Page 206 of Blood Curse

I left the dagger on the rim between us and kept my hand flat against the silver while the spring carried my chosen offering into the Crown.

Behind Stellan, Elias opened his medical case.

The court held the covered walk because they still chose to.

Stellan looked down at the dark bundle.

His hand closed around it.

With his own steady fingers, he began to unwrap the heartblood dagger.

38

STELLAN

The last fold of leather came away.

Adrian’s broken dagger lay across my palm. The hilt was black, the remaining blade hardly longer than two fingers, its snapped edge sharpened into a slant by the break. Rain beaded on the metal and refused to run off.

The weapon remembered what it was made to do. Heat gathered where the hilt touched my skin and travelled straight towards my heart.

My body remembered as well.

Bryony’s stolen voice. The point breaking my skin. The spring going dark because the choice wasn’t mine.

This time, every finger around the hilt belonged to me.

I opened what remained of my shirt. The torn cloth clung to the blood and rain already drying across my chest. Elias stood ready to intervene, his medical case open on the stone, but he kept his hands at his sides.

Bryony watched from the water.

The Crown was pressed to the silver behind her. White light threaded around her body, catching in the red spreading from her palm. Her face had gone pale. Her mouth was tight with pain, but her eyes were clear and fixed on mine.

The choice stayed mine.

She didn’t look away from the cost.

I put two fingers against my chest and found the beat. Strong. Steady. Mine. The blade needed to pass beside it, close enough to draw heartblood and far enough to leave the muscle whole.

I chose the angle.

The coronation cut was measured for me by men in ceremonial robes. They marked the place, named the number of drops and watched to make sure a king gave exactly what tradition required. I obeyed so easily I mistook it for willingness.

There was nothing ceremonial here. Mud stained my boots. My shirt was ruined. The woman I loved was waist-deep in freezing water with a cursed crown nailed into her skin, and the people behind us were holding back a living house.

Yet this choice was cleaner than the one I made in silk and gold. Nobody had decided its shape for me.

Then I drove the broken point in.

Pain punched through my ribs. The dagger’s magic caught the wound open before my body could close it, turning the usual burn of healing into a hard, cold throb. My grip locked around the hilt.

Dark blood welled along the metal.

One drop reached my stomach. Another fell from my skin and struck the spring.

The whole basin flashed white.

Bryony gasped. Her palm stayed flat against the carving.