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I checked the bandage on her side. The bleeding had slowed, and the skin around the wound was already drawing together.
“Will that repair your leg?” I asked.
“Enough for me to stand. The bone will take longer.” Lenora looked past me to Stellan’s bare throat, then at the red bands at his wrists. “You opened the final chain, but the blood restraints remain.”
“The iron is off,” I said. “The restraints hold him inside Harrowmere and stop him hurting me. Can Adrian use them?”
Lenora took another drink before giving me a full answer. “He can push old commands into the restraints while the court still recognises his regency, but your rejection makes each attempt weaker. Once Harrowmere records this attack, Adrian will have to defend what he did in front of the outer court. If the guards speak and show the marks he put inside them, he may lose the authority he needs to reach Stellan at all.”
“Edith’s appointment called the regency temporary,” I said. “Why couldn’t she revoke it after she knew he’d corrupted the Crown?”
Lenora set the bottle down. “Because she tied it to Stellan’s holding sentence. Once Harrowmere sealed both orders, her uncrowned authority couldn’t cancel the regency alone. It ends when the sentence ends, a crowned heir replaces the regent or the formal court removes him for breaking his duty.”
“Adrian kept me chained, controlled the formal court and removed the witnesses Edith needed,” Stellan said. “Every route out depended on authority he already held.”
Lenora looked towards the garden. “The surviving guards and Harrowmere’s memory give us a route he doesn’t control.”
We had one job now. Keep the surviving guards alive, let Harrowmere hold the memory and put them in front of the vampires Adrian claimed to lead.
“Then we cut the marks out of the remaining guards,” I said. “After that, you take them outside.”
Stellan looked at Lenora’s leg. “She can barely stand.”
“I can stand well enough to get them past Adrian’s unmarked guard,” Lenora said. “If I stay here, he’ll tell the outer court that Stellan took me and slaughtered everyone who entered. I need to walk out with the survivors while the blood marks are still visible.”
“Adrian watched you help us,” I said. “He already knows you’re against him.”
“He knows I resisted one command. The vampires outside don’t know why, and I’m still commander. His unmarked guards have to obey me unless he removes my seal in front of them. That gives me enough authority to get these four into the witness room.”
Stellan took the empty bottle from her. “You’ll have minutes before he decides you’re more useful dead. Don’t waste them trying to convince every frightened vampire at the gate. Take the guards to the old witness room and seal the door. Harrowmere can show its memory there when Bryony calls the court.”
Lenora swung her legs over the side of the bed and tested the injured one. “That was my plan.”
“Then it’s improved with age.”
She stood before he could answer. Her left knee nearly gave way, but she caught the bedpost and stayed upright.
I held out the second bottle. “Finish this first. Adrian has already thrown you through one gate tonight. I’d prefer not to watch him do it again.”
Lenora accepted it and drank. “You sound like Edith.”
“She raised me. I’m comfortable with that.”
By the time we returned to the garden, the surviving guards had stopped fighting the vines. The woman lay on her back with one hand over the cut in her armour. The two men tangled in the roses watched us approach. The fourth guard remained on his knees near the wall, breathing hard after vomiting Adrian’s blood.
The dead guard still lay beside the gate.
Stellan stopped long enough to close the man’s eyes. Then he took the black blade from my belt and crouched beside the nearest survivor.
“The command can’t make you attack while the garden holds you,” he said. “I’m going to cut the mark over your heart. Stay as still as you can.”
The guard nodded. “Do it.”
Stellan opened the armour and drew the black edge across the red line. Blood rose around the blade in a thin sheet, separated from the guard’s own, then gathered into a dark bead on the point.
Harrowmere pulled it into the stone.
The guard’s body went loose. The roses released one arm, waited and let the other go when he didn’t reach for a weapon.
