Page 46 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)
“That was mine,” I said, out loud, even though I knew it wasn’t true anymore. The city, the trial, they had belonged to me, once. But now, all of it bent toward Fern, and I was just a passenger.
She grinned, feral and triumphant. “It still is.”
Fern leaned in, lips grazing my ear, and whispered, “Take it back.”
I did. I kissed her.
The world ended.
Thread Modulation: Alyx Vieron Axis Alignment: Trial Realm
It wasn’t a normal kiss.
First, because Fern’s mouth was hotter than anything I’d ever known.
A fusion of girl and myth and the kind of hunger that should have been illegal in a school trial.
Second, when she kissed me, the city around us vibrated, every line of code in its mythic spine shuddering with a frequency that matched my pulse.
Third, when our lips met, I forgot every reason I’d ever been afraid to want her.
She bit down, just a little, tugging at my lower lip like she was daring me to bite back.
I did, because fuck it, why not burn with her?
Our teeth clicked together, tongues fighting for territory, her hand tangled in my hair, my arms wound around her waist, and tugged her in so close it felt like we might short-circuit the trial’s safeties.
The world went white-hot. The ground heaved under us, the stadium seats catching fire again and again, every flare of heat mapping itself directly onto my skin. The altar at the center of the dais shattered, fragments tumbling up instead of down, then dissolving into blue dust.
Fern’s hand slid up my torso, slow at first, fingers memorizing the line of my ribs, then faster, rougher, until her palm was flat against my chest. My trial-supplied armor had vanished somewhere in the chaos, or maybe she’d simply disintegrated it to touch me sooner, leaving nothing between her skin and mine but sweat and the static charge of the dying city.
She cupped my breasts not like they were part of me, but like she had finally worked up the courage to touch some forbidden, dangerous relic. Not hesitant, reverent. Like she was used to wanting, but not having.
Me? I was used to being stared at, judged, labeled too much, too big, too obvious, too impossible to ignore. But Fern didn’t flinch, she didn’t shrink from it or pretend I wasn’t what I was. She wanted me, my body, my hunger, all of it, exactly the way I was.
Her thumb swept over my nipple, and I forgot every reason I’d ever been afraid to be seen.
I felt my nipple pebble instantly, every nerve ending tuned to her touch.
She moaned into my mouth, the sound reverberating through both our bodies, and then Fern squeezed hard, as if she wanted to see if she could leave a bruise.
I gasped, shuddered, and arched my back, pressing myself into her hand. The feedback loop was insane: every time I reacted, the city responded, the sky above us strobing between blinding white and event horizon black, trains in the distance screaming past on broken rails.
She broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to see my face. Her eyes were wild, wolf eyes, crazy, beautiful, and smoldering with mythfire. Her breath steamed in the freezing air.
“You want this?” she asked, voice rough as gravel.
“Please,” I said, and didn’t even care how it sounded.
She grinned, then dipped her head and took my nipple into her mouth.
I lost the plot.
Her tongue was soft at first, swirling over the tip, teasing, then harder, more insistent.
She sucked, bit, and licked with a kind of precision that made me think she’d spent her whole life dreaming of this exact moment.
My hands went to her hair, pulling her closer, and she growled, actually growled, against my breast, the vibration traveling all the way down to my spine.
She switched sides, dragging her teeth across my skin, leaving little marks that stung and then faded in the cold. The Augmented Reality overlay in my vision flickered with every touch, every bite, broadcasting raw data straight to my brain:
[SENSATION: 11/10] [WARNING: POSITIVE OVERLOAD] [CORE TEMPERATURE: ELEVATED] [ERROR: brEATHING SUbrOUTINE INTERRUPTED]
She slid her other hand up between my legs, palm flat against the inside of my thigh, fingers pressing hard enough to make me gasp again. I was soaked—no point pretending otherwise—and she didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask a second time before she slipped two fingers inside.
I almost came right then.
She worked her hand in and out, fingers curled just enough to hit right, thumb pressed hard against my clit. All the while she kept working my chest, switching back and forth, licking and sucking and biting until my whole body was locked into a single loop of pleasure and need and mythic collapse.
The city was coming apart. I could feel it, the data structure breaking down, the code unraveling, the entire world pivoting around the axis of Fern’s hands and mouth and the sounds I was making.
