Tethered Souls Teaser Snippet

As some of you might already know, we had to cancel our preorder for Tethered Souls as there was no way we were going to be able to reach the deadline that was set (May 26th). Amazon wouldn't let us push it out farther, so we had no other choice. But it's still coming! We're working on the climax now, so the first draft is nearly done. This book is going to be thick. It will definitely be releasing in June though, so the wait won't be too much longer. But for now...

Here is a little unedited snippet from Tethered Souls for you guys! Just ignore the 'WHATEVER' and 'OTHERTHING' as they are placeholders until we can figure out some food name for them, lol.
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“Allow us to present your meal.” Kier leaned forward, grasping the makeshift lids on two of the four trays, but he did not lift them away immediately. After a few moments of remaining in that position, he cleared his throat and shot a glare at his brother.

Kayl grunted, lips dropping into that slight frown that seemed to be his default expression, and took hold of the other two makeshift lids.

“We took the liberty of preparing the finest foods in our stores,” Kier said.

“By preparing, he means rehydrating,” Kayl muttered.

Kier hissed at his brother, brows low and eyes narrowed, and then looked at Aileen again, his expression instantly brighter. “If he wants to be technical, I rehydrated them while he watched. So I have prepared this meal for you, Aileen.”

He lifted the lids away; Kayl did the same for the pair he held, though he was a fraction of a second behind his brother. They moved those lids aside, Kier with a little flourish, revealing…food for which she had no name.

There were brown and white slabs of what Aileen could only assume was some kind of meat sitting in a glistening pool of dark sauce, long, flat violet strips that reminded her of bamboo shoots, orange beans flaked with specs of green herbs, and a blue, pudding-like substance filled with little pink orbs, reminiscent of tapioca.

“It’s certainly colorful,” Aileen said. She picked up the fork that had been laid out on her left and moved it toward the tray with the purple strips.

Kayl closed his hand around hers, halting it before the fork reached the food. Aileen’s heart fluttered; Kayl’s hand engulfed her own, and his warm skin was rough and callused though his grip was not ungentle.

“Allow us,” Kier said.

Guiding Aileen’s hand back to the tabletop, Kayl released his hold—though his palm lingered there briefly before he lifted it away. He and Kier set about filling her plate with almost eerie grace and odd delicacy, piling the various foods in ways that suggested attention to the presentation.

“The WHATEVER is truly delicious,” Kier said as he carefully spooned more of the blue pudding onto Aileen’s plate. “It is quite sweet. I have been told terrans enjoy sweetness, do you not?”

“But the OTHERTHING has a more balanced flavor,” Kayl said as he tilted his spoon, dropping a few more beans into the pile he’d already made on her plate. “Excessive sweetness can become overwhelming.”

“And what would you know of excessive sweetness, Kayl?”

“Only what I just said, Kier.”

“I cannot help but sense an underlying meaning to your words, dear brother.” Kier jabbed a fork into one of the chunks of meat a little harder than seemed necessary and cut it into several bite-size pieces.

Kayl scooped violet strips off the tray. “We can hear one another’s thoughts, Kier. You know exactly what I meant.”

“I, uh, like both savory and sweet,” Aileen chimed in, trying hard to hide her grin.

Kier huffed and shook his head. “No, Kayl, I would not consider you savory anymore than you would consider me sweet.”

“What?” Eyes rounding, Aileen gestured to her plate. “I…I meant the food!”

“Yes. The food.” Kier added more meat to Aileen’s plate, which was fast running out of space—especially as Kayl was still scooping the violet shoots onto it.

Without looking at his twin, Kayl said, “I am sure we can allow Aileen to enjoy her meal without being subjected to our bickering, can we not?”

“We can, so long as you refrain from starting arguments with me.”

Kayl released a long, slow breath through his nostrils.

All of the sudden, the twins stopped filling Aileen’s plate. They set down the serving utensils, and each touched his fingers to one side of the plate, sliding it closer to her.

She blinked down at it. There was more food heaped in front of her than she’d be able to eat.

Well, I said I was hungry.

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Tethered Souls (The Infinite City #5) by Tiffany Roberts
Copyright 2022 by Tiffany Roberts
All rights reserved