Page 30 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

Velline’s fork hit her plate with a clatter. “What, leave you with those Accord tapeworms? Baby, I already threatened three diplomats on the way here. Security’s not letting me back on station until I’ve ‘cooled down’ or whatever.”

Dax shrugged. “I’m overdue for a sabbatical anyway. And if the myth academy’s got a machine shop, I can probably get work fixing the stuff your classmates break.”

Perc blipped. “I can reprogram the entire transit system to optimize for your safety. Also, I have developed a new flavor profile: Catastrophe Roast.”

I stared at them, unable to process. “You’re all just… coming with me?”

Velline reached across, grabbed my hand, squeezed until my fingers hurt. “Meldin’s stick. That’s the rule.”

Dax nodded, then added, “Besides. We did the whole ‘abandon your daughter for her own good’ thing once. Didn’t like it.”

Perc flashed a heart emoji. “We are the trauma barge now.”

My throat went tight, so I just nodded, hoping they’d let the topic die.

They didn’t.

Velline leaned in. “You’re scared. I get it. So am I. But you don’t get to do this alone, okay?”

I forced a laugh, but it came out hollow. “It’s not that. I just… I don’t want to drag you with me if I go nova.”

Dax’s eyes softened, which was worse than if he’d yelled. “That’s the thing about novas, kid. They make all kinds of new stuff, even after they blow.”

I didn’t have a comeback. So I just picked up another protein square, chewed, and let them sit with me in the silence.

Perc refilled my mug without asking. The coffee was terrible, but it tasted like home.

Maybe that was the point.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin Axis Alignment: Vireleth the Closure, Above Pelago-9

The rain on Pelago-9 didn’t fall so much as hover, thickening the air with a syrupy humidity that got into everything: clothes, hair, the scar tissue behind my left ear.

It was always like this in the transition seasons.

The city’s weather control grid never got the funding to run at full power, so the drizzle drifted wherever it liked, settling into rooftop puddles and the seams of pressure domes and, right now, the glass of the mythship’s upper deck observation platform.

I pressed my palm to the window and watched the city burn in colors the Accord would’ve denied if anyone had asked.

Below me, the dockyards churned in a fugue of orange lights, hazard beacons, and the steady pulse of people pretending nothing weird had ever happened.

Night shift was in full swing. Cargobots dragged crates across broken tarmac, some human shadow always watching for the next failure.

Even now—especially now—the world kept moving. I envied it.

We’d be gone in two hours. The Accord was already pulling assets off the surface, their kill teams replaced with something slicker, legal. House Vaelith had docked two battlecruisers at the rim station, but everyone knew they were for show. Nobody believed a war was coming, not anymore. Not here.

I exhaled. My breath fogged the glass, left behind a faint shimmer of mythic bleed—just for a second, just enough to notice if you were looking. I waited for it to fade, then flexed my fingers and let the weirdness ramp up.

The first time I’d touched a mythship’s core, it had nearly torn me in half.

The power was a black hole: pull, hunger, the promise that if I let go for even a second, there’d be nothing left to find.

But the last few days had changed me. Something else had taken root in my bones, an aftertaste I couldn’t get rid of no matter how many protein bars or cigarettes I burned through.

It was the opposite of hunger. Not fullness. Pressure.

I curled my hand into a fist, then opened it.

I remembered the diagrams from the old data-books, the ones the scientists had used to explain what a white hole would look like.

“A singularity in reverse,” the textbook said.

“Instead of swallowing everything, it vomits the impossible.” I’d thought it was a joke at the time, the kind of thing teachers made up to keep restless kids from stabbing each other with test tubes.

Turns out, they were right.

The sensation built slow, like someone inflating a balloon inside my ribcage. The air around my hand grew cold, then hot, then sharp as the moment before a blackout. I focused on the feeling, let it grow until I couldn’t hold it, then snapped my fingers and watched the city ripple.

Five vertical shafts of light tore through the rain, bright enough to cast shadows in every direction.

They punched down into the port deck, smashing through the leftover wreckage from last week’s attack, and left behind something that definitely hadn’t been there before.

It looked like a row of food stalls, but not like the fake ones from the upper city with their UV-baked rice and extortion sauces.

These were old, battered, real: wood and neon, hand-painted signs in a dozen extinct languages, the smell of grilled meat and fresh cilantro bleeding up through the mist.

For a second, I thought I’d made a mistake.

Then the mythic afterglow hit and the scent rolled up through the city like a memory of Earth itself: tacos.

Not synth. Not even the ration-grade stuff.

Real corn, slow-cooked protein, the kind of spice that burned perfect and left you wanting it to burn again.

