LUNA
Sebastian held out his arms, and I went into them willingly. The fear I felt earlier was long gone. Something between us shifted a few minutes ago, and now…
I didn’t know how I felt about Sebastian. I wasn’t scared of him. Not in the least. He promised he would never hurt me, and I believed him.
“You need to hold on,” he said, wrapping his arms around me tightly. “We’re going a little further than you’re used to. This stone comes from a tunnel that runs beneath the castle, near the outskirts of the Dead Forest.”
That sounded about as ominous as I would expect a forest surrounding a castle filled with vampires to be named.
“I won’t let go,” I assured him.
Sebastian nodded, and his wings curled around me. Comfort flooded through me as he pressed them against my back. Even the sight of the shadows swarming at his feet didn’t detract from the feeling of safety running through my body.
He pressed his lips to my hair. “Hold on, Luna. I’ve got you.”
There was a promise in his words that were far greater than this moment between us. My vampire prince would look after me, no matter what.
A tiny grain of hope sprouted within me. Maybe, despite the circumstances of our marriage, we might be able to make something together. Maybe we really could solve Julieta’s murder, find Syndra’s plant, and help my brother. Maybe we could break the Tether, and I could still have a life here in Eleyta. Maybe one day, we could be something… more.
My vampire’s shadows swirled around us both, their caress against my skin mimicking their master’s gentle embrace. The air darkened, and the ground shifted beneath us. This time, the darkness didn’t seem as bad. We moved through the shadows quickly, our feet coming to rest on uneven ground as my stomach churned. I sucked in deep breaths until my stomach settled.
“We’re here,” Sebastian said.
An icy, wintry wind went down my back as he withdrew his wings, and I turned around.
Dim purple lights illuminated a long, narrow tunnel. Barely large enough for two people to walk side-by-side, the space was clearly not built for comfort. A rustling sound came from behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. Sebastian’s wings were gone, and he handed me a lit lantern with a smile.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Lacing our fingers together, he led me down the passageway. “Transport tunnels run from Castle Sanguis to all the nearby towns. They allow us to move during the day, since the sun…”
Was the kiss of death for his kind.
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. I understood perfectly.
“That makes sense.” Pursing my lips, I looked around. “Why doesn’t everyone shadow?”
“Shadowing long distances takes a lot of power. Few vampires have the ability to do it well or reliably. Not only that, but we can only shadow walk to places we’ve been to at least once before. It isn’t an infallible method of transportation.”
I mulled over that fascinating piece of information as the tunnel widened. As soon as the space was large enough, Sebastian’s wings appeared back out of the shadows. He stretched them, sending a flicker of cool wind down my back.
“And your wings. They’re also a sign of power, right?”
Even at the ball, I hadn’t seen many other vampires with that ability.
He chuckled softly. “They are.”
Interesting.
The academic within me wanted to know how power was distributed among vampires. Why did Sebastian end up with so much more magic than others of his kind?
My mind whirled as I thought over everything I knew about the people of the north, and we fell into a comfortable silence as Sebastian led us into the earth.
“How much further are we going?” I asked after a while.
“We still have a ways to go,” Sebastian said. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the stone and turned it over in his hand. “I recognize the spot where this came from, but we can’t shadow into the majority of the tunnel. It’s too dangerous.”
My eyes flickered over the looming walls and low ceiling of the tunnel as I pressed myself closer to Sebastian. “If it’s that dangerous, should we even be down here?”