And it hadn’t been her. After all her post-doc work on grit and achievement, she hadn’t gotten dirty like Rayna. She hadn’t stuffed Blackworm into the black hole like Trixie. She hadn’t even gone back to Earth like the other two Black Hole Brides who’d been rescued by the Duke of Azthronos justa couple months ago. She was just…stuck in limbo.
She might as well have let Blackworm send her over that event horizon for all the good she was doing.
“…And the streamers really look beautiful,” Rayna was saying.
Lishelle grimaced. Riiiiight, so at least she could hang streamers. And she was fabulous at that job because she was tall. Good thing she’d put in all those years of schooling andcareer and alien abduction.
She refocused on her friend. “Let’s do our Earth girls’ night out tonight.” Or today or later, or whatever reference to time made sense under the brooding radiant eye of the singularity.
Rayna brushed at her clothes again. “Oh, can’t tonight. Raz and Nor are bringing another delivery, and they asked me and Trixie for help unloading. You should come. Not to work oranything, just hang out.”
Ugh. The only thing worse than being a third wheel to a lovingly engaged couple was being fifth wheel to two lovingly engaged couples. Mousy little Trixie had decided she wanted the sexy, swaggering spaceship captain (well, not captain anymore since Nor and Trixie had remote-controlled the duchy’s flagship dreadnaught right into the black hole to prevent an attack onthe ducal homeworld) and while they’d decided on a longer engagement so as not to compete with the noble wedding, they were stillveryloving. In front of everyone. All the time.
Ugh.
Even as she heard that cranky inner voice, Lishelle wanted to gag herself in purple bunting. Since when was she the sourpuss spinster aunt making disapproving duck lips at everyone else’s happiness?
“Sounds good,”she forced herself to say. “Just message me the time and place. Now, you go get cleaned up before your sugar duke comes back.”
Rayna reached in for a phantom hug, giggling again at Lishelle’s pantomimed shooing to protect her gown.
When one of the estate staffers balanced on an anti-grav unit with ribbons in hand called out for her opinion, Lishelle turned away from Rayna with relief. Was decorating,dancing attendance, and disapproving all she was going to be good for? How depressing. But at least she wasn’t dead.
She finished helping hang the non-perishable decorations. The yili flowers that were native to Azthronos, along with the spring crocuses that had been brought from Earth, would all be force-bloomed for the ceremony. The dowager duchess had insisted on the purple color scheme tooffset Rayna’s dark gold looks while Raz would be in the royal blue of Azthronos nobility. Lots of bold beautiful color, though Rayna hadn’t seemed to care at all, too enamored with her handsome fiancé to be distracted by minor details like wedding colors or decorations.
Or the fact that the groom was an alien.
Since both yilis and crocuses were some of the first flowers of spring on both worlds,it seemed appropriate to feature them in the first wedding between an Azthronos noble and a commoner—not just a commoner but a closed-world Earther. Rayna had told Lishelle and Trixie that she wasn’t going to argue over the details when she was already destroying Thorkon tradition by marrying so far out of her league. Like, lightyears out of her league.
By Thorkon salvage law, the chance thatshe’d awakened first from Blackworm’s stasis pods meant that she was considered primary beneficiary of the space station and bequeathed the honorary status of lady. Since Lishelle had been awakened second, she was like the Black Hole Bridesmaid of Honor. If the station became the success they hoped it would, she would be well repaid for the various horrors she’d endured, and once Rayna took herposition as duchess, her secondary status as lady would pass down to Lishelle.
Which seemed as pretentious and arbitrary as hell, but she supposed she didn’t have the historical background to argue. And anyway, since she’d rejected the opportunity to go back to Earth, the station was the only thing supporting her now. She was literally and figuratively poised above the void.
It was just easiernot to think about all that as she unspooled purple and lavender metallic ribbon through the corridors of the space station.
When Rayna sent her a message to meet them at landing bay four, Lishelle waved to the rest of the estate staff and headed off to join her friends.
Even though the ducal estate had sent over much of its staff to prepare the station for the wedding, the place was huge andthe halls still mostly empty. Other than the purple decorations. Lishelle found herself glancing warily over her shoulder when the ring of footsteps repeated behind her.
Heartbeat stuttering, she paused.
And so did the footsteps.
Oh duh. It was just an echo. Except…
She was wearing the slippers that Thorkons preferred for casual wear with their gowns and robes, and the soft soles barely madea sound on the hard deck plating when she walked.
She brushed her suddenly sweat-dampened palms down the front of her gown. If only she could swipe away her shivers as easily as the tiny flecks of purple lint that poofed up in a faint, shimmery cloud.
The almost imperceptible haze of lavender eddied and shredded around her, as if an invisible hand had torn through it. And she shivered again.
Probably just a breeze from the ventilation system. Since the station had been in hibernation mode at the time of the rescue, technicians from Azthronos had been running all sorts of diagnostic tests, ramping up in preparation for the hundreds of guests, family, dignitaries, media, and potential investors that had been invited to the wedding. There’d been a few spooky moments when all the lightshad gone out—except the starlight, of course.
The thought of the fragile nature of life support on a space station gave her one more shiver. Had the temperature dropped? What if the station was venting atmosphere?
Surely there’d be an alarm. Although considering all the tests, what if something got accidentally turned off? What if—?
Nope. She wasn’t going to entertain that anxiety spiral, whichcould only lead to bad things, like the black hole sucked all light and matter into its quantum pie-hole. She’d been reading a lot—it was her favorite pastime before and since the rescue—and apparently her imagination wanted to mess with her.
