Page 59 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)
Thread Modulation: Dyris Trivane Axis Alignment: South Tower, Eventide
The last time Kaela Vaelith called, she did it from the deck of a burning party barge with seven dead assassins and a live peacock in the shot.
This time, she was broadcasting from what looked like the glass-roofed solarium of her penthouse, which was only slightly less chaotic and only somewhat more legal.
I was in the middle of the stabilization protocol, barefoot, hair unbrushed, the marks of Fern’s teeth still red on my collarbone, when the system chimed and threw her face across half my wall.
“Is this a bad time?” Kaela asked, her voice high and dry, a jetstream over the usual mythic background hum.
She wore a bathrobe in scandalous off-white, a strand of pearls, and nothing else.
Her hair was up in curlers shaped like little mythic caducei, each one blinking with its own comm bead.
Her makeup was perfect except for the lipstick, which was smeared across the rim of a glass the size of a tactical bucket.
I let the system authenticate my face, then glanced at the blinking overlays in the room’s periphery. Three of them said: EMERGENCY. The fourth said: YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT. The fifth, running a little script I’d written as a teenager, scrolled: say hi to auntie.
“You look sober,” I said, which was a lie, and she snorted so hard she splashed the wine. A pale hand with the world’s oldest ring flicked the spill away, then returned to petting the enormous, shaggy dog curled at her feet.
“It’s noon somewhere,” Kaela said, then gestured grandly at her own chest, the bathrobe parting just enough to suggest she’d finally invested in the mythic augmentation kit she’d always threatened.
“And it’s always noon in the Vaelith main house.
Look at you, Dyris. You’re radiating. I mean that in the literal sense.
Do you need to borrow a containment suit? ”
I tried to modulate my breathing, which was not helped by the fact that my own resonance was still spiking every thirty seconds. “If I did, it would have to be alloy. SGR 0418+5729 is showing up on the satellites, now.”
“I saw! Oh, I saw.” Kaela clapped, twice, making her pearls jump. “I always said you’d slip the leash, darling, but this? I thought you’d end up with a cute little coil-field. Instead, you’ve got enough magnetic resonance to peel a god off its throne.”
The dog groaned, rolled over, and tried to eat one of the caducei out of her hair. Kaela ignored it. “Tell me everything. Tell me what it felt like. And don’t you dare say it was just another day at the office.”
I could have stonewalled. I could have deflected. Instead, I did what every daughter of Vaelith did when her arch-matriarch called in for damage control: I lied, but beautifully.
“Honestly? It was like being run over by a star and then being expected to apologize for denting it.” I caught my own face in the overlay reflection, saw the flush, the pallor, the shimmer of old adrenaline in my eyes. “We didn’t plan for a twin event. It just… happened.”
Kaela cackled. “That’s the old Trivane coming out! Lioren never planned for anything. He just saw the fire and ran straight into it, screaming, ‘First one there owns the myth.’”
There was a new ache in my throat, hearing my name in that context. The satellite feeds had all tagged the event as TRIVANE/VAELITH, but hearing her say it out loud—like it was a thing, a legacy, something that actually belonged to me—made the room feel smaller and bigger at the same time.
Kaela studied me, all the laughter draining away, leaving the focus that had gotten her through three coups and four annulments. “You did it, didn’t you?” she said, softly. “You found your axis.”
I stared at the wall, at the burn marks in the mythglass where the last containment ring had snapped. “I didn’t want to,” I said.
“Oh, darling. Want is never the point.” She leaned in, lowering her voice to a war-room hush. “But you did it, and you’re still here. And the Accord can scream all it wants about propriety, but it can’t erase this. Not even if it tries.”
I nodded, once. The energy in the room was finally settling, the gravitational hum a soft constant instead of the full-body vibration it had been all morning. “There’s fallout,” I said. “A lot. One researcher is missing, and the mythic grid is… jumpy.”
Kaela waved that away. “Grid’s always jumpy.
They built it on a stolen algorithm. The important thing is this—” and she pointed, not at me, but through the screen, as if she could see Fern somewhere behind me, lurking just out of sight.
“You made history, Dyris. You and that beautiful mess of a girl.”
She refilled her glass, this time letting the spill land on her thigh.
