A murmur of dark excitement rippled through the hall.
“I kept you alive,” he said quietly. “The court wanted you bled dry on the first night. I gave you a room with a window. I gave you books. I gave you time .”
He removed his crown—a circlet of thorns that had grown into his brow—and set it on the throne. Blood welled from the punctures, but he did not flinch.
A shallow line across his palm. His blood welled up, black as ink, and when it touched her skin, the binding screamed —then went silent. court of blood and bindings vk
“I cannot.” His silver eyes met hers, and for the first time, she saw something beneath the cruelty: exhaustion. “The binding is not a leash I hold. It is a lock we both wear. If I break it without the Tithe, you die. If I perform the Tithe wrong, I die. And if I do nothing…” He touched her cheek, and this time she did not flinch. “The magic will devour us both from the inside.”
For the first time in three years, Kaelen breathed freely.
Her legs obeyed. Not because she wanted to, but because the binding hummed low in her throat, a command disguised as a suggestion. She walked down the central aisle, past the sneering consorts and the fanged courtiers who drank from crystal goblets of wine that was too red to be grape. A murmur of dark excitement rippled through the hall
“Then release me.”
She was the entertainment.
Kaelen had learned to breathe it without flinching. After three years as a ward of the Night Prince, small horrors lost their sting. But tonight, the great hall was fuller than she had ever seen. Chandeliers of black iron held flames that burned violet, casting long, hungry shadows across the marble floor. Nobles in crimson silks and barbed silver masks watched her with eyes that gleamed like coins at the bottom of a well. I gave you a room with a window
Riven rose. He was taller than memory allowed, and when he stepped down, the torches flickered as if bowing. He circled her slowly, the claws of his gauntlets grazing the air near her throat.
Three years ago, on her eighteenth birthday, her own father had sold her bloodline’s last debt. Not with a sword or a cage, but with a single cut of a silver knife across her palm. Riven had tasted the droplet, whispered a word in a language older than the mountains, and just like that, Kaelen was no longer a person.