Page 90 of Blood Curse

I looked at Bryony. Her hand touched the Crown, then dropped. She gave one small shake of her head. It hadn’t reacted.

“Good,” I said. “Everyone who can stand, take your things to the west passage. Anyone hurt stays with Elias. Anyone too hungry to think tells me now.”

Three hands rose.

Mara looked at the hands. “Only three of you are honest. Promising start.”

“Four,” a woman near the door said. “He won’t admit it.”

She pointed at the man supporting her.

“Traitor,” he muttered.

“Alive traitor.”

“All five of you stay,” I said. “You’ll feed first.”

Mara came to my side with a ring of iron keys. “The west wing has eleven rooms ready. Five more in the east wing are dry, though one smells like dead roses.”

“It always smelled like dead roses.”

“Then the room is perfect.”

“Ask who wants to share. Keep travelling groups close if you can.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Nobody gets split from the person they trust because your list looks tidy.”

Mara handed the keys to the nearest steady vampire. “You heard him. West passage. Pick a room, leave the key in the lock and don’t start a war over the bath.”

“There is one bath?” someone asked.

“There are three. I still don’t trust you.”

The healthier arrivals collected their cases. They went because I had given them somewhere to go and because Mara’s expression promised pain to anyone who made the job difficult.

They went by choice.

The metal stayed inert in Bryony’s hair.

Elias pulled a strip of glass from the injured woman’s calf. She hissed and dug her fingers into the bench.

“Road trap?” I asked.

“Flat tyre, spun off the road, broken window,” she said. “We took the last miles too fast.”

“You felt the summons?”

“Since it came.” She watched Elias clean the cut. “It never moved my feet. I came because they said the Blood King had returned.”

The old title changed the air.

People in the west passage stopped talking. The vampires at the tables looked towards me. Nobody bowed. They didn’t have to. The title carried memory, and every person in the room had brought that memory home.

I had wanted them safe. I hadn’t prepared for what their faith would feel like.

Bryony had.