Page 75 of Misadventures with a Duke

“No.” Max lowers onto a decorative bench. He braces elbows to his knees and steeples his fingers. “It is based on the power of the force that got you here.”

I slant a quizzical look. “Fire, then? A crucible of flames?” At a village fair a few months back, Magique and I stopped to watch a troupe of traveling performers. They appeared to swallow fire and even walked across burning coals. Is that the kind of test I am to face?

“Not that.” He presses his fingers harder. Everything but his palms are touching. “The power of what’s inside your heart. Of touching another’s with it, until they declare their love for you before witnesses.”

A long pause.

And another.

Because my brother’s urbanity is going to crack any moment. And then he will confess that jibes are just another form of fraternal fun and we can return to the subject at hand.

After a minute, his game gets grueling.

To the point I realize it is not a game at all.

Fuck.

I husk the word beneath my breath. When I am done, I rake a taut hand through my hair while stabbing a stare up the alley. In the distance, a few sunbeams pierce through the last vestiges of the soggy day. For a few moments, they turn the wet pavement into colorful fire. If only they were all actually fire. A burning maze that would dazzle Kavia, even two hundred and thirty something years in the past, into changing her mind about the insane condition.

But I only stand here, as blinded as before. As blindsided as before. Having to concentrate on bringing enough air to my lungs for a miserable mutter to my brother.

“Are you certain I cannot just discover Atlantis instead?”

RAEGAN

I lean against the little kitchenette table back in our room, hoping one of my two best friends will help erase the awkward pause after the story I’ve just laid on them. Okay, not the basic plot part of the tale. The figurative crickets in the air have more to do with my crazy conclusion…which I’m desperately hoping one of them will talk me out of in some way, shape, or helpful form.

But I still get nothing but their silent blink-blinks.

I should already know better. Like the fact that neither of them are going to bullshit through an awkward moment just to make things less hinky for me.

I should also know that if the look is happening, it’ll be now. That momentary trade of their glances, silently confirming that they need to be talking about some outside help for the friend who’s been locked down for a few too many hours with a guy who just touched down from time-traveling orbit.

So maybe—hopefully—that is the only issue here. Maybe I’m just under-slumbered, oversexed, and too damn desperate to make the impossible happen.

I try to say as much by leaning back in my chair, refusing to qualify the cold dumplings on my plate as a dismal metaphor.

“You know what?” I finally mutter. “Seriously, just forget I said anyth—”

“Ohhh, no.” Allie’s the first to speak up, almost gleeful about the insistence. “No way do you get to be the one running from your De Leon when you led the mission to smuggle mine onto a trans-Atlantic flight last year.”

“You mean after she made room for him on the castle tour hop.” D’s even more eager about hopping on the memory lane tour bus. “And finagling secrets out of the new De Leons about the legends of the old ones.”

I lob a fortune cookie at her. “I seem to remember having help with that one, Mademoiselle Kidman. And now that I think about it, exactly who had the original idea about stowaway Max?”

My question seems to enter the ether as Drue extracts the fortune from her shattered cookie pieces. “Ahhh. Changing the subject is only painting the truth in a worse color.”

Allie taps her fingertips against her opposite palm as if applauding a new course during high tea at the Pembroke. “Very nice!”

“And a wasted effort.” I grab for the slip of paper, only to watch D swipe it through the leftover puddle from the dumplings I managed to get down earlier. “There’s no subject to change here, okay? Obviously Bastien was transported here by accident. Obviously it was an eleventh-hour effort to save his neck—which worked, but not because of me. His heart led the way because Max is part of his heart too. So it’s just coincidence—”

“That you look completely like the woman who was going to be his duchess?” D inserts.

“With a scar in your chest, where that same woman was daggered?” Allie concurs.

Drue tosses her head like a starlet giving sassy game face for the press corps. “As long as we’re on a roll, how about the flashbacks into a language you barely know, referencing occasions you’ve never lived?”

“Not to mention the tall, dark, and decadent detective who’s taken a keener-than-keen interest in our little Eeyore?” Allie adds, earning herself an instant blush-glower from D’s side of the exchange.