Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

Two nights after the blood moon, the court gathered for a black wedding. Maria still felt the cost of pulling every heart in the city. Her hands shook. Her blood ran thin. But her father commanded her to attend, so she stood beneath the crimson banner with the black dragon. The great red marble column rose beside her, its gold dragon base catching the torchlight. Ali Gamal was to marry Carmilla de Styria. Maria did not trust the match. Maria knew Ali well. He was Dracula's inventor, the pale Egyptian who built every weapon her people carried. He spoke in short, plain sentences and never lied. She had also seen what Carmilla did to men. The Styrian countess ruled a room with her voice. She used love the way Maria used blood. This was no wedding. It was a trap dressed in lace. Ali climbed the grand stair to reach the altar. Carmilla waited above him in black. When Ali spoke his vow, his voice cracked wrong. His eyes went dull. Maria watched his heartbeat drift off its rhythm, tugged toward Carmilla. She had bent his mind. "Stop," Ali said suddenly. He gripped his own throat. "You made me sign it. The patronage. The audience. I never agreed." His nails tore at his robe. "I gave you my prototype. I gave you enough." "You gave me your name at court," Carmilla said. "You gave me a claim on Styria. Now you give me a husband's oath." Ali lunged at her. His control was gone. Carmilla's guards drew steel. Two of them ran him through against the red column. Black blood spread across the marble. The court screamed and scattered. Carmilla stood calm above the fight, her hand still raised, still bending the men who fought for her. Maria felt her chance. She could not raise the dead this way. Not with her reserves drained. But she could still pull the living. She reached across the hall and found the guards' hearts. She seized their blood and locked their arms. They froze mid-swing, twitching. Then she turned to Carmilla. Maria did not crush her. She pulled Carmilla's own blood down, dragging her to her knees on the stair. The countess gasped. Her hold on the guards broke. "Your voice does not work on blood," Maria said. "You cannot charm what I already hold." Ali slid down the column, dying. Maria knelt and pressed her hand to his wound. She had no power left to raise the dead, but she could still move his blood back into him and hold it there. She kept his heart beating with her own will alone. Ali lived. Carmilla knelt broken before the whole court, exposed as a killer and a fraud. But Maria felt the emptiness in her chest. She had spent the last of herself keeping one man alive. Now Ali's failing prototype, the daylight machine, had no maker who could finish it. And Carmilla would not forget who put her on her knees.