Page 212 of Blood Curse

My scream tore out across the garden. Blood ran into my eyes. For a second, all I could see was red and white light.

Then the weight left my skull.

The Crown was in my hands.

It felt heavier than metal. Every order it had carried pulled against my arms: kneel, stay, bleed, return, obey. The commands crowded my head without finding my voice.

Rain struck the exposed cut in my scalp. The pain was clean now, sharp and entirely physical. I could feel each place the points entered me. I could also feel the space they had left behind.

My head was mine. My blood was mine. The Crown was only something I was holding.

I turned it over.

The inside of the band was wet with my blood. Fine black marks crawled around the rim, forming names faster than I could read them. Stellan’s appeared in a line that cut deeper than the rest.

The Crown tried to make me look at him again.

I looked at the silver.

Then I forced the band down onto the carving.

Metal struck stone.

The spring exploded with light.

Water surged over my shoulders. The Crown bucked under my hands and jarred my teeth, but the silver caught it. White fire ran through every black mark on the inner rim.

The names began to burn.

Stellan folded over me. His arm slipped from my waist, and his hand fell away from the Crown.

I reached back without releasing the Crown and caught his wrist.

His pulse fluttered under my thumb.

“Stay,” the Crown said through my mouth.

The command struck him.

Nothing happened.

The route into his body was gone. The word left my lips as sound and died in the rain.

Stellan’s fingers turned under mine.

He closed them around my hand.

I felt the choice in that weak grip. He wasn’t held here by a title, a chain or my stolen voice. He stayed because he decided to give me what strength he had left.

I pulled his hand forwards.

He understood.

His blood-covered palm landed over mine on the Crown.

The spring recognised him again.

Light flooded the band from both sides. My blood shone along the outer edge. His moved through the black marks inside it, finding the scars left by every oath once tied to the Blood King’s name.