Page 191 of Blood Curse

It passed between two kneeling vampires. The man lifted his hand rather than blocking it. The grey-braided woman shifted her boot aside.

Nobody touched the blade.

Nobody sent it back to me.

They understood before the Crown did.

Bryony had been looking at the dagger since Mara pulled it from my coat. She didn’t need my whole plan. I didn’t have one beyond keeping the blade from being driven into my heart by somebody else’s command.

She needed a weapon she could choose.

The wrapped dagger crossed the last stretch of stone.

Bryony’s chair stood directly in its path.

The Crown tried to lift her right hand, ready to receive what it ordered Mara to bring. Bryony fought the movement. Her arm shook between the silver rest and the floor.

“Come on,” I said.

I didn’t know whether I meant the dagger, Bryony or every vampire still forcing their body through the command.

Elias’s hold tightened around my shoulders. His face was close to mine, his breath carrying the faint scent of blood.

“I can’t release you,” he said.

“Then don’t break anything useful.”

“Your standards are declining.”

The words were strained rather than amused. His arms pulled harder when I shifted, and the chains around my chest answered.

Across the room, the young vampire got one foot under him.

The Crown’s red light faltered.

Bryony’s arm dropped from the chair.

Her hand hung open, inches above the floor. The Crown forced it back towards the silver, but Mara was still fighting her command, Elias was holding mine, and the rest of the court kept finding movements the first order failed to name.

The control on Bryony’s wrist flickered.

The dagger struck the front leg of her chair.

It spun once and stopped against her boot.

Mara lunged from three steps away.

Bryony’s smallest finger moved.

It reached the trailing edge of the cloth.

The Crown tightened every chain in the hall.

Bryony’s finger closed around the wrapping.

35

BRYONY