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“Thorns,” she said.

Black vines burst between the flagstones.

They wrapped Adrian’s dagger arm and drove thorns through his sleeve. Another length caught his ankle. He cut the first vine, but three more replaced it.

The pressure on my body weakened.

I seized his coat and threw him across the silver line.

Adrian hit one of his guards and took him down. Lenora shoved the vampire she’d been fighting after them. Bryony pulled the side door open long enough for the other two to retreat.

I took one step towards Adrian.

The cuffs flared again.

“Close them,” I said.

Bryony’s palm struck the wall. The main doors slammed shut while Adrian was still getting to his feet.

Darkness covered the red restraints. My knees nearly gave out with the sudden release.

Bryony reached me after the doors met. She stopped just outside my arms, checking my wrists first.

“They’re dark,” I said.

She caught my face and examined my broken nose. “You look awful.”

“I was winning.”

Two fingers stopped my mouth before it reached hers. “Not yet.”

I stopped. Her gaze dropped to the cut down my side and the blood soaking my waistband.

“The dagger prevents it healing,” I said. “Your blood will slow the bleeding, but the cut stays open while its command remains active.”

Anger replaced her fear. “Then we take the bloody dagger.” She rolled up her sleeve and held her wrist near my mouth. “This is triage, not an answer to what you hid.”

I took her wrist. Three mouthfuls dulled the burn and drew the wound together enough to hold under pressure. I lifted my mouth before her pulse changed.

Bryony covered the bite and checked the red line still running from my ribs to my hip. “Enough to keep you alive?”

“And fighting.”

Lenora wiped her blade on the dead vampire’s coat. The guard was still alive, though he wouldn’t stand again without blood. “Adrian won’t offer his hand twice.”

I pressed my palm over the wound. The edges remained hot and open. “He won’t need to. He has to put the blade against a seal to open it.”

Bryony looked at the crack in the main doors. “Which gives us his position.”

“And one occupied hand,” Lenora said.

Bryony looked at my wrists. “Is the dagger controlling the cuffs as well as the doors?”

“Adrian used it to cut the first blood commands into me after Edith closed the iron restraints. The cuffs recognise it. That’s why he can wake them while he remains outside Harrowmere’s inner wards.”

“If we take it, do the cuffs disappear?”

I wished I could give her that answer. “No. It stops him activating them from outside and prevents him cutting new commands. We still have to remove what’s already under my skin.”