Page 184 of Blood Curse

The pale bands didn’t brighten, but several vampires stopped pushing against them.

Not surrender. Listening.

That scared me more.

A command could be revoked. A promise people needed badly enough could keep working after the magic ended.

The woman near the eastern fire looked at the sealed doors. Her mouth moved around a name I couldn’t hear. Someone she lost outside Harrowmere, perhaps, or someone she wanted the walls to keep safe. The young vampire stared towards the tables where the last unopened bottles waited. Hunger hollowed his face.

The Crown showed them a court that never ran out of blood, a home that couldn’t reject them and a king who couldn’t leave.

It left out the locks.

It left out the orders.

It left out the human body trapped in this chair so the offer could speak.

Stellan’s gaze moved over the room. He saw every moment of temptation, but there was no accusation in his face. He knew what it cost them to refuse what they were denied for so long.

That mattered. If he demanded instant loyalty now, the Crown could hide inside the demand.

Faces changed around the hall. These people had been driven from their home, hunted away from one another and left to spend a hundred and twelve years believing their king had abandoned them. Safety, blood and belonging weren’t pretty words to them. They were the exact wounds Adrian had left open.

The Crown pressed its offer into those wounds.

Stellan saw it too. Guilt moved across his face before he buried it.

“Bryony didn’t offer you a cage,” he said.

The metal tightened around my skull.

“Your queen offers you a home.”

The title came out in my voice.

Rage cut cleanly through the pleasure.

My smallest finger twitched against the silver arm.

Stellan saw it.

He didn’t surge towards me. He didn’t reach for the dagger under his coat or strain against it until the Crown punished my heart.

He held my gaze.

“There you are,” he said.

The Crown made my smile widen.

Stellan watched my hand instead.

It could arrange my face. It couldn’t make him believe it.

I pushed at the same finger again. The effort burned from my wrist to my shoulder. The nail scraped silver, barely moving, but the Crown had to notice. Its control clamped down until my heartbeat stuttered.

Stellan heard it.

Fear flashed in his pale eyes. He stayed where he was.