Page 12 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

She’d gone still for a fraction of a beat, mid-step, her mic lifted but no sound coming out. The band carried on behind her, but the tiniest hitch rippled through them. People near me started to notice. I felt heads turning, gazes bouncing between me and the stage, trying to figure out what she was staring at.

Then she smiled.

As if it were just for me, which was insane, because I was one face in a pit of thousands.

This close, I could see the light threads in her hair shifting color, the sheen on her collarbone, and the way her chest moved when she breathed. Her dual-pulse flickered at her throat—a double flash, too quick, like it had stumbled.

Then she blinked, stepped back into the song as if nothing had happened, and the ballad poured out of her. But she kept finding me. Between movements, in the half-seconds when the lights shifted and nobody was supposed to notice where her eyes went, they came back.

Every time.

I flip-flopped from telling myself I had imagined it to wondering if it was just the glare from the spotlight that had made it seem that way.

The thing was, I’d seen her shows. All of them, archived and fan-recorded. She looked at crowds, cameras, and the front row as a singular mass. I had never seen her stare at one person for that long.

The rest of the concert blurred into an overload of color and movement. There was an aerial section where she floated above us on a suspended platform, gravity cheated by some invisible rig. There was a call-and-response with the crowd that shook the walls. Then there was a final encore where she dragged out the last chorus until my throat burned from trying to match her.

When the last song ended, the arena exploded into sound—applause, screaming, and bracelets flashing like a thousand tiny stars blinking rapidly. Some Velans and humans were even sobbing and screaming, “I love you, Zhari!”

Zhari bowed her head, breathing hard, sweat—or the Velan equivalent—making her skin shine. For a second, she looked almost human.

“Thank you, Lumara!” she yelled to the crowd. “Can’t wait to see you all again!”

Then she took a bow, and the floor beneath her lowered her back under the stage.

Then, just like that, it was over.

The house lights brightened. The bracelet pulses slowed and stilled. People around me started moving again, their voices jumpy with adrenaline as they rehashed their favorite moments: the key change in the third song, the new choreography, and the surprise riff on an old hit.

I stood there for a long second, pinned in place by the ghost of the sound. My ears rang. My skin felt thin, as if everything might leak out if I moved too fast.

“So how was that?” the Velan from the line asked, reappearing at my elbow, her cheeks still glowing.

“I think I left my soul somewhere near the third chorus,” I rasped. My voice sounded shredded, as if I had swallowed a comet.

She laughed. “Her concerts are always transcendent. Every single time.” She bumped my shoulder lightly. “Are you staying in the city? You should check out the Prism Quarter. They have the coolest Zhari merchandise and the best Lunar Fizz on the whole planet.”

I smiled. “Lunar Fizz? I’m actually pretty parched.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I might never leave Vela! I’m having the time of my life.”

She flashed me a wink. “Enjoy your stay, human girl.”

We were swept toward the exits with everyone else, shuffling slowly through corridors that hummed with leftover energy. Holo-screens along the walls replayed highlights from the show we’d just seen, already edited and already perfect.

I caught a glimpse of the ballad shot from a side angle, and my feet stopped moving. Zhari was silhouetted against the crowd, her face tilted toward the pit. And there, just at the edge of the frame, was a figure.

Human.

You couldn’t see the face, just the back of a head, a shoulder, and skin that was very obviously not Velan. But I knew that shoulder. I owned that shoulder.

“Oh no,” I muttered.

Zhari’s eyes in the shot were locked on that exact spot, and her expression was one I couldn’t read. She looked almost confused.

The cameras hadn’t caught the double-stutter of her pulse. But they had caught the direction of her stare.

It was aimed right where I’d been standing.

My chest went tight. It wasn’t my imagination. She had been looking at me. At me specifically. The replay was right there on a ten-foot screen, and it wasn’t lying.