Page 50 of Blood Curse

“The coat had pearls.”

“Royal pearls.”

Bryony looked between us. “I hate to interrupt this important historical account, but why was Cecily in the spring?”

“The first joining,” I said. “The Crown had to touch the silver carving under the water before the court accepted her as its bearer.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

The spring had been open to the night then. Cecily walked into it wearing a thin white shift, while the rest of us stood around the edge pretending not to notice how violently she shivered. A circle had been cut into the stone wall under the water. Silver filled the grooves and stayed bright even where age had blackened everything around it.

The priest asked Cecily three times whether she accepted the Crown. She said yes three times, each answer less patient than the one before. Only then did he give her the blade.

She cut her own palm. Nobody guided her hand or chose the depth. When her blood touched the water, the silver lines brightened. Cecily leaned back until the Crown rested against the carving.

The change was immediate. The metal cooled, the water stirred around her and the pressure that had filled the garden disappeared. I hadn’t understood that pressure at the time. I had assumed it belonged to the court waiting for its new queen. Now I knew the Crown had been listening for consent.

My part came next.

The priest offered me a narrow knife. I opened my ceremonial coat, placed the point against the skin over my heart and made the cut myself. Heartblood carried more power because it came directly from the source of a vampire’s life. It also meant putting a blade where a small mistake could kill.

I let three drops fall into the spring. Cecily took my free hand while the water carried our blood across the silver and into the Crown.

“A few drops were enough for the coronation,” I said. “A cleansing may need more. I don’t know how much.”

Elias opened his medical case but didn’t take anything out. “The old court physicians were taught one warning about the Crown. If it took more power than its bearer chose to give, we were to return the metal to the spring and repeat the first joining as a cleansing.”

Bryony stared at him. “You remembered that now?”

“I remembered the words when Stellan described the coronation. I knew the Crown could take its bearer’s body. I didn’t understand that the warning meant it could take more power than the bearer had chosen to give.”

“What exactly do we repeat?”

“The metal touches the silver carving. You give blood freely. Stellan gives heartblood freely. The spring carries both offerings across the Crown while the silver quiets it.”

“And that removes it?”

“It gives the cleansing a chance to remove it,” Elias said. “I won’t promise more than I know.”

Bryony set down her glass. “Does anything else matter?”

“Only choice,” I said. “An order can’t call either offering. If the Crown compels you to bleed or compels me to give heartblood, the rite becomes another act of obedience.”

“So it gets stronger.”

“Most likely.”

“The spring, the silver carving, my blood and yours. Freely given.”

“That’s the whole method,” Elias said. “There isn’t a lost object or another piece we need to find.”

Relief moved across Bryony’s face and disappeared just as quickly. A complete answer could still be a dangerous one.

Bryony asked what would happen if she became a vampire before we tried.

Elias didn’t soften his answer. The Crown had fused itself to a living human body. A turning would heal the metal into stronger flesh and give its appetite a vampire’s hunger. Bryony would gain strength, but she might lose the body’s ability to reject what had been forced into it.

“Then turning me now could make the Crown permanent,” she said.