“Did you know,” she said, “that the last time anyone pulled a Celestial-level magnetic event was six generations ago? And the story says it didn’t just bend the rules.
It snapped them, and the world had to glue itself back together with rumor and spite. You’re in good company.”
I tried not to laugh. It came out anyway. “Is this the part where you warn me not to let it go to my head?”
Kaela’s face softened, the lines around her mouth going gentle for once.
“No, darling. This is the part where I tell you to be careful, because the universe loves a second act, and there’s always a critic with a sharper tongue waiting in the wings.
” She winked, then sat back, letting the dog lick wine off her wrist.
“Be good to her,” Kaela said, meaning Fern, but maybe meaning herself, or maybe meaning the myth that built us both. “And if the resonance gets dicey, call me. I’ve got lawyers who make the Concord look like kindergartners.”
“I will,” I said, and meant it.
Kaela winked again, then did the thing she always did when she was about to hang up: she blew a kiss at the camera, rolled her eyes, and mouthed “no gods, just us,” a family motto so old it had probably been the cause of at least two civil wars.
The screen went black, but the mythic afterimage hung in the air, sharp as ozone.
For a long minute, I just stood there, feeling the weight of the line—the belonging, the pressure, the expectation. It was a lot, but it was mine.
And if I failed? At least the legend would be worth the fallout.
There was work to do, and now I had permission.
I smiled, sharp and unsparing, and started dialing Fern’s comm.
Some news was too good not to share.
Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane Axis Alignment: Eventide, Faculty sauna
The message wasn’t even subtle this time.
It showed up on my HUD as a cartoon chili pepper doing jazz hands, which could only mean one person was trying to contact me, and also that she’d lost the will to be subtle after three full mythic events.
I tried to ignore it. The chili grew a face, then started screaming.
The staff sauna was on Sublevel 4, down a hallway that had been off-limits for so long the paint was actually retro.
I’d never been inside; the only people who used it were ancient faculty, the kind of academics who considered minor war crimes an acceptable pedagogical tool.
The hallway smelled like burned soy and despair.
When I got to the door, it locked behind me.
Not with a click, but a slow, inexorable deadbolt that felt like it might never open again.
The steam inside was so dense I could barely see my own hand.
My clothes were instantly wet, clinging to every inch of mythship-burned skin, which was only slightly less humiliating than the alternative.
I peeled off my coat and let it sag, sweat pooling at the small of my back before the heat could even finish its first lap.
The Headmistress waited, arms folded, perched on a wooden bench older than most of the Accord’s standing army.
She wore a towel the color of wet cement, and her hair, usually perfect, was now a halo of defeated frizz.
A pair of ancient data goggles hung around her neck, lenses so fogged they looked painted on.
I tried to bow. It just made the world spin.
She pointed at the opposite bench. “Sit before you fall,” she said. Her voice had lost none of its edge. “I’m in no mood to catch you.”
I dropped onto the bench, every muscle in my body protesting. The heat was the kind that didn’t just attack your skin; it infiltrated your bones, then sent sabotage teams up the nerves. I coughed, wiped my forehead, and waited for the opening barrage.
“You look like a recycled tube sock,” she said, nodding in approval. “Good. You’ll blend in when the Accord decides to flush the system.”
“Morning to you, too,” I managed. “Is this about the snack bar? Because that was an accident. Mostly.”
She snorted. “If it was about the snack bar, you’d be in the sub-basement eating regret with Perc.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees, towel barely holding the line. Her skin was translucent in the steam, the veins beneath a map of faded wars. “This is about your disaster.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
She let the silence ride for a moment, then: “When you were feeding students, we just had heartburn. Now we’ve got recursive erotics and missing researchers.”
A bead of sweat dripped down her cheek. She ignored it.
“Did you know,” she said, “I outlived Lioren? Sat on this bench the day they erased him, watched the city throw itself a parade. Never thought I’d see anything worse.
” She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that only happens at the top of a bungee jump, when you realize the cord is frayed. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
I tried to play it off. “Wasn’t me. I was at home, watching trash drama and eating industrial cheese.”
Her glare cut through the steam. “If I wanted lies, I’d have joined the Concord.”