Page 76 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

I followed my shadow into the last stretch of the Ruins, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t not.

And as I walked, I muttered, “I should have kissed Dyris harder. More.”

The Ruins heard me.

So did the shadow.

And both of them smiled.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Trivane Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

I knew I’d been ambushed the moment the corridor door locked behind me, but by then it was too late.

Velline was in rare form. She wore a dress that could have punched out the sun, fuchsia boots up to her thighs, and a belt studded with the kind of hardware that might double as a nonlethal restraint system.

She was a head shorter than me, but she radiated the presence of a star on a bender.

Her arms were full, three garment bags, two spray bottles, and a pair of heels sharp enough to gut a moonrat.

She herded me down the corridor with the casual efficiency of a riot cop. “We’re going to have fun,” she promised. “You just hold still and let Mama do the work.”

I tried to protest, but my body was still running on backup systems, and the words came out lazy. “You don’t have to—”

She overrode me. “Hush. You’re not talking yourself out of this. Not today, not ever.” She spun me by the shoulders into a massive double door, which hissed open to reveal the full, terrible glory of the wardrobe archives.

It was like being force-fed through a fashion wormhole.

Racks and racks of every possible silhouette, texture, and color, arranged by logic I could only assume was gene-coded into the Meldin line.

There were suits. There were sequined capes.

There was a wall dedicated to boots, organized by heel height and occasion for violence.

Velline dumped the bags on a low couch and turned on me with the gleam of a woman who’d finally cornered her prey. “Strip,” she said, and for a second, I thought she meant it. Then she rolled her eyes, snatched the zipper on my jumpsuit, and yanked it down with surgical speed.

I should have fought. I didn’t.

She stripped me to the skin in under twenty seconds, all while narrating the process for some invisible audience.

“I always dreamed Fern would let me do this. But she was a slippery little bastard, never sat still, never wore anything I picked out, always five seconds from setting something on fire. You, though? You’re perfect. You’re the still point.”

I grunted as she shoved me onto the couch and started in on my hair. “Not really my thing,” I said, but the protest sounded hollow, even to me.

She massaged some viscous gel into my scalp, then raked it back, twisting and pinning it so tight my eyes watered. “Pain is a sign it’s working,” she said. “You want to look like you’re worth the trouble, you have to suffer a little. That’s the Meldin tradition.”

She layered foundation onto my face in swipes so aggressive I half-expected her to draw blood. “Good cheekbones,” she muttered. “Sharp jaw. I always said Fern needed someone with a strong chin. And look at you, silver and ice and all that attitude. Gods, it’s like I ordered you from a catalog.”

I sat, motionless, letting her go. My mind drifted: Fern, laughing in a cargo bay, shoving me into a crate because “nobody would ever look for me in the kale aisle”; Fern, mouth slick with hot sauce, daring me to say something mean; Fern, standing too close, never flinching.

Velline finished my face, then moved on to the nails. She filed, buffed, painted. “I’m not doing your toes,” she said. “That’s for weddings.” She cackled, then paused, and for a second her hands trembled on mine.

“Fern never let me do this,” she whispered, low. “Never let me… finish.”

I didn’t say anything.

She looked up, blinking fast, then snapped the spell with a grin. “But you, my darling, you’re family now. Which means you get the full treatment. No shortcuts.”

She let go of my hands, rummaged through the bags, and produced the main event: a leopard print bodysuit, sleeveless, with a high-cut leg that screamed “midnight felony” and a plunging neckline so deep it was basically theoretical.

She held it up, radiant. “You’ll wear this. With these.” She brandished the heels.

I drew the line at the heels. “Absolutely not.”

She snorted. “We’ll see.”

I got into the bodysuit with surprising ease. It clung everywhere, refusing to wrinkle or sag. Velline zipped me in, then stood back to admire her work.

“Oh, honey. You’re unstoppable.”

She pushed the heels onto my feet before I could stop her. They were exactly as tall as my dignity was short. I tried to stand, failed, and caught myself on the edge of a rack labeled “Dramatic Entrances Only.”

Velline clapped, delighted. “You’re a natural! No, don’t look at me like that. Come here. You have to see this.”

She led me, teetering, mortified, over to a wall of mirrors.

For a second, I didn’t recognize myself.

