Page 31 of The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement
But now, as the main city of Azthronos loomed, she desperately wanted to see him. Even though she suspected Trixie was right: she shouldn’t indulge her own weakness. Raz had saved her once andshe shouldn’t—couldn’t—expect more from him.
Landing was smooth. Disembarking was strangely anticlimactic, like leaving a cruise ship. Getting whisked away to the Azthronos estate in a giant hovercraft was controlled chaos. And through it all…
No Raz.
They arrived at the ducal estate in darkness.
“At least we can tell day from night now,” Trixie said.
Lishelle peered out the tinted windowbefore sitting back with a snort. “Can’t hardly tell anything else though.”
Rayna watched them both thoughtfully. “Have you decided what you’re going to do once you talk to the envoy?” She told them about her sister being instrumental in finding the data that had led to tracking down the space station, but neither of them had been forthcoming about their experiences before Blackworm.
Maybethey were all weighing the meaning of memory and the relief of forgetting.
Lishelle just shrugged. “I guess I’ll see what happens.”
“When wecansee,” Trixie added.
And then the estate finally appeared.
“Mercy.” Lishelle whistled.
“It’s like a fairy tale castle,” Trixie said.
No wonder Raz hadn’t bothered pursuing her when she told him wait, not yet. He hadthiswaiting for him.
Rayna scrunchedher nose, as if she smelled something bad but really to keep the prickle in her eyes from becoming something worse. Like tears.
Not that she regretted not fucking a duke when she had the chance, but because she thought the lonely little alien boy who grew up into a sexy, charming savior would now be swallowed by the arrogance and accountability embodied in the estate below.
Huge double doorsswung open, and the hovercraft dropped toward the landing pad while her heart dropped too.
Rayna descended the gangway into an expansive courtyard with Lishelle beside her while Trixie hung back uncertainly beside the two stasis pods containing Carmen and Anne.
“Incredible,” Rayna muttered as she gazed around the yard lit to almost daylight brightness with illuminated round globes of varioussizes embedded among intricately sculpted greenery. It was like the Gardens of Versailles imagined by a computer programmer blowing bubbles.
“Incredible as in can’t believe it,” Lishelle agreed under her breath.
A wide white carpet spread from the bottom of the gangway across the courtyard to a fan of shallow steps leading up to the center block of a triptych castle. The two wings on eitherside swept down elegantly while the center soared up toward the dark sky, its pinnacles lit from below to blazing white.
“Too late to go back to sleep,” Trixie said from behind them.
Rayna gave herself a shake. “Just…pretend you are meeting the mayor of the city after you saved a cat stuck in a tree.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lishelle grumbled.
“Oh, and this does?” Rayna marched forward.
“Good point.”
They climbed the steps, the stasis pods floating behind them with a couple of medics in attendance. When they were almost at the top, a tall, powerful presence loomed at Rayna’s shoulder.
She glanced over, a silly smile threatening… Only to see theGrandiloquence’s captain, in the flesh.
His wasn’t the flesh she’d daydreamed of.
Maybe he saw something in her disappointed expressionbecause he snorted. “You think you know what you want,” he said in a low voice. “But that up there is the dowager duchess, and she was born and raised to care only about the good of her realm.”