Page 182 of Blood Curse

Her mouth opened.

The first breath sounded like hers.

The voice didn’t.

“Every vampire in the Night Hall will kneel.”

33

BRYONY

The command left my mouth and filled the Night Hall.

For one second, nobody moved.

Then Stellan’s spectral chains burst into view.

Red light locked around his wrists, throat and chest. The links didn’t reach for a wall or drag him towards me. They tightened in place, forcing his body to complete the result the Crown named.

Kneel.

Paler bands appeared around every other vampire. They caught shoulders, waists and thighs, turning a room full of standing bodies into a single slow collapse.

Mara grabbed the edge of a table. The wood groaned under her hands. Elias braced one foot behind him and got half a second longer than the people beside him.

The grey-braided woman’s knees hit first.

The young vampire near the western wall followed. His palms struck the floor, and he shoved back immediately, fighting to lift his shoulders even while the bands forced him down.

The Crown made me watch all of it.

My body sat straight in the queen’s chair. My hands remained open on the silver arms. I could feel each finger, the hard wood against my back and the points fixed inside my scalp. Feeling any of it made fuck-all difference when none of it moved.

Stellan’s right knee bent.

He didn’t look at the floor. He looked at me.

The Crown pulled harder. His boot slid over the stone. Red links crossed his chest and pressed until his left knee started to give as well.

I fought for my smallest finger.

Nothing happened.

The Crown’s pleasure ran through me as the court went down. It was hot, immediate and vile. My pulse leaped in answer, turning another stolen thing into something that felt dangerously like desire.

It wasn’t mine.

Hours ago, Stellan held my wrist while my blood warmed his mouth. I felt every pull and knew exactly why I’d offered it. When he stopped, my body missed the sensation before my mind caught up. The wanting stayed mine even when it was inconvenient.

This rush had nowhere to go except where the Crown drove it.

It made my skin hot while vampires were forced to the floor. It tightened my stomach when Stellan’s chains flared. It turned the old queen’s chair into the middle of every gaze and tried to make that attention feel like worship.

I refused to be ashamed of what my body did under attack. Shame would only give the Crown another place to sit.

Instead, I counted what it hadn’t taken.

I could see Stellan. I could hear the scrape of boots and the rough breaths around the hall. I remembered my flat, the terrible locks and the two drawers I’d promised him as if our future depended on wardrobe space.