Page 96 of Blood Curse

“Move them if you need to.”

“And if it commands me?”

“You name the order. I revoke it.”

“Even if the court hears every word?”

“Especially then. I’m done letting the Crown have private secrets.”

“Good.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I am convinced. I also hate it.”

“So do I.”

Noise travelled down the cellar stairs. The first bottles had reached the Night Hall, and more than sixty vampires had started talking at once.

Stellan glanced up. “We can delay the gathering.”

“Then everyone sits upstairs imagining what the Crown might do.”

“It just spoke with your voice.”

“It didn’t take my appetite.”

“You’re going back?”

“I want food, people and enough witnesses to stop either of us doing something stupid alone.”

“A romantic evening.”

“We had the romantic part upstairs.”

Heat moved across his face before he controlled it. “You make concentrating bloody difficult.”

“That sounds like a personal failing.”

His mouth almost curved. He took my hand, and we went upstairs together.

The Night Hall had become louder while we were gone. Every chair was taken. Vampires sat along the window ledges and on the wide stone hearth. The injured woman rested her stitched leg on a stool while the man beside her held her glass.

Nobody looked royal. Everyone looked tired, hungry and relieved to have reached a locked door that opened for them.

I liked the room that way.

The injured woman with the grey braid raised her glass when I passed. “May I ask you something?”

“You may.”

“Does the Crown hear us?”

“I think it hears what I hear. It also seems to notice submission, blood and anything that feels like a royal command.”

She glanced around the crowded room. “Then gathering everyone seems risky.”

“It is. Leaving each group alone with half the truth felt worse.”