Page 116 of Blood Curse

“Can it stop my heart completely?” Bryony asked.

Elias didn’t look away from her. “Yes.”

My hand tightened around hers.

The Crown needed a living bearer, but Elias doubted the vampires who made it had cared how much strain a human heart could take. It could kill Bryony while trying to keep itself alive. One missed sequence wasn’t enough for him to judge how quickly that might happen. He wanted more information and looked as if he hated every way he might get it.

She turned her head towards me. “Don’t start planning how to stand over me every second.”

“I can hear your heart from the other side of the room.”

“You’re terrible at reassurance.”

“I wasn’t trying.”

“Can the spring stop this?” Bryony asked.

“It stopped it during the failed cleansing. The effect didn’t last once you left the water.”

“Then we need another attempt.”

“Not while the Crown can order Stellan’s blood into the spring,” Elias said. “We solve that first.”

“Quickly,” I added.

Bryony’s gaze sharpened. “I gathered that.”

The Crown warmed under the black points in her red hair.

Her hand went rigid in mine.

“Bryony?”

She lifted two fingers.

Present.

The room disappeared.

Cold chapel stone struck my knees.

Screams filled the air. Human blood, vampire blood and smoke crowded my lungs. People I had known for decades fought their own bodies while Adrian watched from behind the altar.

This wasn’t the memory I had carried for a century. That one came in pieces: Cecily’s white dress turned red, a silver knife, guards with blades at human throats and my mouth closing over her neck.

The Crown gave me everything.

Cecily stood in my grip with one wrist trapped in my hand. Her dark hair had come loose around the pointed band. Blood ran from the places where the metal entered her scalp. Her face held rage that didn’t belong to her.

“Release me,” she ordered.

The command tore at my hand. I kept my fingers closed.

Three guards held knives against three human throats. Their arms shook with the effort to resist her last order. One blade had already broken skin.

I couldn’t hold Cecily and fight the command inside them. I couldn’t reach the Crown without letting go of her wrist. I had spent eight fucking months choosing delay, and every choice had narrowed to this.

My remembered hand pulled her towards me.