Page 2 of The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight
Chapter 1
She’d sworn she was never, ever, not ever setting foot on that nasty space station ever again, nuh-uh ever and hell naw.
So it was really annoying to be standing in the station’s atrium garden, going back on her word to her own self. But somebody had to manage the wedding of the first Black Hole Bride. Right now, she was directing staff from the Azthronos estate who were hanginglavish purple loops of ribbon from the high arched dome where transparent triangular panes that framed the vastness of space.
She refused to look at the black hole swirling out there among the stars.
Lishelle Lewis had a lifetime of experience ignoring whatever got in her way.
Of course, it was one thing to ignore her high school counselor who’d told her girls from rural Tennessee didn’t applyto Ivy League schools, or her first boss who’d believed such a diploma didn’t count since it got paid with scholarship money.
It was a little harder to ignore a cosmic black eye glaring down at her.
Well, she had dark eyes too, except she had two of ‘em, so that ugly ol’ singularity could go larf itself.
Her animated gestures to the decorating crew morphed to a ruder one at the black hole.
“That’s tempting fate, you know,” said an amused voice behind her.
She swiveled to face Rayna Quaye. Like Lishelle, Rayna was one of the Black Hole Brides—a handful of surviving Earth women abducted by a crazy alien who wanted to sacrifice them to the singularity in order to reanimate his dead consort.
Or whatever wackiness that’d been. With the upcoming wedding, Rayna—Lady Rayna Quaye, actually—wouldbecome the bride of Aelazar Amrazal Thorkonos, Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Zalar, Avatar of Azjor, God of Oaths. Which would make Rayna the duchess of an alien solar system—let the wackiness shine on.
At the moment, she didn’t look the part. Instead of a Thorkon day gown or more formal robe, she was clad in a pair of sturdy overalls liberally streaked with mud. The extraterrestrial plantingsin the atrium garden might be genetically engineered to help clean and circulate the air in the space station, but they were still just dirty.
Lishelle set her hands on her hips. “The last time I argued fate and free will, I was smoking weed in my dorm room. It went about as well as you might imagine.”
Rayna laughed. “We definitely need another Earth girls’ night out before the wedding. No weed,but we do have ghost-mead.”
Although Lishelle smiled back at her and agreed, inside, she felt herself shrinking.
Lady Rayna was about to be a duchess on Azthronos. Trixie, the other Black Hole Bride who had chosen not to return to Earth with her memory wiped, was training to be an on-station technician. And that was despite being recaptured by the crazy alien who wanted to make her a singularitysnack.
Rayna and Trixie weren’t ignoring the nightmare they’d all been through. They were, like, leaning in and shit.
Sort of made Lishelle wonder if she was the only not-crazy one.
Rayna tilted her head to study the bunting. Under the mud smudges, her tawny skin was flushed from her exertions. Or maybe the duke was around here somewhere, getting her dirty and hot. “It looks great, Shel. Maybeyou don’t believe in fate, but I feel so, so lucky to have you and Trixie and my sister here helping with the wedding.” She let out a deep breath, collapsing her shoulders. “Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say, because it means you’rehereinstead of back on Earth, happily knowing nothing about sentient, spacefaring species, some of whom are homicidal psychopaths. But still… I do feel lucky everyday and every night and every…whatever weird perpetual twilight we got coming from that black hole radiation. I hope you know how muchyoumean to me.”
Rayna spread her arms as if she was coming in for a hug, but Lishelle warded her off with the flash of one palm. “Just keep your lucky, filthy self over there, girlfriend,” she said firmly. “This is a new frock.” She smoothed her hands down thebright geometric pattern of her sleeveless day gown. “You can show me exactly how much I mean to you by depositing hella galactic credits into my account if the station is up and running in time for the”—she made air quotes—“most romantic nuptials in the Thorkon galaxy.”
Wrinkling her nose—which had mud on the tip—Rayna speared her hands through her whiskey-dark hair. “Ugh. I know we’re cuttingit close, but having the wedding on the station is a great chance to position it asthepremiere exotic destination resort in this quadrant. That’ll earn you, me, the other girls,andthe duchy a crap-ton of galactic credits.”
Lishelle eyed her. “Right now, seems you’ve been rolled through actual crap. We can’t sell this as a fairytale with you looking like the underside of a cow’s tail. A dukemight marry a closed-world commoner who was bequeathed a space station and became a lady, but no crap.”
Rayna snorted even as she swiped uselessly at her overalls. “You sound like the dowager.”
“Because that old biddy knows about looking the part.” Lishelle did too, even if she hadn’t ever been able to disguise what she was. Generational rural poverty never quite wiped off, no matter how shemuch she increased her vocabulary and tweaked her syntax.
“The dowager is the one who got the crocus bulbs from Earth, and she said if they were planted right away, we can speed up the growth cycle in time to bloom for the ceremony.”
“I just don’t think she meantyoushould plant them.”
“Somebody had to,” Rayna said with a very duchess-like wave of her hand.
It wasn’t the nonchalance or eventhe faint whiff of mud wafting off the nobility-to-be that made Lishelle turn away.
Somebody had to.