Page 183 of Blood Curse

The Crown could flood my nerves.

It couldn’t make this room the only life I wanted.

The thought stayed clear even while the rush spread lower.

I knew what wanting power felt like. I admitted it to Stellan when this started. I knew what I felt when he chose to put his hands behind his back for me, when he drank because I offered and stopped because he decided he’d had enough.

This was different.

The Crown didn’t care what anybody wanted. It cared that knees were striking stone.

Stellan’s first knee landed.

Pain flashed across his face. The links tightened again, dragging the other leg down.

“Bryony,” he said.

The Crown held my head still.

His gaze dropped to my right hand. He had seen the signal before it stole my voice. Two fingers. Still here.

I couldn’t give him one.

The last standing vampire fell. Elias caught himself on both hands. Mara remained half upright beside him, one knee on the floor and the other leg shaking under the pale band wrapped around her thigh.

Stellan’s second knee touched stone.

The command was complete.

Power crashed into the Crown.

My back arched against the chair. Red light flooded my sight, and the pulse of obedience drove through every point buried in my hair. The Crown drank the finished command as if the court opened its veins for it.

The doors shook in their frames. Fires leapt higher. The silver arms under my palms grew hot.

Around the hall, the vampires remained on their knees.

Some bowed under the pressure. Others kept their heads up. The man in the borrowed coat had one fist against the stone and blood running from his split knuckles. Beside him, the grey-braided woman breathed hard, her eyes fixed on the chair she had used to steady herself before the command.

Nobody praised the Crown.

Nobody called me queen.

The silence made the thing inside the metal furious.

It used my mouth again.

“Obedience will make this court permanent.”

My voice rolled through the room, colder than I had ever heard it.

Stellan’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer for me.

The Crown forced my lips into a smile.

“Give yourselves willingly, and Harrowmere will protect you. The gates will close against every enemy. The cellars will remain full. Nobody will scatter you again.”

The promise landed harder than the command.