Page 43 of She Who Devours the Stars
She turned my hand over, palm up, and pressed her thumb into the hollow. “You don’t want to be here. You want to be free.”
“Is that what you think you are?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
She nodded, slow. “I was. Once. Now I’m just… not contained.”
Her thumb pressed harder, then let go. She looked up, met my gaze, and held it.
I wanted to break the silence, to explain myself, to justify the entire disaster of this “meeting.” Instead, I asked, “Why did you come?”
Her eyes flicked over my face, searching for the answer. “Because I thought you might understand.”
I knew, in that split second where Fern paused and let the world settle around us, that I was in real trouble. The kind that didn’t have a protocol or an after-action report, the kind that rewrote its own rules line by line. There are moments when the future branches, when every possible outcome fans out into infinity, and you know with crystalline certainty that you’re about to step onto the branch you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Or at least until someone edits your memory with a military-issue amnesia scalpel.
She closed the gap between us in an optical illusion, a slow stalk that felt like freefall. The mythic hum in the air thickened and went sticky-sweet, as if someone had poured honey over the room’s nervous system. Every sense sharpened: the whirr of containment filters in the wall, the high-and-lonesome whistle of city breezes scraping distant towers, my heartbeat thumping arrhythmia against my ribs.
Fern leaned so close her breath ghosted along my cheekbone. “You’re a coward, Dyris,” she whispered, as if reciting a sacred litany meant only for my mitochondria. “But you’re the bravest coward I’ve ever met.” My name sounded different on her tongue, like it belonged to someone who’d earned it.
Her hand cut a diagonal from my wrist to my shoulder, fingers trailing electric signatures across skin as they climbed. She took her time with me, staking out territory instead of just passing through; I could feel her mapping every microflinch and shiver, rerouting her approach mid-move to exploit whatevernew reaction she found. For all her casual violence and mythic scorch, Fern’s touch was calibrated and careful, a predator’s mercy or a surgeon’s grace. Maybe both.
She cradled the back of my neck in her palm and pulled me forward, not fast, not rough, but slow and terrifyingly sure. The space between our faces went zero-G for a microsecond before gravity collapsed us together.
The first kiss was nothing like I expected. I’d braced for devouring or domination or some melodramatic collision of wills, something fitting for a girl whose resonance had destroyed half a fleet and made history sweat. But Fern kissed me soft: lips barely there at first, all suggestion and no demand. Her mouth tasted like unripe fruit and old wine; her breath carried ozone from wildfires long since put out.
I tried not to react but failed so completely it almost looped around into success, a dull moan vibrated out of me before I realized what it was. On instinct, I tried to twist away, but Fern just moved with me, always one step ahead of any escape vector I plotted.
She deepened the kiss, slow escalation instead of blitzkrieg, until there was nothing left in my universe except sensation: teeth grazing lip (hers then mine), tongue tracing unfamiliar words against palate (mine then hers), my hands moving up without authorization to clutch at her biceps because suddenly I needed something solid or else I’d collapse through the couch and fall forever.
Somewhere in the static between brain and body, I tasted salt, blood, and the faint metallic edge of panic layered over the ghost of the steak I’d only tasted on Fern’s tongue. Stupid, but the thought surfaced anyway;I hope she likes dessert.
She broke contact just long enough to look at me through half-lidded eyes gone midnight blue in the containment shimmer. “Still think this is protocol?” she asked, or maybe accused, but didn’t wait for an answer before kissing me again, harder now.
The next minute or hour blurred: she nipped at my mouth until I gasped open-mouthed for air; she used it as an excuse to invade deeper. Her hand slid down from my neck to hook inside my collar, Accord formalwear is supposed to be dignified, but no one told Fern, and with one practiced flick, she undid two buttons and exposed four times as much skin as any official function ever did.
There was negotiation happening here, but not in words. Every move Fern made said: I want you on my terms, but I want you strong enough to resist a little first.
So, when she pressed me back against the couch cushions and bracketed me between her knees, one on either side of mine, I fought just enough for it to be interesting. My hands tried to direct hers; hers countered by pinning them flat against my sides or entangling fingers until we were locked in a standstill that only ended when she decided it would.
She broke off kissing long enough to say, “I heard Vaelith girls bite.” Her voice was laced with amusement over hunger.
“Only if bitten first,” I shot back with more bravado than sense.
Fern grinned like a wolf who’d just heard an invitation arrive by post. She bent down and bit gently at my earlobe, then less gently, and when I yelped more from shock than pain, she laughed into my neck before sealing her mouth there for several seconds that recalibrated all previous definitions of ‘pressure point.’
By then, I felt drunk on something more substantial than wine, full-body tremble running under my skin like static seekingground, but also weirdly lucid? Like everything normal was falling away, but some core part of me was more awake than ever before.
She opened another two buttons on my shirt while keeping our hips pressed tight together; everything about Fern screamed improvisation, yet somehow she kept perfect control over how fast things escalated.
I finally managed to get one hand free (she allowed it) and threaded fingers into her hair, auburn, not the infamous Trivane black shot through with reckless cometary gold or peroxide blonde, and pulled her face level with mine again.
“I don’t lose control,” I warned, uncertain if it was a threat or confession.
“You don’t,” Fern agreed solemnly. Then: “But you want to.” She ran her thumb over my cheekbone like a promise written in Braille.
I could have thrown up another wall then, told her we should slow down or stop altogether, but lying seemed pointless because every atom in circulation between us crackled yes yes yes keep going! She kissed down along my jawline toward where my pulse hammered loudest; with each stop along the way, she tasted skin like it might vanish if left too long untouched.
The room’s containment shimmer cycled higher until everything outside our hothouse bubble blurred out completely; even Vireleth’s silhouette faded into insignificance compared to Fern pinning me flat against ancient upholstery while systematically undoing every defense I’d ever bothered building.
When she reached for the hem of my undershirt, it felt less like seduction than invocation, a ritual act performed with near-religious care. And when the fabric hit the floor, neither of us bothered tracking where it landed, because suddenly we wereflush, chest-to-chest, and each heartbeat threatened to detonate something structural inside.