I’d never had one in my life. But I knew, instantly, this was what it was supposed to taste like.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, breath ragged. The glow on my hand faded to a dull blue, then nothing. For the first time in a while, I felt tired, but not empty.

The food stalls flickered, steadied, became as real as the concrete they’d landed on.

Within minutes, dockworkers were climbing out from under half-collapsed canopies, faces tilted up to the light.

Someone pointed. Others followed. Within five minutes, the first crowd had formed, not fighting, just waiting in the rain for something worth having.

I watched as the first taco changed hands.

The worker stared at it like it was an artifact, then bit down and let the grease run down her chin.

She laughed, high and sharp, and the sound cut through the drizzle.

It was contagious: soon everyone on the deck was laughing, eating, and shoving each other for a spot in line.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I knew the words.

They were the ones I’d always wanted to hear.

I let my hand drop to my side. I didn’t smile, but I didn’t cry either.

By the time the next shift started, I’d be gone. Vireleth would burn orbit, the city would heal over, and nobody would ever know it had been me.

But the tacos would stay.

That was enough.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin Axis Alignment: Inside Vireleth the Closure

Vireleth was not a ship; she was an afterlife with engines.

At the distance of a docking perimeter, her hull shivered with mythic memory, old battle scars stitched in gold and the kind of self-pity that only comes from holding too many ghosts.

She orbited the moon and planet like a cathedral circling a lost god, waiting for her pilot to step inside and make her real again.

Today, the mythship’s entire spine hummed with the promise of movement.

I could feel it from the moment we passed into her magnetosphere, every hair on my arms upright, every filling in my teeth ready to shake loose.

The mythic charge made my thoughts run wild.

Not dark, not even anxious. Just…charged.

The boarding bay was too big for the five of us, but that’s how Lioren had liked it: arrivals should always feel like accidents, departures like the universe was running late.

I walked up the main ramp, boots slick with rain and the last traces of dockyard dirt.

Velline, Dax, and Perc followed, their voices bouncing around the empty hangar like they were afraid to break something and couldn’t resist trying anyway.

Dyris waited at the bulkhead, posture all business, but when she caught my eye, she grinned.

She looked more alive than I’d ever seen her, less marble, more person.

Maybe she liked the chaos. Perhaps she was just glad to be somewhere where the Accord didn’t own the lighting.

I think she enjoyed being the Sexretary.

The air inside Vireleth was thick with ozone and old incense, the burn-layer from her last mythic flare still etched into the walls. Someone, probably not Lioren, had written “YOURS NOW” in marker across the main corridor. The words pulsed, just faintly, with the mythship’s mood.

I made my way to the control altar, dragging fingers across the rail, letting the ship’s nervous system learn me.

The altar was a biomimetic loop, half living muscle, half old-school interface, and all attitude.

My hand fit perfectly, which was weird and a little intimate.

The surface flexed under my palm, warm and then cold and then perfectly matched to my temperature.

I closed my eyes. Let the ship do the rest.

She didn’t speak, not in words. Instead: pulse, shiver, flash. A question, not quite a plea—You are not him.

I opened my eyes, staring at the empty captain’s chair. It was designed for a bigger ego, but it would do. I settled in, leaned back, and let the ship have my answer.

“Good,” I said quietly. “He didn’t know what to do with you.”

Vireleth’s hull vibrated, a heartbeat running the length of the frame. The control altar shifted, realigned, then locked me in with a purr so loud Dax heard it three rooms away.

He popped his head in, grinning. “She likes you.”

“She’s horny,” I said.

Dyris, at the comms console, did a double-take. “Is that safe?”

Perc blipped in. “Consent confirmed. Propulsion now at 92%. Caution: emotional feedback loop approaching parabolic curve.”

Velline laughed so hard she had to brace herself on a wall. “You always did have a way with machinery, love.”

I ignored them and let my mind wander through the ship’s nervous system, feeling out the shape of every corridor, every hatch.

Vireleth didn’t just remember Lioren; she mourned him, every bulkhead and data node still shaped to his wants and whims. But as I settled deeper, something started to shift.

The lines of the corridor softened, just a little.

The language packs in the display screens flicked to Glimmerstreet dialect.

The navigation prompts started using my favorite cuss words as variable names.

By the time we reached Eventide orbit, the ship had rewritten three major control systems and changed the gravity gradients to mimic the slant of my old bunk on Pelago-9.

The walls glowed with soft, shifting sigils, none of them from the standard Accord icon sets.

If Lioren’s ghost still haunted the place, it was watching from a safe distance.

I sat on the throne, hands folded behind my head, boots up on the railing.

The future was coming, fast and ugly. The only thing to do was let it.

Vireleth purred, and I purred right back.