Then I did, and it was so awful it looped back to incredible.

I was all angles and ferocity, my mythprint flaring like it wanted to set the outfit on fire, and my face was so perfectly cruel I could have started a minor coup just by raising an eyebrow.

I let out a breath. “I look like a villain’s evil secretary.”

Velline leaned in, lips pressed to my ear. “You look like you could save the world. Or ruin it. Same difference.”

She turned me by the shoulders, studied the profile, then dabbed at my eyes with a soft brush. “You know, Fern would have hated this. But she’d have loved to see you wear it. She always liked a girl who could pull focus.”

I nodded, slowly. “She did.”

Velline was quiet for a long beat. Then, softer: “She’s coming back, you know. She has to.”

I swallowed hard. “If anyone can, it’s Fern.”

Velline smiled, but her eyes were raw. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it easier. She always had to do it her way. Even when it hurt.”

I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the mirror, hating the way my face betrayed nothing, not even the ache in my chest.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Velline grinned, savage and perfect. “She won’t have a choice. She’ll be too busy staring.”

I managed to laugh, sharp and brittle.

Velline hugged me, quick and hard, then let go. “Now go. Show the universe what a Meldin looks like when she’s ready to win.”

I left the wardrobe, heels clicking like gunshots down the empty corridor.

At the end, I caught my reflection again, alone in the long wall of glass.

I looked ridiculous.

I looked beautiful.

And as I stood there, the mythic pressure in the air doubled. I could feel the storm building, the hunger at its center.

When Fern came back, I was going to make sure she never got away again.

But the moment she did, I was burning this outfit to ash.

Thread Modulation: Dax Meldin Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the only thing you look forward to is the batter taste of fried butter sticks and the shrill whine of a mop drone on the verge of collapse.

I was wrist-deep in the guts of said drone, the workbench layered with a geological record of old oil and bread crumbs, and I’d given up even pretending to care what time it was.

Perc was perched—he’d insist it was “stationed”—on the edge of the bench, his carafe half full of the day’s fourth brew cycle. He’d been running the same three comments on loop for the last hour, but he was my only company, so I didn’t have the heart to cycle him off.

“I could heat those for you,” he said, eye stalks shifting toward the plate of congealed butter sticks.

I grunted, didn’t look up. “They’re better when you can taste the regret.”

He hissed a laugh. “My record shows you only say that when you’ve run out of antiacids. Or shame.”

The mop drone spat a wire at my face. I caught it, jammed it back in with a forceful thumb, and for a second the old thing shuddered to life, wobbling on its ball bearings before promptly throwing up a wad of ancient hair and dying again.

“You ever get tired of me fixing the same bot a hundred times?” I asked.

Perc was contemplative, which meant his heating coil made a low, sad whine. “No one else gives me upgrades. And you always have a better story the next day.”

I shot him a glare, then peeled a stick off the plate. It bent, not snapped, so I chewed it with the kind of grim commitment that wins wars.

My compad vibrated, but I ignored it.

Perc filled the silence. “Moon Tape? Again?”

He didn’t need to say what he meant. The legendary footage of Lioren, all mythprint glory, tearing the surface of a moon in half while looking directly into the camera. The kind of violence that’s both a warning and a love letter.

I considered saying no. Then nodded. “Do it.”

Perc flicked on the screen. The feed was lo-res, compressed a thousand times from too many hands passing it around, but the effect was the same.

Lioren, shirtless, grinning, arms lifted to the sky, the mythic surge making the very air around him catch fire.

The moon, proud and untouched for a million years, cracked like a raw egg.

I watched it twice, not blinking. After the second loop, I killed the feed. My hands were shaking, just a little.

Perc topped off my coffee without asking. The first sip hit my mouth like a punch, but the burn was nice. Real.

“You believe in him?” Perc asked.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “Not since he let the world eat him. Or maybe since I saw what he left behind. Does it matter?”

Perc’s voice went soft, almost embarrassed. “I think it does. Fern’s different.”

“She’s the same,” I said, too fast. “She’s the same, but worse, and I…” I trailed off. The drone on the table blinked a red diagnostic, then powered down again.

Perc said nothing for a while.

I finished the coffee, then smashed the cup against the bench, not hard enough to break it, just enough to feel it.