Page 39 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)
Fern was already moving, choosing the nearest booth and sliding in without a word. I followed, clinging to my self-control like it was the last functioning airlock on a doomed station.
The menu was printed on laminated hardcopy, the kind that didn’t wipe clean even after years of sauce trauma. Fern studied it with the rapt focus of someone reading a sacred text. Her lips moved, barely audible: “Triple cheese… extra melt… garlic crust…”
I stared, entranced, as she absorbed every calorie with her eyes, her face lit from below by the backwash of the neon open sign. It was obscenely intimate. I couldn’t look away. She hadn’t even touched the food, and already I felt like I’d witnessed something illegal.
Todd reappeared, balancing two glasses of tap soda and a plate of garlic knots. “On the house,” he announced, setting the carbs between us. “I like to keep the stars happy.”
Fern’s attention snapped to the garlic knots like a sensor locked on a threat. She picked one up, squeezed it lightly, and took a careful bite. Her eyes closed. She chewed slow, savoring, then set the half-eaten knot down and let out a tiny, involuntary noise—something between a sigh and a whimper.
I felt my own face go hot, the blood rushing up past my ears. “You okay?” I asked, hating the way my voice cracked.
Fern nodded, opened her eyes, and said, “That’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. I picked up a knot myself and bit down, the garlic salt punching straight through to my frontal cortex. I forced myself to chew slow, like I wasn’t desperate to match Fern bite for bite. My hands trembled, just a little.
We ordered—two slices each, nothing fancy.
Fern let me pick, but when the pizza arrived she went straight for the first slice, folded it in half, and devoured it with the kind of focus usually reserved for engine diagnostics or bomb defusal.
The cheese stretched, snapped, left a smear on her chin.
She licked it off, unabashed, then went in for another bite.
I almost fainted.
Todd watched from the counter, arms crossed, a smile of genuine pleasure on his face. He winked when Fern demolished her second slice, then gave me a thumbs-up like I was complicit in a perfect crime.
Outside, one of the surveillance drones hovered closer, camera lens pointed straight at us. Fern looked up, wiped her fingers on a napkin, and gave the drone a slow, deliberate wink. The drone jerked back, spun in a panicked half-circle, then stabilized.
I nearly spit soda through my nose.
After the second slice, Fern slowed down. She wiped her mouth, then leaned back in the booth, eyes distant but happy. “So that’s pizza,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I get it now.”
I couldn’t help it. “Yeah?” I said, voice so thin it barely carried.
She turned to me, eyes soft but bright. “It’s not tacos,” she said. “But I think I just got religion again.”
I laughed, and this time it wasn’t nervous or hollow—it was real, full, and maybe a little unhinged.
Fern smiled back. Not coy, not calculated. Just present.
I sat there, pulse still racing, and wondered if this was what it felt like to survive your own myth.
I couldn’t tell if I was about to faint or propose.
Both felt dangerously possible.
Thread Modulation: Alyx Vieron Axis Alignment: South Tower, Eventide Athenaeum
The return to campus felt like walking home after a controlled demolition—every step technically safe, but the air still thick with the memory of violence and the knowledge that someone, somewhere, was filing a report about the entire incident.
The pizza sat heavy and comforting in my stomach, but the real burn was the afterglow of adrenaline and a thousand unprocessed feelings ricocheting around my blood.
The Academy itself loomed ahead, the main quad now patrolled by only two drones, both trailing us at a comfortable, almost polite distance.
It felt less like surveillance and more like we were being escorted to a coronation.
The campus arches, which usually scanned IDs and lit up with a passive-aggressive orange if you were late or broke curfew, did something new as Fern and I approached: the lights flared blue, then white, then went dark for a full second before rebooting.
When I glanced at the system panel, it flashed a single word: SOVEREIGN.
I kept walking, but my brain kept trying to process the implications. Walking next to Fern was no longer just walking next to a mythic; it was walking beside an active, planet-class override, an event horizon with a student ID number.
Inside the perimeter, the air was cool and faintly ionized.
At the base of the South Tower, Dyris waited, all high cheekbones and zero margin for error.
