Luna shook her head, her eyes still glued to the door.
“No,” she said slowly. “But we are going to do this. We need to do this.” Lifting her chin, she turned to me. She barely made it halfway up my chest, but her voice was strong and laced with authority when she said, “Shadow us in.”
She was brave, this wife of mine. Far braver than I had ever thought a human would be.
I couldn’t deny it any longer. The feelings I had for her weren’t those of just a companion or an ally. I liked her. A lot. Far more than I had ever liked anyone else in my entire existence. Even Athena, gods be with her soul, didn’t make me feel this way.
This specific turn of events was one I would never have anticipated, but now, every single thought and action of mine revolved around Luna. Waking and sleeping, she was all I could think about.
I needed to keep her safe. Not just because of Keven’s vision, but because she was my… everything.
If she died, I thought I would probably survive—the Binding Ceremony was created to allow the weaker of the partners to draw strength and life from the stronger one—but that wasn’t the point. Life wouldn’t be worth living without this fascinating human in it.
Whether she liked it or not, Luna was mine. I would destroy anyone who dared even think about harming her.
The moment I said those vows and Bound myself to Luna, her problems became my problems. Her enemies were now my enemies. Even if we broke the Tether, I would always keep her safe.
“Sebastian?” Luna’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “Are you going to bring us in?”
I blinked, shaking my head as I pulled myself back to the present. “Yes. Hold on.”
Drawing on the darkness in my veins, I moved us into the room. Barely a second passed before the shadows deposited us in the middle of the bedroom. Luna’s grip on my hand tightened, and I drew my dark power back into myself.
“It’s so… empty,” she said.
A servant had stripped the four-poster bed, and the broken furniture and glass were gone. The blood stains on the walls were gone, but a faint sheen of red remained. All that was left was the bare mattress on the empty bed.
The broken window was boarded up, and the chill in the air was obvious even to me. It did nothing to remove the stink of fear and death. A shudder ran through me. This could have been Luna.
My hand moved of its own accord to her shoulder, pulling her against me as we both stared at the room. I didn’t know if it was the Tether or something else entirely, but I had an intrinsic need to keep her as close to me as possible.
“I… I don’t know where to start.” A strange, disbelieving laugh escaped Luna as she turned in a slow circle. “How does one go about catching a killer?”
There were many ways, and I was well-versed in nearly all of them. It was a side-effect of being an instrument of death and destruction. However, most of my methods were unpleasant, to say the least, and I would not risk getting Luna involved in anything dangerous.
Thankfully, one of the side effects of our Tethering was that, at least for now, the queen did not have any of her special projects for me.
She had others at her disposal, of course. Vampires who were, if not as skilled as I was, at least adequate tools of destruction. None of them were as strong as me or came close to rivaling the power running through my veins.
For now, Luna and I would stick with the safest option.
“We should look for a clue,” I said.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
Rubbing a hand across the back of my neck, I sighed. “We need to see if we can find something that is strange, or out of place. Is that… do you want to wait while I search?”
She shook her head. “No. I need to do this. Julieta was practically my sister. From the moment my first stepmother died, she was by my side. I can’t abandon her in this. It wouldn’t be right.”
There was so much to unpack in that sentence, so much hidden pain, that for a moment, all I could do was suck in a breath. “I’m sure Julieta would be happy to know that you’re looking into her death,” I said softly.
“I hope so,” Luna whispered, wrapping her arms around herself as she took a step back and pressed herself against me.
“I know so.” Something within me compelled me to move, and I bent, brushing my lips over Luna’s hair.
That was my mistake.
The scent of golden wheat flooded through me, and my entire body tightened. The hunger that had been a mere inconvenience minutes ago woke with aroar. Like a child demanding to be heard, it howled, roaring through my veins.