43. Stellan
STELLAN
Adrian’s wrist broke in my hand.
The dagger turned away from my heart as he shouted. I drove my shoulder into his chest and carried him off the dais.
We hit the floor together. Pain tore through my wounded side, but I kept hold of his arm and slammed it against the stone. The heartblood dagger fell between us.
I had lost too much blood to heal at my normal speed. The wounds in my chest and side opened with every hard movement, sharpening Bryony’s fear. I tightened my grip on Adrian and kept moving. She had already done her part.
Adrian struck my throat with his free hand. His fingers found the half-healed cut and ripped it open.
I caught his jaw and threw him towards the throne.
He hit the lowest step, rolled and came up on his feet. His broken wrist hung at the wrong angle, but it had already started pulling back into place.
“The house is closed to you,” Bryony said from the dais. “Your guards can’t reach this room, and you can’t command the ones we freed.”
Adrian looked at the Crown on her head. “You’re holding power you don’t understand.”
“I understand that you’ve lost.”
He moved for her.
I hit him from the side before he reached the first step. We crashed into the base of the throne hard enough to shake the Crown’s white light.
Adrian drove his thumb into the wound over my heart.
My grip failed long enough for him to seize the back of my neck and smash my face against the carved stone. Blood ran into my eye.
I twisted under his arm, caught his injured wrist and bent it again.
Bone broke a second time.
Adrian snarled and buried his fangs in my shoulder.
I locked one arm around his head and dragged him closer instead of pulling away. My fingers closed behind his neck. One hard turn would break it, but his knee struck the wound in my side before I could finish.
The impact threw us apart.
The dagger lay near the edge of the dais. Adrian saw it at the same time I did.
We reached for it.
His fingers touched the hilt first. I stamped on his forearm and heard another crack, but he hooked the weapon towards himself with two fingers.
Red light crawled over the black blade.
“Stellan,” Bryony warned.
I stepped back as Adrian slashed. The point missed my stomach and opened the front of my shirt. He came after me with the dagger in his left hand, healing wrist held close to his body.
Lenora and the freed guards held the room behind him. White wards covered their chests while they watched the closed passages for another attack. Bryony remained near the throne, keeping the doors sealed and the Crown’s power away from my body.
She had left the fight to me.
Adrian attacked again before I could clear my vision.
I caught his forearm, but the dagger cut across my palm. He used the opening to drive his head into my face. My vision flashed white.
The blade entered under my ribs.
Adrian shoved until the hilt struck my skin.
“All that power,” he said, breathing hard against my cheek, “and you still needed a human woman to free you.”
I closed my hand around his throat. “I needed Bryony.”
I ripped the dagger from my side and threw him across the floor.
He landed near the broken doors. The white wards flared and drove him back towards me before he could reach the passage.
Bryony had closed the exit without ordering the house to attack. Every choice inside it remained ours.
Adrian rose more slowly. Blood from his mouth stained his teeth, and his wrist hadn’t finished healing.
“Stellan Varen, kneel.”
The old regent command struck the place where his restraints had been. It found no chain, no mark and no authority left to carry it. I stayed on my feet.
“Bryony removed your hold,” I said. “You don’t get it back by raising your voice.”
“She knows what you did to Cecily?” he asked. “Does she know you killed people when you burned the old court?”
“She knows about Cecily, the fire and every death you hoped to use against me.”
His gaze flicked towards Bryony. “He’ll do the same to you. The Crown will turn you, and he’ll kill you when you stop being useful.”
“He told me what happened before you tried to use it against him,” Bryony said. “You’re out of secrets.”
Adrian’s face tightened with anger. “Edith knew he couldn’t be trusted. She spent her life keeping you from him.”
“You murdered her.”
The Crown’s light brightened with Bryony’s anger. Every door in the lower court shook, but she kept them closed without crushing the vampires trapped beyond them.
Adrian had expected old guilt to divide us. He had nothing left when it failed.
He came at me with the dagger held low.
I let him close the distance.
The point entered my stomach. Before he could pull it across, I caught his wrist and drove my forehead into his nose.
Bone collapsed under the strike.
Adrian staggered, but I kept his weapon arm pinned. He tried to tear the dagger free while I held the blade inside long enough to break his fingers from the hilt.
His nails raked across my face as he fought to keep hold of it. I drove my elbow into his ribs until his grip opened, then tore myself off the blade.
The weapon dropped when I stepped back.
Adrian lunged towards it.
I kicked the dagger across the floor to Lenora.
She stopped it under her boot.
Adrian turned for Bryony.
The move was fast enough to blur. He cleared the bottom step before I caught the back of his coat.
Fabric tore in my hand. Adrian reached Bryony and closed his good hand around her throat.
White light flared from the Crown while Bryony held Harrowmere still.
Bryony didn’t command me. She drove her knee into Adrian’s groin and clawed his face when he folded.
I reached him a second later.
My fist struck the side of his head and sent him into the throne. He tried to grab Bryony again. I caught his arm, pulled it behind his back and broke it at the elbow.
Adrian screamed and tried to twist free.
Bryony stepped clear while the Crown remained steady on her head and the open path between us stayed empty.
“Dagger,” I said.
Lenora kicked it towards me.
The black blade slid over the stone. I caught the hilt and drove the point into Adrian’s back.
He arched against me. The dagger entered under his ribs and reached his heart.
His blood rushed into the carved channels along the blade.
Adrian went still against me.
I held him against the throne until his heart stopped beating. The broken bones in his wrist and arm stopped healing. His weight sagged against my grip.
He had spent a century hiding behind commands, guards and the authority he stole from Edith. Death left him with none of them.
I lowered his body to the floor and pulled the heartblood dagger free.
Red light still moved through the channels. The weapon tried to draw the power from my blood where it covered my hands.
I laid the dagger across the lowest step.
Adrian’s dead hand twitched towards it as the last of his command burned out.
I brought my heel down on the black blade.
The heartblood dagger broke in two.