Page 42 of The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight
She grabbed one of the bottles of ghost-mead and popped the seal to take a swig, washing down her urge to bawl.
Tynan, sitting on a beautifully embroidered shawl next to the throne with his elbow on the seat, gave her a slightly scandalized look that she was stealing from the offerings.
She shrugged. “I don’t think the god will mind.”
He held out one handimperiously.
Picking her way between the gifts up the shallow stairs to his side, she passed over the bottle. He tipped it back for a long moment, his throat working. When he finally lowered it, letting out a gasp, she smelled the burn of the alcohol on his breath.
His eyes watered as he spun the bottle in his hand to read the label. “Last century was a good year, apparently.”
She swallowed,tasting the fire that hadn’t been extinguished despite the passage of time. “Very good.”
He gazed around them at the gifts, then lifted his eyes higher to the hall itself. “I can’t believe they come here, to this abandoned place.”
“Love is strange.” She perched on the edge of the step, one down from him. “It’s pretty far out of the way, but it has a certain…mystique to it.”
He quirked one eyebrowat her. “I think you mean musty, not mystique.”
“No. That hole in the ceiling keeps the fresh air coming.” She leaned back on her elbow and gestured at the bottle he was still clutching.
Handing it over, he revealed one last data cube in his lap. “This one is too old and won’t play.” He rolled the small device between his fingers, his expression pensive.
She took another drink to drown thedesire to console him. “It’s probably just more of the same.”
“And yet every one is different.” Setting the cube aside, he held up a small trio of dolls, linked by their arms into a set, and grimaced. “The goddesses who smote me must be laughing to see how far I’ve fallen.”
“Or maybe they wanted you to see that your fate wasn’t for nothing.” She gestured with the bottle. “All these people findtheir way here to celebrate or mourn their beloveds, seeking hope that this one is the right one, whatever. As legacies go, it’s not bad.”
Tynan set aside the goddess dolls, staring at her. “Since when is the blaster-stealing Lady Lishelle a romantic?”
She flushed; probably just the heat of the ghost-mead in her cheeks. “A girl can be a dreameranddeadly.”
Leaning forward, he plucked the bottlefrom her slack fingers and waggled it at her. The much reduced level gurgled like a laugh. “What do you dream of?”
She wanted to grab the bottle back from him again, but that might look desperate. Instead, she picked up the dolls and combed her fingers through their artificial hair. The alternating textures—one silky, one curly, one coarse—took the edge off her agitation. “Ihadthe dream. Theperfect husband, the perfect job, the perfect life. Everything they tell you to dream of.”
“That was before,” he pointed out gently.
And over even before that. Somehow, between then and now, she’d forgotten how to dream. She looked down at her clenched fingers in her lap, even more entangled than the goddess dolls’ looped arms. “I was the first one Rayna woke on the station. That’s why I’llbecome primary holder of the station salvage rights after she marries her duke. But sometimes…”
He waited, but when she didn’t go on, he prodded, “Sometimes?”
“Maybe it would’ve been easier to stay asleep,” she blurted. “In the stasis pod, I didn’t have to dream.”
She flinched at her own words. How weak was she to admit how tired she’d been—tired of showing how she’d worked so hard to “makesomething” of herself. As if she hadn’t alreadybeensomething. Getting divorced and then having her colleagues and friends shrug because everybody got divorced eventually had been the wake-up call she’d needed that sheneededsomething else. She’d gone to Sunset Falls hoping it would be a reset button. Ha!
When Tynan curled his hand at her nape under the silk scarf around her hair, she stiffenedfor a heartbeat, then sighed and yielded to his grip, tilting her head back to meet his gaze.
“You can’t live asleep,” he pointed out, his fingers flexing gently.
“Says the guy who was some sort of incorporeal interdimensional divine being on the other end of a wormhole,” she grumbled.
His lips curled, not so much beatific as impish. “And even I was summoned forth by the power of love gatheringjust beyond my event horizon.”
Part of her—the tough part that she’d showed the world, meaning Earth, when her career and marriage faltered—wanted to scoff at the notion. Love wasn’t a force like gravity or electromagnetism. And yet… She remembered when every new book she read felt like an opening door, and every dorm-room argument seemed fresh and brilliant and life-altering.
Maybe she didn’tneed a new dream; she just had to remember the excited girl she’d been.