Page 194 of Blood Curse

The Crown tried to force the last word through my teeth.

I closed my hand harder.

The broken point cut deeper.

“Fuck you.”

The words came out wet and rough, but they belonged to me.

The unfinished command reached nobody.

Around the hall, the vampires kept moving.

Mara planted both feet and stood beside my chair. The pale band tried to form around her waist again, but the Crown couldn’t rebuild it while holding the crowd command and fighting for my hand.

Elias straightened behind Stellan. He gripped his own wrist, stopping the hand the Crown had used to restrain his king.

“Still mine,” he said.

The young vampire near the wall got to his feet. He swayed, one palm pressed against the stone, and stayed up.

The pressure inside my skull changed.

The Crown wasn’t only angry. It was frightened.

It trained itself on finished obedience. It understood blood given after a command and bodies arranged exactly where it put them. It didn’t understand a room that obeyed once, recognised the weapon and started standing anyway.

I understood them.

They weren’t free yet. The bands still pulled. Stellan’s chains remained locked around his chest and throat. Every person who rose was doing it while the command owned their muscles and the Crown punished the attempt.

They rose because somebody else had risen first.

Mara’s hand closed around the back of my chair. “Keep cutting if you need it.”

“I noticed.”

“Your bedside manner is becoming unpleasant,” Elias said.

“Wrong room.”

The exchange lasted seconds. It gave the court something ordinary to hear while the Night Hall filled with red light and blood.

Stellan hadn’t moved.

He could pull harder. I could see it in the tension across his shoulders. He was holding back because the Crown used my heart against him once already.

I pressed two bloody fingers against the dagger wrapping.

Still here.

His gaze dropped to them.

I curled the fingers into my palm.

Ready.

Stellan’s expression changed by almost nothing. The set of his mouth hardened. His right hand turned against the chain at his wrist.