Page 73 of Blood Ties

“I’d spent a century telling myself every heir would choose control once the court offered it. You proved that was an excuse. I abandoned the service passage when you walked away from the Crown. If the chain had opened then, I would have stayed until I could get you out.”

Bryony’s expression didn’t soften. “Would you have told me?”

“I intended to.”

“That’s a lovely answer. It also means no.” The brief edge in her voice was familiar. It hurt more than shouting would have.

“No,” I said. “I kept finding reasons to wait, and I used every one because I was a coward.”

“You weren’t too frightened to bite me or take me to bed.”

I forced myself to hold her gaze. “By then I wanted you. I knew the truth might end every feeding and every touch, so I kept quiet. That was another selfish choice.”

She looked away. Her fingers pressed into her sleeves hard enough to whiten the tips. I remembered those hands on my skin and understood that she might never put them there again.

“Was the sitting room part of it?” she asked. “Did you touch me because you thought sex would open the manacle?”

“I knew trust affected the iron. I didn’t know pleasure would release it. I wanted the manacle open, and I wanted you in my lap. Both were true.”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “That’s bloody convenient.”

“For me, yes.”

“And when you stopped feeding?”

“I’d taken enough. I wanted the rest of that encounter to be about your pleasure and mine.” I paused, choosing accuracy over any answer that might soothe her. “It showed what I wanted by then. It doesn’t erase what I hid from you.”

The light on the floor darkened around my feet. The court drew a second line towards Bryony, though it stopped several inches from her boots.

She studied it. Harrowmere wasn’t asking for a judgement. It was keeping the confession where neither of us could change it later.

“You don’t owe the court a verdict,” I said. “You don’t owe me forgiveness either.”

“Good, because I’m bloody furious.”

“You have every right to be.”

Her head lifted. “Stop agreeing with me like that fixes anything.”

“It fixes nothing. I’m trying to answer without defending what I did.”

For several seconds, only the low movement of the court broke the silence. A door closed in the distant hall. The red lamps held steady.

Bryony came closer. She stopped near the fallen manacle and looked down at the iron her trust had opened.

At first, I’d placed every danger at Adrian’s feet and called myself another prisoner. Her refusal of the Crown stripped that excuse away. I’d become another man making decisions about her life without her knowledge.

The guilt hadn’t stopped me accepting her wrist. I wanted her safe and wanted the strength her blood gave me. Harrowmere always supplied another danger, and I kept using it to delay the truth.

She nudged the manacle with the toe of her boot. It scraped across the stone. “I don’t regret wanting you. I don’t regret what I did in that sitting room. You don’t get to turn my choices into mistakes because you lied.”

“I won’t.”

My answer didn’t ease the strain in her face.

“But I don’t know which parts of us belong to me and which parts you arranged.”

“Your desire belongs to you. I encouraged it, and I hid why I began. Both facts matter.”