Page 156
Adrian’s hand closed around the dagger hilt. “You’ll spend the rest of that strength keeping yourself alive while your queen orders you to feed me.”
The word queen made the bond flare. Bryony’s anger struck hard enough to shake the white wall around the dais.
Lenora saw it move. She drove the seal blade into the same place, and a thin crack formed under the black edge.
Adrian glanced towards her.
I twisted my left wrist inside the chain. The link had loosened when Bryony took the Crown, and I turned my hand until the metal cut through skin. Another half inch would let my thumb pass.
The dagger shifted over my heart.
“Stop,” Adrian said.
Bryony needed time, so I stopped. Adrian’s threat had nothing to do with it.
The white light around the throne began to pulse with her heartbeat. Each beat travelled into the red chains, weakening their colour before Adrian’s mark forced it back.
He could feel his control slipping. Sweat ran down the side of his face, and the hand holding the dagger trembled from the effort of maintaining every restraint at once.
“Wake her,” I said. “Ask nicely.”
Adrian struck me across the mouth.
My lip split against a fang. Blood filled my mouth, and I smiled at him with it on my teeth.
“You think she’ll save you because you fucked her?” he asked.
“I think you’ve confused fear with obedience for so long that you can’t recognise either one.”
His expression hardened as the dagger moved deeper and blood ran down my ribs.
Bryony made a strained sound.
I forced my body still.
The pain in my chest reached her. Adrian wanted it to shape her first command, and I refused to help him.
“Stellan,” she whispered.
Her eyes stayed shut, but her face turned towards my voice.
“Take your time,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It was true in the most literal and irritating sense. The chains had me fixed to the floor, Adrian held a blade in my chest and a magical wall blocked every ally in the room.
Bryony’s mouth moved in the start of a reply. The Crown flashed, and her teeth closed before any words came out.
Adrian rose on one knee. “You accepted the Crown of Harrowmere. The court has accepted you as its heir. Your king is bound and ready to surrender his power.”
His voice took on the polished tone he used when pretending to protect her.
“All you have to do is command him,” he continued. “Say, ‘Stellan, surrender your heartblood to Adrian Rook.’”
The exact words entered the Crown’s light.
Every red chain tightened at once.
My spine arched off the floor as the restraint reached inside my body. It closed around the power Adrian wanted and pulled it towards the dagger. The blade heated in my chest, but the blood still refused to cross.
