Page 211 of Blood Curse

The picture was honest for less than a second.

Long enough.

Safety built from obedience was still a cage. I knew that because the Crown had spent days teaching me from the inside. It could stop a fist by owning the arm. It could prevent betrayal by stripping away the chance to choose loyalty. Every clean result left a person trapped under it.

Stellan didn’t want to survive as my prisoner. Mara didn’t want protection that lived in her bones. The court came back for a home, not another ruler who could reach into their bodies and call control mercy.

The Crown reached for my mouth.

I closed it.

It pushed a command against my tongue. I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted blood, but I didn’t waste breath arguing with it. Every answer I had spoken had given it words to bend. It got my hands instead.

I pulled.

The first point tore free.

Heat poured down the side of my face. The Crown shrieked inside my skull with a hundred voices, some young, some old and all furious.

My knees hit the bottom of the basin.

Stellan caught me around the waist with his free arm. The movement dragged him forwards. His blood clouded the water between us.

“Bryony.”

His voice was faint but still his.

I kept pulling.

A second point came loose, then a third. Each one left a hot line across my scalp. The band lifted high enough for rain to run under it.

The Crown changed tactics.

Stellan’s body went slack against mine.

I turned my head. The metal tightened, trying to drive its points back in while I looked at him.

His hand remained braced over mine. His mouth had lost its colour. Elias stood just beyond us, but the spring’s light threw him back whenever he reached towards Stellan.

“His heart is slowing,” Elias said.

The Crown filled my head with a single bright offer.

One command. One word. Heal.

Stellan would live.

Everyone else would belong to the thing offering him to me.

My fear wanted the bargain. Love didn’t.

I faced the carving again.

The silver circle shone under the water. It held the blood we gave by choice, two currents running side by side. The Crown could imitate Stellan’s voice and borrow my terror. It couldn’t change what brought the spring to life.

I wrenched the band upwards.

The remaining points ripped free together.