Page 53 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
“Ghosts,” she whispered. “That’s all it would be.”
“No!” He swept his hand violently through the hologram, as if he intended to reach inside it and pullout…whatever he sought. “Once safely on this side of the event horizon, the quantum uncertainty would resolve itself. The virtual particles would become reality. What was lost would be regained.”
He was insane… Wasn’t he? She knew the Thorkons had a god for every occasion. Rayna’s Raz wasn’t just a duke, he was an avatar for the God of Oaths, and at the estate on Azthronos she’d seen statuaryfor dozens and dozens more gods and heard their names invoked for everything from winning at games of chance to drinking toasts. But to think that their gods were real and living on the other side of a wormhole with the Earth women Blackworm had sent as emissaries…
“Who did you lose?” she asked quietly.
His head was held at such a high, stiff angle, she thought he might break. Instead, he twistedto look away from her. At what, she couldn’t tell.
His answer was quieter than her question. “My consort. I could not take her to wed because she was not titled. But she was the only one who…” He let out a shuddering breath. “I swore I would never let her go.”
Trixie stared at the profile of his averted face. The anguish was real, and the sorrow—nothing virtual or uncertain here. At this angle,pain creased his face like a dead moon bombarded to the verge of cracking. But knowing how he’d treated the Black Hole Brides, what he was planning on doing toher, she wondered about the consort.
Had that unnamed woman escaped him the only way she could?
“Even if a few particles return,” she said with as much gentleness as she could muster for a madman, “it wouldn’t be your lost love.”
Slowly,he raised his head, and despite her earlier recklessness, she fought a shiver.
If anybody wasn’t all here, it was Blackworm.
He resumed his thoughtful, commanding stance with his hands behind his back. “Do you know why I chose females who’d registered with the Intergalactic Dating Agency?”
She forced herself not to roll her eyes. “Because they’d already been vetted for leaving Earth and noone would miss them when they were gone?”
“That,” he acknowledged. “And because they’d already shown themselves committed to finding love, however far away it might be.”
Not on the other side of a black hole, she wanted to scream. She swallowed hard. “I never signed up with the IDA. I lived in Sunset Falls where the Big Sky outpost was, but I didn’t even know it existed.”
He pursed his lips,and for half a second, her heart stopped as she wondered if he might be swayed.
With a tilt of his head, he asked, “Do you want to find love?”
In the second half of the hesitation, her heart finished its beat.
And she thought of Nor.
“Yes,” Blackworm said with satisfaction. “Ignorant closed-worlder you might be, but you do understand.”
He reached out and grabbed her arm. Ignoring her sharpcry, he wrenched her forward into the whirl of the black hole. She cringed, as if that current of light might rip her apart, but the harmless photons of the holographic projection just beamed beatifically on her skin, like party glitter.
“I sent the others, and now you, to find the God of Eternity and the God of the Beloved on the other side, to petition the return of my consort.” He loomed overher, the obsession in his eyes brighter than the reflected stars. “I know I am close. Once enough of you have gone and been blessed, the virtual particles on this side of the event horizon will be sufficient to reanimatemybeloved.”
Trixie wanted to laugh, albeit hysterically. As if zombies and ghosts weren’t bad enough, Blackworm was actually hoping to create a zombie patchwork-particle Brideof fucking Frankenstein ghost.
Gifted to him from the gods of Thorkon.
That last part sobered her. She’d prayed more than once in her life, and meant every word.
Blackworm was insane, but… Maybe she did understand him a little.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
His grip on her arm drove muscle into bone, hard enough to bruise. “Your keenest scientists couldn’t do my math. How couldyouknow differently?”
“I know the gods don’t answer cowards and unbelievers.” She stared up at him harder than he was holding her. “If you want your beloved, go after her yourself.”
His upper lip curled back, flashing white teeth in his anger, but he didn’t answer, only slung her out of the hologram.
