41. Stellan
STELLAN
The first black point touched Bryony’s hair. Every throne-room light died.
Adrian’s red chains kept me pinned beside the dais. I could hear Bryony breathing above me, fast and shallow, while the Crown lowered another inch.
“Bryony.”
Her gaze found mine through the dark. She still held the Crown with both hands, blood running between her fingers.
“I’m here,” she said.
The Crown dropped onto her head.
Bryony’s eyes closed as her body went rigid. The black metal flashed white against her red hair. Power burst from the throne and raced across the floor. It hit the broken doors, filled every open passage and climbed the walls until the whole room shone.
The force threw Lenora and the freed guards away from the steps. A clear wall rose between them and the dais before they could get up.
“Bryony,” Lenora shouted as she struck the wall with the seal blade. “Can you hear me?”
No answer came from Bryony.
Power flooded our bond and drove the breath from my lungs. Harrowmere’s rooms, gates and wards pressed into my awareness, too much to separate, but Bryony remained present under them. I felt her fear, pain and the furious effort she used to control both.
She had already answered when she chose to lift the Crown herself.
Adrian released the chain around my throat and grabbed the front of my torn shirt. He pulled me higher against the base of the throne, then placed the heartblood dagger over the wound above my heart.
The black point entered the cut it had already made.
Pain spread across my chest. I kept my eyes on Bryony.
“The coronation isn’t complete,” Adrian said. “Don’t mistake a few lights for authority.”
“You’re the one hiding behind her.”
He pushed the dagger deeper until its point scraped my breastbone. “She chose the Crown. Harrowmere accepted her. When she wakes, she’ll give me what I need.”
The metal began to pull at my blood. It could take ordinary blood without Bryony’s help, but the power bound to Harrowmere stayed locked inside me. Adrian needed her voice to force it out.
He’d spent years arranging this moment and now waited for a woman he’d never understood to obey.
The thought would have amused me if breathing didn’t hurt so much.
The Crown tightened around Bryony’s head.
She gasped as her hands flew away, but the metal stayed in place. Fine white points spread into her red hair and settled against her skin without drawing blood. The Crown had her.
Pressure closed around the power Harrowmere had bound inside me. Bryony had given no command. The Crown had opened the path between us and left it waiting for her voice.
Adrian noticed the change in me. His attention sharpened, and his grip on the dagger steadied.
“You feel it now,” he said.
“I feel her.”
“You feel your new mistress.”
I stared until his smile thinned. Adrian still couldn’t understand the difference between devotion and control.
I pulled once against the red chains.
They contracted around my wrists and throat. Adrian’s command still held them, although the light inside the links had started to flicker.
“Don’t waste your strength,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting a century to kill you. I can spare a little.”
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.
Bryony still hadn’t spoken.
Adrian repeated the command for her. The Crown answered with another pulse, testing the path between her authority and my blood.
I could feel the empty command waiting for her voice.
The last time I’d felt that pressure, Cecily was already lost inside the Crown. Her orders had torn through me before I understood she was fighting them. Bryony had entered knowing the risk and chosen it with her eyes open, even if they were closed now.
I wouldn’t treat her like she was already gone.
The chain around my left wrist loosened another fraction. I kept my hand relaxed and gave Adrian no reason to notice.
Lenora worked the seal blade deeper into the crack. The freed guards pressed their weight behind her while white sparks burned across their arms.
Adrian ignored them and leaned close to Bryony.
“Command him,” he said. “He’ll obey you. He has no choice.”
Adrian had built his plan around the Crown taking every choice away. Bryony kept making her own.
I let the chains hold me. The dagger remained against my heart, ready to drink the moment she spoke, and I waited.
The light stopped pulsing.
Bryony opened her eyes wearing the Blood Crown.