She sped up, hand moving faster, tongue flicking over my nipple in time with her thrusts.
I lost it.
The orgasm hit me like a punch, all muscle and heat and raw code.
I screamed and the city above us exploded, trains derailing and spiraling up into the sky, buildings folding in half, rivers of binary fire running down the streets.
Every seat in the stadium blinked out, one by one, until it was just us, alone in the epicenter of a mythic apocalypse.
Fern didn’t stop. She kept her fingers inside me, kept licking and biting and sucking, dragging out the pleasure until I was shaking, unable to do anything but hold on to her and ride the wave.
Finally, when I couldn’t take any more, I collapsed against her, face buried in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. Her arms wrapped around me, strong and certain, and she held me tight while the world rebuilt itself from the outside in.
We stayed that way for a while, just breathing, the heat of our bodies pushing back against the cold of the new-formed city. The sky had stabilized, the trains had stopped, and the only sound was the slowing heartbeat in my ears.
Fern stroked my back, slow and gentle, and whispered, “You’re fucking incredible, you know that?”
It wasn’t just the words, it was the way she said it.
Like she was starving. Like I wasn’t just someone she wanted, but someone she’d been aching for, dangerous, rare, impossible, and now that she had me, she didn’t intend to let go.
There was hunger in her voice, enough to shake the air between us, enough to make me realize the Nullarch wanted me. All of me.
That truth landed like a blow, beautiful, but also terrifying. I wasn’t sure I could survive being wanted like that.
I laughed, shaky and happy, and didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say.
The trial’s mythic overlay flickered once, then resolved into a single, perfect line:
I looked up at Fern. She smiled at me, soft now, almost shy.
“You did it,” she said. “You owned the world.”
I smiled back, and for the first time, believed it.
Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane Axis Alignment: Trial
Alyx’s body didn’t calm down, not right away.
If anything, she got worse: every breath glitched, every heartbeat hit like a detonation. The city around us shuddered, code peeling at the edges. Her skin flared too hot and her eyes shifted, no pupil, no brown, just burning data drifting into the air like a system crash in real-time.
She was smiling. Wide and bright, maybe too bright, cracked at the edges like she was riding a high that would kill her.
I wrapped both arms around her and held on, because she was vibrating so hard I thought she might break apart, or take off and leave me behind.
Her chest heaved, slick with sweat, her skin fever-hot.
My hand skimmed over her abdomen to flick some sweat away, to cool her down, but the second I touched her, she shuddered—full-body, like the contact pushed her closer to the edge.
She whispered something, breath hitching on each syllable, half sob, half code.
“Zero, one, yes, fuck—align, collapse, align—”
Her hands went to my back, nails digging in. She was lost, and loving it, but I could see the cracks in her: her mouth bled blue light, her eyes had been consumed by the Astrum, iris and sclera both gold, no brown left.
Recognition of the astral resonance flooded my mind, not just hers, but my own, too.
It slotted in like a circuit completing, a signal fired through a world’s bones.
I could feel Eirona-Null, the machine intelligence, the city-mind—a Gestalt world, artificial and infinite, and now part of me.
The Trial hadn’t just tested us, it had awoken another Astral Resonance inside of me, a real resonance to a real place, not the illusory world of the trial.
I could feel it in my skin, in the code-rush under my pulse: I could control machines. Disrupt technology, bend artificial environments like they were clay in my hands. I didn’t need to guess what Alyx had gained, but whatever it was, it was burning her alive, and she was loving it.
And no, as gratifying as it would be to claim I fucked her into meltdown, I didn’t. This wasn’t me. This was an unstable resonance, a powerful, sentient world, overwhelming a woman who couldn’t accept she was special, part of the story, a prominent member of the cast, and instead, she burned.
This is what everyone warned her about. A resonance unlocked in fire, and burning uncontrolled with mythic jet-fuel as a primer.
I stared at her mouth, familiar blue-white mythfire leaking from her lips: her eyes, all gold, all fire, no mortal left. If I didn’t catch her now, I’d lose her, forever.
So I pressed both palms to her chest, right on her heart, right between the breasts I’d just worshiped, and said, “Alyx. You’re not my echo. You’re the signal that followed.”
The world listened. Even Alyx listened. Her eyelids fluttered, and I could feel her attention on me, the struggle to remain aware, thinking, and her refusal to be swallowed by the Astrum or myth.