Vera’s POV
The throne room no longer felt like a place of governance. It felt like a fault line.
I stood at its center, the crown absent from my head but present everywhere else, and held the space together through force of will alone. Old alliances fractured openly now, polite language stripped away in favor of accusation and demand.
“Silence,” I said, not loudly, but with intent.
The word carried farther than it should have, pressing into the crowd like a physical force. Some voices faltered. Others continued, louder now, as if defiance itself might anchor them against what they sensed rising.
Lord Varrin surged forward, his face flushed, his composure long gone. “This cannot continue, Your Majesty. The Rite was violated. A consort collapsed. The wards are unstable. Someone must be held accountable.”
Lady Anselma countered sharply from the opposite side of the room. “The Rite failed because it was interrupted. If the triad had been completed, the instability you fear would already be contained.”
The Blood Monarch stirred beneath my ribs, irritated and alert. I felt its attention shift through the room, cataloguing threats, noting which voices carried fear and which carried hunger.
“Do not speak as if this is theoretical,” I said, my voice tight with restraint. “A man nearly died.”
“He was unfit,” Varrin snapped. “It happened because the existing consort could not withstand what the realm requires.”
Lucien’s absence was a wound in my awareness, raw and burning. I could feel him through the Anchor, moving, alive, furious, but not here. That absence made every accusation land harder.
Another noble shouted, “Execute Voss for treason! He overstepped ancient law. He tampered with the sovereign current.”
A different voice answered just as loudly, “Execution would plunge us into chaos. He is the only stabilizing force left. Your Majesty must submit to the bond and finish what was begun.”
Submit.
The room surged with noise again, demands colliding, fear escalating into something dangerously close to violence. I felt it then, clearly and terribly—the moment when I could end this.
One command. One deliberate release of authority.
I could force them to kneel. I could still every voice, every doubt, and impose peace the way storms impose silence on a field. The Blood Monarch leaned into the thought eagerly, showing me how simple it would be, how clean.
My hands trembled.
The hunger surged, hot and persuasive, whispering that tyrants were only monsters when they ruled without reason, and I had reason. I had chaos pressing at my doors, blood already spilled, a realm teetering on the edge of fracture. I could save them from themselves.
“No,” I whispered, the word barely audible even to myself.
My knees threatened to buckle as the power recoiled inward, frustrated and unsatisfied. I gripped the arm of the throne behind me, steadying myself without sitting, refusing even that small symbol of retreat.
“This assembly will not decide my bonds,” I said, raising my voice again, forcing control back into it through sheer discipline. “Nor will it decide guilt based on fear.”
Varrin sneered. “Then you condemn us to instability.”
“I condemn you to patience,” I shot back. “Which is far more dangerous to those who profit from panic.”
The crowd rippled, anger and fear mixing into something volatile. I could feel how close it all was to tipping, how little stood between shouted argument and drawn blades.
That was when Darius stepped forward.
He moved calmly through the chaos, his presence cutting a path without force, without command. The nobles nearest him parted instinctively, relief flashing across their faces as if his proximity itself were a promise.
I felt the Blood Monarch react immediately. The hunger leaned toward him, not blindly, not desperately, but with intent. My stomach twisted with equal parts revulsion and need.
“Your Majesty,” Darius said, his voice steady and measured, pitched to carry without provoking. “This does not need to end in blood.”
I glared at him. “You have already spilled enough.”
His expression did not harden. If anything, it softened, concern carefully calibrated. “What happened in the Rite was not my intention. The current surged beyond prediction.”
“You reached for control where none was granted.”
“I reached for stabilization,” he said evenly. “The realm is fracturing, and you are carrying the fault lines alone.”
A murmur of agreement moved through the chamber, subtle but unmistakable. I felt it like fingers brushing my spine.
“You see,” he continued, gesturing lightly to the divided nobles, “they are already choosing sides. Execution will martyr me. Submission will enrage them differently. Neither option restores balance.”
“And your solution does?” I demanded.
“If you allow me to finish what was begun,” he answered simply.
The words sent a jolt through me, sharp and unwelcome.
“You would complete the bond,” I said. “After what you did to Lucien.”
Darius met my gaze without flinching. “Lucien resisted a structure that was already moving. I regret the cost, but the alternative was collapse.”
The Blood Monarch stirred again, hunger sharpening, drawn to the certainty in his tone, to the promise of relief embedded in his words.
“You speak of collapse,” I said, my voice low, “as if I have not been holding this realm together since the moment my blood changed.”
“And you have,” he replied. “Brilliantly. But brilliance is exhausting. Let me carry some of it.”
The temptation wrapped itself around my ribs, heavy and insidious. I could feel how easily the hunger could tip into acceptance, how quickly the chaos might quiet if I allowed him closer, allowed the bond to settle into the shape he offered.
Across the room, someone shouted again, “Finish the Rite! Restore the law!”
Another voice screamed back, “Kill him before he enslaves her!”
The guards tensed, hands drifting toward weapons, and the room teetered once more.
I felt the power rise instinctively, answering the threat, ready to impose order whether I asked it to or not. The Blood Monarch pushed forward, impatient now, showing me again how easily I could end this.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to feel Lucien through the Anchor, to remember the warmth of his devotion, the pain of his collapse, the hook I had felt inside my own ribs when he was taken.
When I opened them again, I met Darius’s gaze squarely.
“You are offering me peace at the cost of myself,” I said.
“I am offering you survival,” he replied. “It always changes those who achieve it.”
The hunger inside me leaned closer, curious, evaluating, drawn to the man who stood unafraid in the center of my storm. I felt it coil, testing the idea of yielding not out of weakness, but out of calculation.
Around us, the throne room trembled on the edge of violence, and I understood with brutal clarity how narrow my path had become.
I could dominate them all and end the conflict in an instant. Or, I could step closer to the man my blood wanted, and risk losing something I might never reclaim.
As Darius waited, calm amid the chaos, and the Blood Monarch’s hunger tilted unmistakably in his direction, I realized:
The threat was no longer whether I would rule. It was how I would choose to be fed.