Page 213 of Blood Curse

The Crown screamed.

This time, the voices didn’t come from my mouth.

They poured out of the metal.

It had never held Cecily whole. It had kept pieces—voices, memories and commands—until each theft could pretend it was a person.

A woman begged someone to kneel. A man ordered a door sealed. A child’s voice called for her mother. Commands overlapped until the words collapsed into raw noise. I heard the Crown trying every voice it had stolen, searching for one the spring would obey.

I didn’t try to separate them or decide who was innocent. The people were gone. What remained was theft pretending to be tradition.

The silver answered with silence.

Cracks raced across the black band.

The first ran under Stellan’s palm. Another cut through my blood. They met at the deepest mark inside the rim, the one carrying his name.

Something pulled tight around his heart.

His body jerked against mine.

Red light rose from his chest in the shape of a broken circle. I had seen the Crown’s chains. This was older. It had been sunk into him so long it moved with every beat, a title made into a wound and passed off as power.

The Blood King.

The title moved through the garden without being spoken. Every vampire beyond the gate turned towards Stellan. Their faces tightened as their bodies remembered the title being pulled from him.

Stellan had carried that weight for over a hundred and twelve years. He had used it to protect people when he could and hated himself whenever protection began to look like command. The role took his choices too. It just dressed the theft in power.

The Crown tried to drag the circle back into him.

Stellan pressed harder.

So did I.

The spring flooded the mark.

Red turned white. The circle split and tore away from his chest. It hit the Crown with enough force to crack the basin wall.

Stellan shouted. His grip crushed my fingers for one brutal second, then loosened.

The black band broke.

One piece struck the bottom of the spring. Another skidded across the carving. The section under our hands stayed whole while all those borrowed voices screamed once more.

I shoved it deeper into the silver light.

Stellan’s palm stayed over mine.

Together, we broke the last piece.

The Crown shattered.

Harrowmere convulsed.

The ground snapped sideways. Water climbed the basin wall and hung in the air. Every window in the east wing burst outwards, spraying glass across the grass. The covered walk dropped a foot and slammed back onto its columns.

Mara shouted for the court to get clear. Vampires moved around one another, dragging the injured away from the roof and catching anyone who fell. Their voices were human in the only way that mattered. Nobody’s words carried chains.