Page 18 of Blood Curse

“I was in France by dawn.”

“Adrian sent you there?”

“I doubt he cared where I landed.” Mara’s eyes hardened. “I came back. The roads turned me around. Maps changed while I held them. Once I walked towards Harrowmere for nine days and arrived at the same inn every night.”

Bryony glanced at the glowing windows. “An exclusion ward.”

“A vicious one,” Mara said. “We could remember this place. We could remember him. We simply couldn’t find either.”

I heard the part she left out. “Who is we?”

“Whoever survived Adrian’s temper and the last century.”

Faces rose in my memory before I could stop them. Soldiers who had laughed too loudly in the kitchens. Courtiers who had complained about my decrees and obeyed them anyway. Servants who had smuggled extra blankets into the village every winter. I had mourned them as one blurred loss because remembering them separately hurt too much. Now some of them might be walking towards us.

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

“You came alone.”

“I was closest. And I don’t travel at the speed I did when you last saw me.”

“You’re still fast enough to assault an injured man.”

“I made an effort.”

Bryony almost smiled. “What broke the ward?”

Mara nodded towards her Crown. “That did. I felt the hiding spell tear apart, then the summons showed me the road. Not an order. More like a door thrown open.”

“So anyone who answers is choosing to come,” Bryony said.

“Yes.”

That mattered to her. It mattered to me too.

Footsteps sounded behind us. Lenora came from the throne room carrying her wooden case and two lengths of clean cloth.

She stopped when she saw Mara.

“You took your time,” Lenora said.

Mara stared. “You got old.”

“And you remained rude.”

“It’s comforting to know some things survived.”

Lenora’s brief smile vanished as she held out the cloth. “If you’re here to help, Adrian’s body still needs moving.”

“Gladly.”

We returned to the throne room. Adrian lay near the lowest step, one arm flung towards the place where the Crown had killed him. Death had made the bastard quiet. It had done nothing to improve him.

The room already felt less like his. The old standards had begun to show through the soot along the walls, silver thread catching in the new lamplight. I remembered Mara standing guard under those colours while pretending not to listen to council meetings. I remembered Cecily laughing on the steps. The memories belonged here, but they didn’t get to decide what came next.

Bryony stopped beside the body. Her expression held disgust, not sorrow.