Page 43 of Tethered
LUNA
“What do you mean, Tristan?” Sebastian asked. His voice was as bitter as the air in this castle as he spoke to someone in the hallway. “How in the seven circles of hell can Ciro be ‘gone’? The priest is nearly six hundred years old! People like that don’t just disappear into thin air.”
A mumbled response came from the guard. Try as I might, I could not hear what he said. It didn’t seem to matter, because seconds later, Sebastian turned around.
His brows furrowed, and he scowled as he reached behind him, grabbing my hand. “Come on, Luna,” he said, pulling me down the hall. “We have to go.”
His legs were twice the size of mine and I struggled to keep up as he walked hurriedly down the halls.
“Where are we going?” I stumbled behind him.
My slippers slapped on the cold stone floor as I rushed to keep up. He didn’t reply, instead picking up the pace and pulling me past a slack-jawed servant who watched us turn the corner.
“Sebastian!” I shouted, trying to yank my hand out of his. “You promised to explain the Tether!”
“I will,” he said, speed-walking around a corner. “But something has come up.”
My heart pounded as we hurried down a chilly hallway, and I shivered. Sebastian didn’t even seem to notice that he was moving far more quickly than me.
I panted, “Can you at least slow down?”
“No time,” he said, yanking me into a tight stone stairwell. His wings brushed against the walls, and my breaths grew heavier as we hurried down a flight of stairs, but he didn’t seem to notice.
When we stepped out into a stone hallway covered in dark red carpets and black tapestries, I was downright running as I rushed after the long-legged prince. The interior decorator for this wing of the castle had never heard of springtime colors, of that, I was certain.
“Why aren’t we doing that shadow thing you do?” I asked after we hurried down a dark set of stairs before entering yet another deserted hallway. “Why walk?”
Sebastian looked over his shoulder, tightening his grip on my hand before he pulled me into a shadowy alcove. His black eyes gleamed as he looked down at me.
My body, the treacherous thing that it was, didn’t seem to understand that I was in this marriage against my will. Nor did it care that Sebastian accused me of trying to kill him earlier this evening. All it cared about was the handsome curve of the prince’s cheekbones and the way his hair was tousled in the perfect manner.
He must have noticed where my attention had gone because he smirked. “We are running, Princess, because someone Tethered us without our permission and now they’re missing. We are going to see my mother because she needs to know.”
There was that word again. Tethered. I still did not know what that meant.
“I see.” Frowning, I studied him. “And we aren’t shadowing because…”
“Because even I am not fool enough to shadow into the queen’s presence without warning. She has dozens of wards around her at all times, and surprising her would not be a good idea.”
“That makes sense,” I conceded. “Can you at least explain what being Tethered means now?”
“No,” he said, pulling me back into the hallway and speed-walking once more. “Not yet.”
Apparently, that was all he was willing to say, because he stopped speaking altogether as he continued to lead me through darkened corridors.
Finally, Sebastian came to a stop in front of a black door engraved with a silver crown. Two vampires were standing guard, but the moment they saw us, they dipped their heads and disappeared into the shadows.
Sebastian turned to me, raising a brow. “If you value your life, Luna, you’ll hold your tongue in here.”
I narrowed my eyes and clenched my hands into fists. “I’ve had a night from hell, and now you want me to hold my tongue?”
The vampire prince glared at me, as if to say,not now, and his wings snapped behind him as he pushed the door open. I caught sight of several bookshelves, and a desk covered in papers. Sebastian gripped my hand tightly and his wings curled behind me as he pulled me into the room.
Once the door shut, all I could do was focus on breathing. Queen Marguerite stood in the middle of the study, her lips pursed as she flipped through a book.
Up close, the vampire queen was breathtakingly beautiful. An ornate black silk headband held her hair away from her face, and she wore a tight, form-fitting gown of the same material. A bright red ruby hung between her breasts, the same color as her lips. Purple lights flickered in orbs on the walls, and snow battered a trio of moonlit windows.
NowI understood why Sebastian did not want me to speak. Violence emanated off the royal, and despite the fact that Queen Marguerite appeared to be no older than thirty in human years—they all did—I knew she had lived for centuries. She could probably kill me in the blink of an eye before going back to her reading as though nothing had happened.
