The tether pulled.
Selena felt it first as a gentle tug, then as increasing insistence, then as something close to pain radiating from her spine where the throne had fused bone to bone, marrow to essence, structure to self. She'd strayed too far from her seat—had climbed the citadel's stairs toward the altar, had encountered Abyssal, had been consumed nearly to nothing by the Hollow's silence. And now the throne wanted her back.
"No," she said, gripping the bloodstone railing with marked hands that bled fresh blood from the pressure. "I'm not done here. I haven't decided about the altar. I haven't—"
The tether yanked.
Not physically—though there was physical component to it, sensation of being pulled that transcended mere metaphor. But more fundamentally than that, the throne was asserting its claim on her, reminding her that she'd been allowed to wander but never to truly leave, that mobility within the realm wasn't the same as freedom from the seat that defined her authority.
