Page 210 of Blood Curse

39

BRYONY

The Crown moved inside my hands.

It shouldn’t be possible. The black band was solid metal, slick with rain and my blood, but it twisted against my palms like something trying to turn its head.

The loosened points dragged through my scalp.

Pain flashed white across my sight. My fingers clamped harder. Stellan’s body braced mine from behind, his breath rough against my wet hair, while the spring burned around our waists.

The Crown stopped fighting.

A picture opened in my head.

Stellan stood in the Night Hall in a clean black shirt. The wound beside his heart was gone. Colour had returned to his face, and his pale eyes followed me as I crossed the room.

Every vampire in Harrowmere knelt.

The image was sharp enough to smell: candle smoke, rain drying on stone and the warm dark pull of Stellan’s blood. The Crown laid power across it like a promise.

Keep me.

The words didn’t touch my ears. They slid straight into the place where fear had been chewing at me since the dagger had entered his chest.

Command them, and they would hold him. Command the wound, and it would close.

The picture changed.

Mara gripped Stellan’s shoulders while Elias pulled out the blade. A dozen vampires pressed their hands to him and fed their strength into his heart because I ordered them to. The torn skin sealed. Stellan took one steady breath, then another.

Alive.

The want hit so hard my arms weakened. I wanted him furious with Elias for fussing over the wound. I wanted him dry, warm and taking up too much space in a bed that had already lost one fight with us. I wanted tomorrow’s argument, the key he promised me and every inconvenient year after it.

The Crown offered all of that in one perfect image. It even gave Stellan the small crease beside his mouth that appeared when he was trying not to smile.

It had learned him from me. It had searched every private place I let him occupy and built a weapon from the future I wanted.

The Crown gave me the word in his voice.

My grip slipped.

Stellan’s heartbeat stuttered against my back. Every ribbon of his blood already crossing the water had left his body colder and heavier against mine.

I could make them save him.

The thought was mine. That made it worse.

The Crown rushed into the gap.

It showed me Harrowmere repaired by dawn. Doors obeying my touch. Vampires fed, sheltered and unable to hurt each other because I had taken the choice away. It offered safety with every sharp edge hidden.

Then one of the kneeling vampires in the Night Hall lifted her face.

A pale band covered her mouth.

Another wrapped Mara’s chest. Elias had one around each wrist. Stellan stood free beside me only because the Crown had driven its deepest chain through his heart.