Trixie squinted. “I’m not sure…”
“Aaaaand that right there’s the problem.”
Redirecting her focus to breakfast, Trixie stabbed her spork—Thorkons had a more elegant word for their all-purpose eating utensil, but basically it was a spork—into the biscuit with maybe more force than was absolutely necessary. “No problems here,” she said defensively. “I talkedto Doctor Boshil, and I’m fine.”
“Oh, I know how to fool people too, baby girl.” Lishelle gave her an arch glance. “But we never talk about our lives before this, not even you and me and Rayna.”
Trixie pushed her plate away. “Because our lives before don’t matter anymore, do they?”
“Exactly,” Lishelle said triumphantly. “We have the whole universe ahead of us now, literally. We need to thinkbigger.”
Bigger than what? Trixie stared at the mashed remains of her biscuit. She didn’t talk about her past because she was embarrassed by it, and whatever Lishelle’s reasons were for keeping quiet, probably her secret thoughts were similar. Happy people were always thrilled to talk about how happy they were.
Still, she was cautiously interested. Biggerthanwhat didn’t matter anymore. But…“Biggerlikewhat?”
Lishelle tapped the dat-pad. “Since Rayna and her sugar duke are away touring the kingdom, I’ve been doing some reading about Earth’s place in the universe. They call us closed-worlders, but basically they take whatever they want.” She scowled. “Like, where have I seenthatbefore? Seems like they’re not so advanced as they’d have us believe.”
Remembering how Nor had kissed…That had not been advanced or high tech or alien at all.
Lishelle was still talking and Trixie forced herself to focus.
“…So before Rayna gets back, I think we need to decide what it is we want to do next,” Lishelle finished.
Couldn’t they just stay here? The estate was basically a fortress, a beautiful fortress, yeah, but the defenses were obvious and fearsome. And now they had biscuits andgravy.
Plus, the Black Hole Brides (ugh) owned the space station on the edge of Azthronos territory, a resource they were rebuilding into an investment plan for their futures. So they had to be close by—but nottooclose, obviously, what with the nearby singularity being the nightmare-inducing hellhole of their abduction, not to mention a sucking void of death.
Even as she dithered, Trixieknew Lishelle was right. They had to look forward, not back.
“So what are you going to do?” She helped herself to the pixberry tea from one of the beautiful decorative pots dotted along the table.
It was Lishelle’s turn to sit back awkwardly, her fingertips drumming on the dat-pad. “I’m still reading.”
Lishelle had been reading a lot, but Trixie just nodded, not inclined to tease. She knewhow easy it was towantto do something more…and yet not be sure what that would look like, exactly.
It was as easy to hide in a book as in a bedroom.
“I’ll think about it,” she promised. Luckily, Rayna’s tour of the Azthronos system was going to take awhile, so they didn’t have to make any decisions right away. In the meantime, maybe she’d help Lishelle find some Earth recipes for Cook—
The dat-pad under Lishelle’s palm chimed a soft alert, and she glanced down at it with a frown. “I have a couple searches running, so let’s see…” She scanned the surface.
And the rich, dark tone of her skin blanched ashen.
“No.” She jolted to her feet, jostling the big table hard enough that her delicate coffee cup tipped. The other diners swiveled to stare at her.
Trixie reached for the otherwoman’s hand. “Shel, what’s wrong?” The quiver of the fingers twined in hers made her heart shiver too.
Lishelle’s shock-widened gaze was fixed on the dat-pad, but no answer emerged from her parted lips.
Trixie tugged the pad toward her, spinning it around to read through the wash of spilled coffee. Down the table, one of the other diners who’d been perusing his own dat-pad gasped aloud andexclaimed to his companions, who all looked at Lishelle and Trixie again.
“He escaped,” Lishelle said in a strangled whisper.
Trixie didn’t need a universal translator to understand her friend or the aliens across the breakfast table or the incomprehensible gibberish on the dat-pad.
Blackworm, the monster who’d taken them from Earth and held them captive on the edge of a black hole, was loose.
