by yourself.”

I blinked. “That’s some ‘I care about you’ talk for someone whose last job was running counter-intel on my sex life.”

Dyris went crimson. It was a good look on her. “You’re more dangerous than anyone realizes. Including yourself. But you’re not the enemy.”

I let the silence fill up again, just to see how much it would hurt.

In the end, I nodded. “Fine. I’ll do your myth academy. But you’re coming with.”

Dyris raised her eyebrows, genuinely startled. “That’s not—”

I cut her off. “If I’m getting schooled, I want a chaperone. You know. Handler. Dorm mom. Whatever the fuck the Accord calls it.”

She took a breath, weighing the angles. “Attaché,” she said finally.

I grinned, slow and hungry. “Still my Sexretary.”

Dyris made a strangled noise and tried to hide it with a cough. I let her. It was the least I could do.

We spent the rest of the hour picking over the details.

What to pack, which of Lioren’s coats I could keep, whether or not the mythship would still answer my call from the other side of the rim.

It was like planning for a war we’d already lost, and I couldn’t decide if I liked the feeling or if it just made me want to break something expensive.

Later, when the official Accord feeds cycled to “night,” we both ended up in the captain’s bed, because neither of us had the energy or the will to pretend otherwise.

The mattress was so soft it nearly swallowed me whole; I curled up on the edge, clutching the sleeve of the dead man’s coat like a lifeline, and listened to Dyris’s breathing until it smoothed out my own.

I’d never slept in a real bed before. Not like this. The luxury would have made me panic if I’d been alone.

But with Dyris there, inches away, her body heat leaking through the sheets and her heartbeat steady as a metronome, I let myself drift. I let the room go dark. I let the future take care of itself, for once.

It was enough.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin Axis Alignment: Lounge, Aboard Vireleth the Closure

The Vireleth lounge didn’t know how to do breakfast, so it just panicked and did everything at once.

The long table was set with three different kinds of protein slab, a bowl of synthfruit that looked like someone had melted rainbow colored lumps over wet gravel, and three full pots of coffee—all already half-empty.

Velline, my mother, was working her way through a stack of fried something, pausing only to reapply lipstick between bites.

Dax, my dad, had switched to his second mug and was using the downtime to tattoo a circuit diagram onto his forearm with a microprobe.

Perc, our personal coffeepot and accidental AI, sat at the head of the table with a crocheted scarf around his base and the kind of smug that only comes from being the single most functional being in the room.

I hovered at the edge, clutching a plate and trying to work up the courage to join them. You’d think after surviving three planetary disasters in a week, I’d be past the “awkward family meal” stage of development. You’d be wrong.

Velline saw me first. She gestured with her fork, waving me in like I was a stubborn cat refusing to come inside. “Eat, baby. We’re all just one more emergency away from learning to photosynthesize.”

I made my way to the table, set the plate down, and sat. It felt like trespassing. I didn’t know how to say “good morning” after the last few days, so I just picked up a protein square and bit down. It tasted like regret and compressed optimism.

Velline watched me, her eyes lined in the kind of blue that burned under station lights. “You sleep?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Some.”

Dax looked up from his arm, the microprobe still humming in his hand. “Heard you’re getting shipped off to myth school.”

“Eventide Athenaeum,” I said, mouth full. “Sounds like a cult, but with better branding.”

Velline cackled. “Everything’s a cult if you wear enough eyeliner.”

Perc piped up, his screen blinking a perky coffee cup. “Attunement curriculum includes mandatory rest periods and emotional hygiene modules. Recommend full compliance for optimal outcomes.”

I eyed him, then turned to Dax. “Did you teach him to guilt-trip, or was that a firmware update?”

Dax grinned, wide and soft. “He learned it from watching you.”

The laughter, brief as it was, broke the surface tension.

I took a breath. “So, uh. I don’t want to assume—” I trailed off, realized I didn’t know what I was about to say, and started again. “They said I’m supposed to go alone. But I don’t have to.”