She’d swapped her armored uniform for a formal wrap in indigo mythweave, the kind of dress that could only be tailored for someone born with a genetic right to command.
Her hair was up, pinned with a line of silver that made her look older than she was and somehow even more dangerous.
As we approached, Dyris tapped her tablet twice, eyes not leaving our approach.
“You’ve been assigned the South Tower,” she announced, like she was reciting a weather report.
“It’s now sovereign territory of House Trivane.
Vireleth installed dimensional escape nodes on all four prime axes.
Subprime options will follow pending calibration. ”
I nearly walked into a decorative pillar.
Dyris’s eyes flicked to me, then to Fern, then back. “Oh,” she added, with just the faintest hint of real amusement, “the sculptor array finished your bath.”
Fern’s entire face lit up, a transformation so sudden it made me question whether I’d ever seen her actually happy before. “Hot springs bath?” she said, voice trembling with an excitement that seemed chemically impossible for a Trivane.
Dyris nodded, and for a moment her mouth twitched at the corners, just shy of a full smile. “Naturally. Myth-tempered stone. Custom temperature resonance. Saltwater blend.” She tilted her head. “It’s traditional to test new sovereign infrastructure with a bonding ritual.”
I was pretty sure I’d stopped breathing.
Fern spun on her heel and sprinted up the tower stairs, leaving her boots untied and flapping behind her. I stared after her, not sure if I was allowed to follow.
Dyris, still watching me, waited until Fern was out of earshot before speaking again. “Would you like to join us?”
The way she said it, all calm and level, made my brain blue-screen. “Join you,” I echoed, like an idiot.
Dyris’s tone was unhurried, faintly clinical. “For the soak,” she clarified. “It’s the fastest way to stabilize new mythic architecture. Shared presence accelerates containment.” She paused. “Or you could return to your room and process the evening’s events alone. If that’s your preference.”
Upstairs, Fern called down, “We have extra towels!”
I opened my mouth to say I’d pass, or that I had other plans, or that I didn’t want to be a third wheel in whatever strange ritual this was—but the words failed, crumbled, and I just nodded.
The spa suite was on the top floor, but it might as well have been in another world.
The entry was a sliding glass panel that dissolved at our approach, revealing a chamber flooded with the golden light of a dozen candle-styled mythlamps, their flames steady and blue against the polished stone.
The central pool was a perfect circle, rimmed in pale marble and lined with glowing runes that shimmered just below the surface.
Steam rose in slow columns, curling toward the vented ceiling.
The whole room pulsed with a gentle energy, something between electricity and anticipation.
The spa suite stretched before us, a celestial realm of quiet luxury that felt worlds apart from anything I’d known.
Fern was already in the water, her hair piled atop her head like a dark, chaotic halo.
Her arms draped languidly along the rim as though she claimed the pool for herself by just existing in it.
As if she were not the mythic incarnation of destiny itself but rather a serene feline basking in sunshine, utterly at peace.
As our entrance stirred the air with a cool breeze, Fern opened her eyes briefly to acknowledge us before leaning back again.
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she surrendered to the buoyant embrace of the water, floating with an ease that seemed unthinkable given who she was—or perhaps because of it.
My heart skipped several beats when I noticed Fern wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath the shimmering surface. Panic flared like solar fire, and my gaze darted instinctively toward Dyris for guidance or reassurance or—well—anything to ground myself in this surreal moment.
Ever poised and swift as a blade through silk, Dyris discarded her indigo wrap with a grace born of generations bred for command.
The swim sheath beneath adhered to her lithe form like liquid starlight, accentuating every controlled movement as she descended into the pool.
Her entry barely disturbed the mirrored water; she settled at its edge in alignment with some unspoken protocol, posture perfect and hands folded—a high priestess presiding over an ancient rite.
I teetered on indecision, reminded painfully of my awkward corporeal existence compared to their effortless poise.
My jacket fell away first; then the shirt slipped over my head.
Thank every cosmic power for my sports top—both a comfort and a shield against vulnerability.
Jeans followed reluctantly after neat folds on a bench I hoped conveyed an air of nonchalance instead of frantic calculation.