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I drove the dagger into my palm again, but it was ready for the pain now. Red light locked my wrist before the cut could deepen.

The command tore out of me.

“Every vampire in the Night Hall except Stellan will seize him.”

The words landed complete.

Pale bands snapped around the court.

Twenty bodies turned towards him.

Then the Night Hall erupted.

36

STELLAN

The young vampire by the wall reached me first.

He launched across the fallen table with both hands stretched towards my throat. The Crown was using his speed, his strength and the one purpose it forced into him. It hadn’t given him any sense of self-preservation.

I caught his wrists, turned with his momentum and sent him sliding across the tabletop instead of into the stone.

Three more bodies replaced him.

The Night Hall became hands, teeth and pale bands of command. Chairs overturned. Glass broke under boots. The fire threw wild shadows across faces I had known for years and others I had met only after the gate opened.

Every one of them was trying to take hold of me.

Every one of them was fighting the movement.

The woman from beside the kneeling man grabbed for my coat. Her fingers curled into claws halfway there. She jerked her arm wide, missed my ribs and tore a strip from the tablecloth instead.

A man lunged past her. I ducked under his arms and drove my shoulder into his stomach. He folded over me. I lifted, twisted and put him on the floor without letting his head strike.

Someone caught my hair.

I pulled free, leaving several silver strands in a fist that closed again.

Fangs flashed near my cheek. I struck an open palm into the vampire’s chest and threw him backwards into two others. They fell together, swearing as the Crown forced them up again.

I had ruled this court, abandoned it and returned to find it stronger than I deserved.

Apparently tonight I was also responsible for throwing it into furniture gently.

Elias came through the bodies on my left.

He didn’t waste strength fighting the command all at once. His shoulders stayed rigid while the rest of him moved, each step fractionally slower than it should be. The Crown drove his right hand towards the healing wound in my side.

He knew exactly where my healing remained weak.

Of course it chose the physician.

I blocked his wrist. His other hand closed around my forearm, and the command flared over his chest.

“Three fingers,” he forced out.

That was all the warning I got.