Page 214 of Blood Curse

The house gave one deep groan.

Then every door stopped moving.

The roses along the spring wall shook off their rain and went still. Light vanished from the cracks in the path. Harrowmere remained old, damaged and crowded with vampires, but it was a house again. Stone. Timber. Iron. Nothing inside it was listening for a king’s order.

The Crown’s control of the house was gone. Whatever older protection remained in the land and doors no longer answered through a living body.

The water crashed down around us.

Black fragments covered the silver circle. The spring ran through them, washing away the last red light. Each piece became dull metal, thin and useless.

The pressure inside my skull disappeared.

I waited for another voice.

Rain. Broken stone. Elias breathing hard beside the basin.

That was all.

The quiet reached further than my head. It moved across the garden and into Harrowmere. Vampires straightened under the covered walk as old commands released whatever scraps they left behind. A woman near the gate touched her throat. A man looked at his open hands and began to laugh.

Mara stood with one hand on the gate. She tested it by pushing the iron wider, then let it swing until another vampire caught it. Neither of them flinched. Elias looked towards the house as though he had spent his whole life hearing a sound that had finally stopped.

Every vampire remained standing.

Stellan’s palm was still over mine.

For one second, relief made me stupid. I turned under his arm, ready to see his face and swear at him for frightening me.

His hand slid off the broken Crown.

“Stellan?”

His knees gave way.

I caught as much of him as I could. His weight drove me down into the freezing water, and Elias lunged across the basin to keep his chest from striking the stone.

The wound beside his heart was still open.

Dark blood poured from it.

Elias said something sharp to Mara. Feet pounded towards us. I heard all of it from far away because Stellan’s eyes were closed and his body had gone terrifyingly still in my arms.

I pressed my hand to his chest, just clear of the wound.

For one endless second, there was nothing.

Then his injured heart gave one weak beat under my palm.

40

STELLAN

Pain brought me back.

It was sharp, wet and deep beside my heart. My body tried to curl around it, but hands held my shoulder and hip against the bottom of the spring.

The dagger lay where I had left it on the cracked basin wall.