Page 155 of Blood Curse

“Good. I didn’t want you gone.”

“If you want the useful detail, the word sounded wrong, but nothing caught hold of me. I didn’t have to fight my arms or my throat. I could have walked away.”

“You’re sure?”

His expression hardened. “The Crown made me seize Mara earlier. I remember exactly what losing my body felt like. This wasn’t it.”

“All right.” The tightness under my ribs loosened. “Then it needs the whole order.”

He pushed a chair out with his foot. “Sit down. You still look unsteady.”

I sat. He took the chair across from me rather than moving away. That helped more than another speech would have.

“Did you learn anything?” Mara asked.

“The Crown needs a complete order.”

Elias reached for my wrapped hand. “Let me see.”

I let him remove the cloth. The cut was messy but shallow. He cleaned it while everyone made a determined effort not to stare.

“You can talk,” I said to the room. “I’m not going to shatter another glass because somebody discusses the weather.”

The grey-braided woman reached for another sealed bottle.

A few people laughed. One conversation started near the fire, then another at the windows. A bottle opened. Blood poured into a clean glass.

Stellan remained beside me without placing himself between me and the court.

Nobody treated me as harmless. Nobody treated me as a monster either.

The gathering resumed with me still in it.

28

STELLAN

The court’s first ordinary blood gathering had ended with one broken glass, one spilled cup, a cut human hand and a useful discovery about incomplete commands.

Mara called it progress.

By the next afternoon, she had put half the lower court to work.

Lenora had returned the hilt half after Bryony gave me the choice. The pointed half remained wrapped and locked in the armoury.

Tables scraped over stone. Doors stood open from the blood cellar to the Night Hall. A black wooden chest waited near the stairs while vampires added knives, pistols and three swords that looked older than the owners carrying them.

The hilt half of the heartblood dagger rested in a leather wrap inside my coat. Its broken point lay against my ribs, close enough to slow my healing if it entered my chest.

I disliked carrying it.

I disliked anyone else keeping it more.

Mara pointed at the chest. “Yours too.”

“No.”

The vampire beside her dropped a knife into the chest and moved away before the disagreement became interesting.