Page 178 of She Who Devours the Stars
The mythic resonance in my body didn’t lessen or dissipate. It settled in, heavy and certain, like a second heartbeat.
I could feel it thinking. Still here. Still hungry. Still waiting.
I looked at the sky, now fractured with the arrival of the Black Helix—bigger, darker, so much more than mythlogic hadever accounted for. It wasn’t attacking. Not yet. It was just… interested.
Zevelune drained her glass, then threw it over her shoulder, the sound of it shattering echoing forever in the dead quiet.
She leaned in, smiling at both of us.
“And the next act begins,” she whispered, so softly I almost missed it.
Then, louder, amused and hungry: “Soon. Not yet.”
She turned and faded into the trees.
I looked at Dyris. She looked at me.
Neither of us let go.
Epilogue: The Myth Still Hums When We Dance
Thread Modulation: Fern Fucking Trivane
Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure
Vireleth pulled Dyris and me out of the ruins, and by the time we made it out of the shower and down to the lower decks, the party had spread across multiple levels. Dyris managed to feel human and escape the clutches of the shower, so now I was playing catch-up in one of Lioren’s mythcoats.
It fit like prophecy. That’s the only way to describe it, not a jacket, not really, more like a promise made in violence and stitched together with ego, half Lioren’s mythprint, half mine, except I wore it better because I had to. It settled over my shoulders like a dare, still warm from memory, and I swear I could feel the seams flex, not to fit me, but to admit me.
I caught my reflection in one of the lowlight mythglass panels: shirtless, glowing, abs looking like they’d been kissed by divine lightning, collarbone framed by the ridiculous asymmetrical neckline, and I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was unfair how good I looked, and how long it took me to stop trying to measure up to a man who was never my rival, just my prequel.
The jacket wasn’t subtle. The outer shell rippled like oil over sin, pink-black starshine that made people flinch if they stared too long, like it knew things about them it wasn’t supposed to say out loud. Every step I took, the hem flared with mythlight sparks that hissed out midair like they had opinions. Inside, the whisper-lining murmuredYou were always the onelike it had a crush on me. Or maybe a vendetta. Hard to tell.
One sleeve trailed behind like a leash I refused to hold. The other gripped my arm like it knew what I’d done to earn it. The collarframed my neck like a threat and an invitation. I wasn’t sure if it wanted to seduce me or wear me. Maybe both.
And sweet, holy tacos, the back sigil. I caught a glimpse in a corridor mirror, a fractured heart pierced by mythvectors, each one glowing with that too-bright ache of past-tense love. Ten declarations of intent. Ten reminders that I hadn’t just survived the story. I’d outlived it. Outloved it. Outwritten it.
He drafted the myth; I revised the gravity.
I adjusted the collar, just so. The mythcoat shifted like a breath. Not approval. Not surrender. Just… acknowledgement.
Lioren had been many things. Legend. Martyr. Mythic fucking narcissist. But he hadn’t been my enemy. He’d been the scaffolding for something better, for a girl with catastrophe in her bones and a kiss that could end timelines.
For me. For Fern fucking Trivane. I blew a kiss at the mirror, winked, and let the jacket flare as I turned.
“I win,” I said, not like a gloat, but like a benediction.
The jacket didn’t argue. Neither did the myth.
“Yes, we all won, Fern. Are you coming to the party?” The spooky ass voice of Kairon the Mirror asked me, with MY reflection. I flipped him off, and stalked towards the party.
Vireleth’s main lights were killed, some “combat protocol,” probably, but more likely an excuse to let the mood projectors do their thing. I stepped in and the world hit me in full: color-sick overlays on every wall, post-Faith-Pulse music warping between synthpop and planetcore, and the smell—mythprint ozone, melted cheese, and the deep, deliberate sweat of a hundred humans deciding together to never, ever sleep again.
I did not know half these people. Not even a quarter, probably. Vireleth’s mercy had extended to the civilian population of allof Eventide, not just the Athenaeum, while the planet's mythic grid repaired itself. Refugees and mythkids and ex-Academy types flooded the corridors, stacking up like the world’s saddest open-bar wedding. Someone had repainted the launch bay with a mural of me, which was so embarrassing I almost imploded on sight: “NULLARCH 4EVER” in bleeding blue-and-gold, my face rendered like a death cult’s version of a prom queen. Someone had also already tattooed it, chest and all, on their bicep.
I bypassed the main deck crowd, dodged a conga line led by three first-years and a pizza delivery guy still in his work uniform, and ducked into the center of chaos: the refitted warship mess, now “Pizza Miracle” for the night, courtesy of an industrial Myth-Oven and the greatest coffee pot ever to haunt the void.
At the bar, Perc rode high on a repurposed serving drone, carafe wreathed in LED ribbons, arms waving. “Brew complete! Brew complete! Justice not yet complete!” he crowed, then: “NOW WITH FAITH-INFUSED PEPPERONI BLESSINGS!” The crowd howled. A kid in a zero-G hoodie did an entire somersault in response, catching a slice of the “Margarita Supreme” mid-spin and inhaling it in two bites.
