Page 169 of Blood Curse

Elias nodded once.

Bryony watched me over her injured hand.

Her pulse changed.

I heard the quickening clearly across the hall. Not fear. Desire warmed her green eyes as she looked at me in the old chair.

Her gaze dropped to my split lip, then travelled over the open neck of my shirt and my hands on the carved arms.

The look wasn’t reverent.

It was filthy.

My fangs pressed lower.

Bryony noticed. Her mouth curved.

Fuck.

I had spent a hundred and twelve years believing the court was something I had failed and love was something I had lost. Since Bryony arrived, I had treated them as rival demands. If I became what the court needed, a throne would appear between us. If I chose her, I would be abandoning everyone else again.

Bryony had never asked me to leave the court.

The court had stopped asking me to surrender myself.

Apparently, I had made the problem more complicated than it was.

She caught me staring and held my gaze.

Desire crossed her face, private despite the room.

Heat moved through me that had nothing to do with the Crown.

I wanted to leave the dais, put Bryony against the nearest closed door and remind both of us that kings could use their mouths for better things than speeches.

The court had waited over a century. It could survive another ten minutes.

My dignity might not.

The grey-braided woman lifted her chin. “You’ve told us what we can refuse. What can we rely on?”

The question stripped the humour from the room.

I gave her the answer she deserved. “Shelter while Harrowmere stands. Blood while the estate can buy it. Protection from anyone who treats this court as property. The truth when I don’t know how to provide any of those things.”

“And you?” she asked. “Can we rely on you?”

I looked at the faces in front of me. Some were familiar. Others had arrived after my imprisonment and knew me only as a story, a failure or a king dragged out of the ground by a human woman with inconvenient courage.

“Tonight, yes,” I said. “Tomorrow, ask again.”

She moved away from Elias and stood on her own. “Then tonight, you’re my king.”

The Crown flared.

Red light raced across its black points, along the walls and over the edge of the dais.

The room stayed upright.