Page 154 of Blood Curse

“I don’t know.” I looked at the man. “Did you feel anything?”

“I heard you.” He flexed both hands. “My body stayed mine.”

Relief nearly folded my knees. Hunger remained, tangled with the smell of spilled blood and my cut palm.

Elias pulled a folded cloth from his coat. I took it and wrapped my hand.

“I need to get out of this room.”

Stellan shifted aside without hesitation. He didn’t touch me or block the door with questions.

I crossed the lower court and reached the cold passage beyond it before my breath broke. The Crown throbbed with fury. My hand hurt. Shame hurt worse.

I had come to watch them live, and within half an hour I had nearly ordered one of them to put his throat under my teeth.

Stellan stayed at the arch behind me. He gave me air, but I could still see him when I turned.

“It didn’t land,” he said.

“I still said the first word.”

“And destroyed the rest.”

“I wanted his blood.”

“The Crown wanted it.”

“So did my body for a second.” I pressed the cloth harder against my palm. “I’m not pretending that part didn’t happen.”

Stellan’s expression stayed steady. “Don’t pretend. Your body wanted blood, and you broke the command before it reached anyone else’s body. Both things are true.”

“I hate when your honesty is useful. It doesn’t make either part easier.”

“It gives you the whole truth instead of the Crown’s version.”

The Crown tried to make hunger feel like guilt and guilt feel like proof that I should disappear upstairs. If I hid every time it pushed something ugly into me, it would own more than my voice.

I looked towards the Night Hall. Conversation hadn’t resumed. The court was waiting without crowding the passage.

“Elias needs to clean this.” I lifted my wrapped hand.

“He does.”

“Then I’m going back.”

Stellan’s expression didn’t change, but pride warmed his pale eyes. “All right.”

He offered his hand. I didn’t take it. I walked beside him instead, and our shoulders brushed once.

The smell of blood met me at the door. This time it remained a smell. Hunger stirred, but the Crown couldn’t turn it into a sentence before I closed my mouth.

The man I had nearly commanded stood where I had left him. Someone had cleaned the table and covered the spilled blood with sand. My broken glass had been swept into a metal pan.

I stopped in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

He studied me for a moment. “Did you leave because you thought I wanted you gone?”

“No. I needed air.”