Page 106 of She Who Devours the Stars
The text, big and bold:
CANDIDATE CONVERGENCE: TRIVANE / TRIVANE
She let the words burn a hole in her retina, then read the fine print:
[INTERPRETIVE STATUS: MUTUAL BOND CONFIRMED]
[AGE AT EVENT: 27, 19]
[PRIMARY VECTOR: SGR 0418+5729]
[COMMENT: "IS THIS A MARRIAGE? MAYBE. WHO'S TO SAY."]
[FILED UNDER: UNPRECEDENTED | FLAGGED FOR MYTH REVIEW]
Kaela howled, voice shredded from the night before but still loud enough to make the glassware shiver.
“Trivane x Trivane!” she said, to no one but the soapy water and her own ghost. “Oh, you absolute chaos demons. You unhinged, incestuous, narrative-destroying starlets.”
She read it again, then rolled over and slapped the System panel on the wall, queuing up her own public commentary before the rest of the Accord’s leeches could dilute the take.
She typed, one thumb, eyes blurry:
Trivane x Trivane. God help us all.
She considered a meme, maybe a screenshot of Lioren’s infamous “why not both?” face, but she wanted the purity of the raw message. She hit send, then watched as the feed lit up. She could feel the response, the way a mythic animal senses an earthquake seconds before the dirt shakes: first a ripple, then a rumble, then the whole world falling in on itself.
Within seconds, the reblogs, quotes, and meme remixes started. First from the expected set—her own family’s retinue of spooks and gossips, the Concord’s media sharks, the mythos humor channels. But then, like a second pulse, from the places that really mattered:
- The Accord’s own news office, “seeking comment.”
- The House of Antellan, “demanding a cease and desist.”
- The cult of the Black Helix, “praising the marriage of null and void.”
- A pack of junior mythic analysts, slicing apart her comment and spinning out ten thousand words of analysis in real time.
Kaela basked in it.
She set her glass down, wiped the sweat from her neck, and pulled her bathrobe on with the practiced indifference of someone who’d been both the cause and the cleanup crew of toomany legendary messes. She wandered to the window, looked out over the city’s ever-glowing veinwork, and let herself laugh, a dry, delighted sound.
“You Liorened her. You absolute menace,” she said, picturing Fern—her runaway mythchild, her favorite little antihero—out there somewhere, making the Accord’s best and brightest melt down on live feed. “This is the act of a man who impregnated a moon.”
She poured another glass—more out of habit than need—and tossed it back. The burn hit her like old memory.
On a whim, she spun up the live social feed. The trending topic was already “Trivane x Trivane,” climbing faster than last year’s assassination attempt on the Accord head. The first meme had gone up before she’d finished her own post: Fern and Dyris in bridal combat gear, locked in a gravity-well of marital ambiguity.
Kaela snorted, then slouched into her chair, watching as the notifications lit her skin in neon blue. She let the bath cool around her, let her hair get even messier, let her voice go completely.
At some point, she remembered she’d promised to hate Fern, or at least make her pay for the last disaster, but it was hard to feel anything but pride.
She leaned back, glass in hand, hair wild, bathrobe clinging to her ribs, and watched the mythosphere burn itself clean for the second time in her life.
When the first interview request from the cult of the Black Helix came in—asking if she’d officiate the inevitable “wedding”—she laughed so hard she nearly dislocated her jaw.
“Oh, the cults are awake already. That was fast.”
She didn’t bother replying.
