Page 41 of The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight
She reached out a steadying hand to his elbow. “It’s…big.”
“It’s destroyed,” he saidflatly.
In the crumbled remains, the outlines of archetypal Thorkon architecture were still visible, maybe with a few more primitive decorative flourishes than the ducal estate where Raz and Rayna lived on Azthronos Prime. The towers were asymmetrical, one shattered in half, one missing entirely, and the surrounding wall gaped with holes. If it had ever had a protective shield as the ducal estatedid, that technology had long ago failed.
“We should go back to the shuttle,” Tynan said.
When he whirled around to leave, she stopped him, tugging at his elbow. “We came this far.” With his dat-pad light pointed away from the ruins, her eyes picked out a faint glow. “Look. There’s a light inside.”
“Probably the goddesses, lurking, waiting to see if I came back after they razed the place.”
“It’s not razed,” Lishelle protested. “It’s just…distressed.”
From the tension in his arm as she tugged again, she knewhewas distressed. But he yielded to her lesser weight.
Whether it was vengeful divinities or just the ravages of time, the castle had definitely seen better days. Better aeons, actually. They passed through the open gate—open because the gate was long gone—and as they enteredthe courtyard, the rain stopped.
Lishelle glanced up as the light of three moons peeked between the clouds, casting shadows in all directions. “The storm’s over.”
“The goddesses,” Tynan said tersely. “Wanting me to see the ruin they left for me.”
She held back her opinion that, goddesses or no, if there’d been no one to take care of the castle and property, it would’ve decayed. The jungle onthis warm, wet planet seemed hungry indeed. She gave him another tug. Between the coffee and the nap, she was wide awake and ready to explore.
“C’mon. Let’s see what’s inside.”
Maybe seeing inside the castle would tell her a little more about what was inside him…
Wait, she didn’t need insights into the God of Beloveds. Where would that get her? It had gotten her abducted to this little inwardworld on a stormy night, is where it had gotten her.
She snorted, although maybe that was the dust as they shouldered through the huge front portal and stepped inside the castle.
The great hall where they entered was in better shape than the outside implied. The plastcrete walls arched upward to transparent steel diamond panes overhead. Most of those windows had held up, although one empty framehad allowed the jungle to send questing viney fingers inside. Leaves had blown in on this and other blustery nights, sorting themselves into various sized drifts in the corners and gathering at the bases of the towering columns that marched deeper into the hall to frame an elevated dais.
“That is where I held court,” Tynan said.
Moonlight and three shadows each followed them across the floorwhile they walked toward the dais. As they approached, the shadows fell away, and the glow she’d seen from outside overtook the light of the three moons.
“Someone has been here.” She nudged the blaster into his hand. “Maybe you should carry this.”
“Whoever came here wasn’t looking for trouble.” He holstered the weapon at his thigh. “It’s a shrine.”
Small solar lanterns were dotted around thegiant seat carved from stone and metal—throne, there was no other word for it. Overflowing the curving seat and arms and spilling across the dais was an abundance of gifts: food pouches, large bottles of Thorkon liquor and smaller bottles and jars of unknown substances, statuettes of humanoid figures and more animalistic shapes, including a mishkeet or two, and many, many data cubes.
They walkedalong the lower step of the dais, peering at the offerings. Finally, Tynan knelt at the edge and tapped one of the cubes.
“Hear me, God of Beloveds. I have found my heart…”
The speaker never said his name or the name of his heart, but his yearning poured from the cube, filling the silence of the great hall with emotion like the reflected light of another moon. When the recording ended, Tynantouched another cube.
“Thank you, Lord Tynan. My wedding is tomorrow…” Pure joy.
Another cube played only sorrow. “How do I live without him…”
Lishelle watched while he activated them all. Some of the more expensive models projected holo-vids, showing couples dancing or laughing or, sometimes, doing more intimate things that probably even a god didn’t need to witness. Some messages were decidedlyold-school, written out in blocky Thorkon calligraphy. One was even carved on what looked like a block of marble. Her universal translator provided the meaning of the word etched into the stone and highlighted by little flecks of moss and lichens—
Love.
Her eyes prickled at the overwhelming flood of need, desire, happiness, contentment, longing, loss—all the endless cycles and individual trajectoriesthat had ended up in this one place.