Page 21 of Blood Curse

We walked back towards the main doors. The house grew brighter around us. More lamps woke along the galleries, then in the empty rooms above. Harrowmere wasn’t waiting quietly now. It was calling its people home in light as well as blood.

At the threshold, Mara stopped.

“I’ll open the gate,” I said. “But I won’t promise anyone that the old court is waiting on the other side.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“Anyone who enters accepts Bryony as queen. They accept her laws. They leave their grudges outside.”

“The last one may be difficult.”

“Then they can keep walking.”

Mara smiled properly for the first time. “There’s my king.”

Bryony leaned into my shoulder. “He’s taken.”

“That’s also an improvement.”

Beyond the doors, the drive cut through the black grounds towards the road. At first I saw only rain and the bare silver branches. Then a distant light moved between the trees.

Another appeared behind it.

Mara looked past us at Harrowmere’s lit windows.

“The others are already coming.”

5

BRYONY

The first light reached the end of the drive.

It wasn’t a car. It floated at shoulder height, a white flame trapped inside a glass sphere. A woman walked under it with three men close behind her. More lights moved through the trees.

“How many people did I invite?” I asked.

“A few dozen tonight,” Mara said. “More over the next several days.”

“That would have been useful before I opened the gate.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Stellan’s mouth curved. The expression vanished as the first vampires crossed the bridge.

They looked exhausted. The woman’s silver hair had been hacked short with a blade. Mud covered her long coat to the knees, and one of the men supported another whose face had gone grey with hunger. Their fangs were down. Their eyes fixed on Stellan and stayed there.

The silver-haired woman stopped a few feet away. “Is it truly you?”

“It is.” Stellan stepped into the rain. “You’re safe inside. All of you.”

“The summons carried your blood,” she said. “It woke every oath I gave you, but my feet remained mine. We all could have turned away.”

One of the men gave a tired laugh. “I considered it. Then I decided I’d rather risk a trap than spend another century wondering whether my king was alive.”

The woman’s attention shifted to me. Rain caught in her pale lashes. “And you are?”

“Bryony.”