Page 40 of The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight

“All the more reason for me to come,” she said. “And I’ll bring the blaster.”

He flashed her half a smile, and she thought it looked almost grateful.

When she and the other Black Hole Brides had been rescued from the spacestation, she decided not to go back to Earth because being gone for three years had been like a lifetime. Hehadbeen gone for a lifetime. Several lives. She wasn’t going to say he was brave, but she wouldn’t have done it herself.

He waited at the hatch, shifting from foot to foot, while she scrounged through the crew area and found one of the light EVA suits meant for questionable environments.She pulled on the long jacket over her robe and clumped over to him in the bulky boots. “If you can’t wait till morning, let’s do this thing.”

He palmed the patch controls, and though she stilled herself for a rush of freezing air, the rain-scented wind that swirled in was only cool. She inhaled deeply, not realizing how the atmosphere of the station had been blunted, even with the profusionof plantings meant to purify and enliven the canned air.

“It smells like spring,” she mused.

“It is,” Tynan said. “On this side of the planet.”

It was so easy to forget, and so crazy to remember, that in her life now, it was always spring and winter, night and day, starting and ending, somewhere in this vast universe.

They stepped out into the small clearing where they’d landed. Tynan hadtaken the shuttle’s dat-pad, now he aimed the illuminating beam in a slow arc across their surroundings. “This landing zone used to hold a dozen ships,” he murmured. He redirected the beam of light upward to capture the swaying branches of the trees overhead.

The jungle—for that was what it was—had overtaken everything. Just as much as she’d grown used to the canned air on the space station,her eye had gotten familiar with the formal shapes favored by the Thorkons. To see this lush and wild spread reminded her of the strange sunflowers that had bloomed in the nexus atrium under the black hole.

And for once, the wildness didn’t scare her.

She took a few steps beyond the shelter of the hatch, exclaiming to herself at the lighter gravity that made her steps a little too big, evenfor her.

“Lishelle, don’t go far,” he warned.

“Oh, just as far as a different galaxy,” she muttered to herself. To him, she called back, “I have the blaster.” As if that was everything she needed.

But it did give her steps a spring of confidence, more than the lighter gravity even, as she prowled around the edge of the clearing. After a moment, Tynan followed her. She felt as if she was theone leading this adventure.

“The roots have busted up right through the plascrete,” she marveled. “I thought the stuff was unbreakable.”

“Nothing is unbreakable,” he grumbled. “The roots go deep, and time and water and inevitability have their way with us all.”

She grimaced. “You came back,” she pointed out.

“True. This is all my fault. Look, here’s a bit of the path to the stronghold.”

She hadn’t meant that it was his fault… But he wasn’t entirely wrong. She fell into step behind as he stalked down the path.

The trees arching overhead blocked most of the rain, but the understory crowded close enough to wet her skirt. The brush of the plantings released the fragrance of green growing things, and she took another happy breath. “It reminds me of the storms at home,” she said.

“The ancient progenitors who seeded the universe used many of the same building blocks,” he said. “None of us are so different.”

She wasn’t sure she could ever believe that. But shehadfucked an alien, sooooo…

While she kept waiting for lights to appear in the darkness beside their own, the path twisted onward and upward at a sharper angle until she was huffing a little despite the gravity difference.Teaching the Azthronos cook the recipe for Earther biscuits and gravy maybe hadn’t been the best idea ever. “How much farther?”

“This used to be a covered moving walkway.” His voice was far away even if his body wasn’t. “I had it installed so visitors would be treated to a small tour of my holdings.”

“Vain warlord,” she murmured.

He glanced back, and a faint grin flickered across his lips.“Yes. But I’m being taken down a notch in front of you now.”

The darkness and the storm made the path seem longer than it really was, she realized when they popped out of the forest to stare up at the castle.

Or whathad beena castle. It was ruins now.

At the sight, Tynan recoiled, his shoulder bumping her.