The grounds, however, were nothing compared to the looming structure that grew larger the closer they came. A chateau, he had called it. Had he not, she would have thought the massive place was a castle.
Yet, as magnificent as it all was, her attention was snared by the number of guards stationed around the property. All of them were in dark gear with assault rifles strapped across their backs.
There were four that she could see, all wearing intricately detailed masks.
One was gunmetal gray with dark eye sockets, but nothing where the mouth should have been—to see, but not be heard. Another was painted to resemble a melting skull. The third was plain black, but there were words scrawled in white along the top of it—iarta-ma—and the last only had a rather wide smiling mouth drawn on it.
Seeing them waiting there, Luna wondered just who Uilleam was, and who he was expecting to come after him to hire men like these.
Once they finally slowed to a stop, the door to the car was opened, a hand popping in to assist her out. Uilleam wasn’t far behind.
She followed the man in front of her across the drive, and up the sandstone staircase toward heavy oak doors that made up the front entrance. Uilleam pushed both open as he entered, sunlight spilling into the foyer where a chandelier that was twice the size of any one she had ever seen glittered with the reflecting light.
It was amazing, but so had Lawrence’s home—though that place did pale in comparison to this one.
Uilleam didn’t allow her a chance to properly take it all in, rather showing her down a seemingly never ending hallway to a room with a blue door.
Once inside, he said, “Bathroom is through there,”—he pointed to another closed door on the other end of the room—“I’ll ensure you have everything you need before I leave, but should you require anything else, ask for Kit.”
Wait … “You’re leaving?” she asked, not quite understanding.
“I can never stay too long here,” he said by way of explanation, as though that answer explained everything.
If anything, it only raised more questions.
One of the guards she’d seen outside appeared in the doorway, words that she didn’t understand flying out of his mouth. With only a nod in her direction, Uilleam followed after him, closing the door behind them.
What the hell was going on?
She thought she understood what was happening here, but it was clear she didn’t.
Taking the time to look around while she still could, the room didn’t disappoint.
There was a large four-poster bed in the center of the room, the sheer drapes surrounding it tumbling down onto the floor, hooked behind small handles to give a proper view of the bed.
Everything about the space felt light, airy, thanks to the light shades of gray coupled with the white. Even the floors, a polished concrete, added to the beauty of it all.
It was obvious that someone had taken time to restore some of the original architecture, and while the space wasn’t completely modern, it didn’t have the heavy feel of a room from earlier centuries.
Luna explored every inch of it, even venturing out onto the vine covered balcony. She wasn’t far from the ground, and with some careful maneuvering, she could have easily reached the ground, but the slight weight of the tracker Uilleam had strapped to her leg banished the thought for the time being.
When there was nothing more to see, she looked back toward the door Uilleam had walked out of mere minutes before. He had said she was free to walk around, to do as she pleased really, but only to an extent.
It may have ben pretty, the room he’d given her but it was still a prison.
Quietly stepping out of the bedroom, her eyes scanned the lengthy hallway, taking everything in. She could hear voices coming from her right, too high to be the Kingmaker’s low timbre.
She started down the opposite direction instead.
There was so much to see that she hadn’t noticed the first time she’d walked these halls when Uilleam brought her in.
Paintings in gilded frames lined the walls, portraits of sharply dressed men and women in elegant gowns depicted within their paint.
As she neared the end of the hall where it opened into the grand foyer, she noticed that there was a portrait missing from the wall—a void from where it should have been outlining its former position. It had to have been moved recently due to the variance in the color of the wall.
The one beside it, however, caught her attention as well. The individual depicted was decades younger than the others hanging alongside him.
And he also looked … kinder.
“Hello.”
Luna nearly jumped a foot in the air as she spun to face the owner of that accented voice who was suddenly standing at her back. He moved nearly as quietly as Dominic.