“I don’t want her at my feet,” Raz objected.
“Huh. I thought that’s what dukes wanted: the worlds at their feet.” Nor shrugged. “Well, let me know how that works for you.”
“I’m sure the scrambler will be useful.” Raz slid the device into his coat.
“I know it will, Your Grace. I meant the seduction.”
At that moment, a soft, lilting fanfaresounded from the far end of the ballroom. Raz’s stomach clenched with anticipation and unease. The Octiron crew abandoned the buffet tables and hurried toward the grand staircase. The lights in the hall dimmed except for one bright spot at the head of the stairs.
His ray of light.
She was coming. And what he wouldn’t give to have her coming again in his arms, alone together instead of here.
He cursed his mother’s decision to sell their privacy to Octiron. Worse, he hated the inherited responsibility that made him understand why she’d done it. Was it too late to grab Rayna and make a run for it? Certainly the questionable Captain Nor had an unmarked vessel hidden away somewhere, probably with a large engine and low trackable emissions. Raz held his breath, thinking of all the wondersof the universe he could share with her.
But not at the expense of his own corner of it. His gut clenched at the knowledge he would never abandon his solar system and the souls who looked to him for guidance and galactic credits.
So he stood there, his fingers clenched around the tumbler of ghost-mead until his knuckles ached.
And then she appeared at the top of the stairs.
The earliest flowerof spring on Azthronos was the lush, delicate dusty-mauve beauty called the yili, and he had to grant his mother’s virtuosity in ornamenting Rayna as one. The wide, light layers of skirts and sleeves floated on invisible anti-gravs like fragile petals, and the purplish hue of the gown brought out the deep honey-gold of her skin as if a rising sun was touching her for the first time. Smooth,clear icestone crystals were woven into the edges of the petals and… What had they done to her hair? He’d seen it tangled from her escape, sleeked from the sonic shower, and wild from the way she’d thrashed her head when he stroked her to release. But this was yet another facet of her. The brown waves were gathered high, exposing the slender column of her neck, except for a single curled tendril oneither side of her face, framing her cheeks with a braided mauve ribbon. More crystals sparkled in her hair and the ribbon as she tilted her head to survey the room below.
If it had been him up there, he knew he would’ve stumbled. It was too much: the brilliant light that still wasn’t as glaring as the focus of the whole assembly, the sudden hush among hundreds of beings that seemed to createa vacuum in the ballroom, the mortification she must be feeling knowing that everyone staring at her now had mere moments ago been speculating on her fate.
But if she had any misgivings, it didn’t show. She paused, poised as any debutante he’d had thrown at him on his tour of Azthronos, but not coy. She stood square to the light and the crowd, her head angling high again.
She took one step,and icestone sandals glinted between the shivering layers of her skirts, the heels so high his gut felt pierced by the points and by the agonized fear that she would fall.
But she took one more lilting step, and then the center panel of the stairs began to descend toward the ballroom floor, so smooth she didn’t even wobble.
Unlike his heart.
“Lady Rayna Quaye,” intoned the estate steward.“Of Earth.”
“Of Mud,” someone whispered in a sly aside. Raz overheard a few titters at the common joke at the closed-worlders’ expense. But he didn’t have time to berate—or maybe beat—the ignorant guests. He was too busy pushing forward to the base of the stairs.
As he approached—his gaze fixed unfalteringly on her—he saw the hectic flush on her cheeks wasn’t artful cosmetics but more than atouch of panic. A string of tear-shaped crystals strung along her brow glistened like water droplets and made her wide, dark eyes look fathoms deep.
He would willingly fall.
As, it seemed, would a dozen other males who jostled ahead of him to be at the foot of the descending stair when she arrived. He waited for his ducal prerogative to sink in, but they were oblivious to him, focused as theywere on the lovely Lady Rayna. So he threw an elbow at one, twisted his shoulders to pass a second, and hip-checked a third. He was first in line with the stair still a breath above him.
Rayna’s gaze met his and slayed him where he stood.
The stair touched down, and when she took her first step toward him, a hundred icestones hidden among her skirts fell to the polished stone floor and shattered.The scintillating cloud belled out from her feet, catching the lights so she seemed to be walking on a nebula.
The crowdoohed in delight, and Raz almost forgave his mother’s ruthless manipulations when Rayna’s lips twitched in amusement. The panic left her eyes, and she gave him the barest wink. Tiny crystals in her lashes winked at him too.
The nebula reached his boots as he strode forwardto take her hand.
“Lady Rayna,” he murmured. “You are indeed a ray of light.”
“Your Grace,” she murmured back. “You are so full of it.”
He quirked a grin at her, but her tease sent a shaft of lust spearing through him. He wantedherto be full, of him, and not just his one lone finger. The formal trousers cut into his groin as his flesh swelled with need for her. Fortunately, the ballistics-gradematerial restrained any obvious erection.
He lifted her hand to his lips, and the ring blazed brighter than all the icestones together, the molecular lattice inside the gem shattering and recrystallizing in time with her heartbeat. As the Eye of Zalar glinted, the crowd fell silent, then a low buzz swelled outward from their central point, like another rolling cloud of icestone dust.
