Page 56 of The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement
“I know she’s busy.” Raz had seen the clips from Octiron’s celebrity show, deliberately but stylishly staged and with a clear sign of his mother’s managing hand.
“So am I busy,” Nor complained. “That other Earther chit is a menace.And you should be occupied with more important matters.”
“I am.”
Those more important matters were never-ending, even though his tour of the system had given him some solid direction on mastering the duchy’s finances. He’d eaten every meal with different Azthronos interest groups, reconnecting with his people and their needs, and he thought he’d done an admirable job. Even his mother admittedas much over pixberry tea one morning—somewhat grudgingly, so he knew he must be doing well indeed. He visited the shrine of the God of Eternity where his sire and all the previous dukes were interred and he poured the traditional cup of ghost-mead into the river, wishing he might’ve had more time with the man whose footsteps he followed. He attended another ball at the estate, and an Octiron newsclip proclaimed him the galaxy’s most eligible bachelor.
Which didn’t make missing Rayna any better.
In his quarters, he kept the small icestone crystal that he’d found tucked into a fold of the crumpled cravat he’d worn to the ball. It must’ve come off her dress, miraculously surviving her dramatic public court presentation—and their later private unveiling. It was unbearably delicate betweenhis fingertips, and he feared to crush it with his wretched pawing. But it was all he had left of her.
How had she become so important to him in—cosmologically speaking—zero amount of time?
His mother asked him the same question over tea. “You gave up a space station for what?” she grumbled. “A magnanimous gesture to a pretty girl?”
“Iama noble male,” he reminded her. When she’d just fixedhim with a gimlet stare, he sighed. “And Rayna reminded me that even when you’re trapped in a situation not of your own making, what you do under duress defines who you are—and who you’ll be even after you are free.” Rayna had just wanted to get away and instead she’d become accountable for an Earth enclave in a distant galaxy. “You sent me from home to learn new ways, to take Azthronos in a newdirection. And that means not being a replica of my sire. Or of you.”
She stared down into the dark stain of the pixberries for a long moment before lifting her gaze to him. Her eyes glimmered with tears he knew she’d never shed. “I missed you while you were gone.”
“I missed you too.” He reached across their cups—one of the changes he’d like to add included Earther coffee on their morning trays—tosoften any accusation she might’ve heard in his voice.
“You were always such a good child, so clever and well-spoken, the perfect heir and future Duke of Azthronos.” She curled her lips inward. “I didn’t know you felt so trapped by our expectations.”
“By my own,” he corrected. Poor little rich boy, Rayna had teased him. “But I am still the Avatar of the God of Oaths, so believe me when I promiseyou that I am committed to our worlds and our people. Even if I did give up a space station on the edge of our system.”
“You gave up the girl too,” the dowager muttered. “What was she thinking, walking away from us?”
He leaned back in his seat. “Probably thinking she didn’t need the headache.”
His mother sniffed into her tea. “The headache is what you plead when youdon’thave a tall, virile,noble Thorkon male in his prime holding out a ring.”
He winced. “I love you too, Mother.”
He spent the rest of the day deliberately buried in reports and comms from around the system. His staff informed him that the deluge wasn’t always so severe—mostly the managers and stewards whom he’d met on his tour were eager to display their acumen—but for now he was glad of the flood that kept him preoccupied.
Otherwise, he might just storm down to the Earthers’ suite and assert his ducal prerogative to ask the question his mother had asked, with maybe a few more plaintive words thrown in.
What are you thinking, walking away from what we might have? In all the vast universe, do you think these feelings happen with just anyone?
Because he knew she’d be going soon. Nor had told him the talks were wrappingup with many petabytes of agreements having negotiated and signed. With nothing more of interest to see—and a new season of the Great Space Race to promote—the Octiron crew had already departed. Raz wondered if they’d consider a Despondent Duke as one of their Great Space Racers…
But he had promises to keep.
So he stayed at his desk long after the last of his staff had peeked in, asking if heneeded anything else—a subtle suggestion that he go away.
Go home, he told them all. No, he didn’t need anything.
Only her. And she had chosen her freedom, fair enough.
When the dat-pad screen in front of him blurred to a haze of seemingly alien symbols, he admitted defeat and rose from his desk to stretch. Wandering out to the balcony for fresh air, he leaned on the railing.
If only he hadsomeone to join him…
His office balcony overlooked the front courtyard and the long sweep of the lawn that spread farther yet to the estate valley. He tracked the winding road that led up to the mountains far away where the ducal household spent a month in the summer to relax. He’d probably not have time for that during this rotation around the sun. Anyway, it would be too much time to be alone.
He lifted his gaze to the first stars glinting in the evening sky. The slowly roiling energy of the protective dome turned all the pinpricks of light to arced traceries, as if every one was a shooting star.
Some of his reading the last few days had been about Earth, and he knew the land where the Black Hole Brides called home made wishes upon shooting stars. How sad that the Duke of Azthronoshad all the shooting stars in the heavens but couldn’t demand his one wish come true.