Taming the Thorny Rose novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Judgement

The change took four breaths.

The first, he was my husband, swaying on the altar steps with a hand pressed to his chest.

The second, the grey went out of his eyes, and the red flooded in.

The third, his teeth lengthened, and the sound that left his throat was not a word.

On the fourth, he looked at the two hundred vampires in the ring, and he saw prey.

"Back," shouted the shaved-head guard.

"Everyone back!"

They scattered.

Some of them ran for the gap in the stones, and some of them crouched with their fangs bared.

Aldric dropped to all fours on the grass.

His shoulders heaved, his fingers dug furrows in the frozen ground, and the wind carried the smell of him across the circle.

The thing he was becoming had no name.

It was only hunger with a king's face.

Osric stepped back from the altar with a sigh of satisfaction.

"There," he said, to the Houses.

"You see it.

"The fever, in its glory.

"Good houses, the Rite must be completed before he reaches the gate."

He turned to me.

"The blade, Thorn.

"Unfit, and strike him now.

"It will be quick.

"Only the queen can end him, and you are the queen."

I looked at the king on the grass.

I thought about the book in the crypt.

I thought about my mother cutting his chains, with a silver knife in her lap and no fear in her face.

I took the Thorn blade from my belt.

The ring of hunters drew breath.

The loyal guards gripped their swords.

Osric's smile widened.

I walked up to the altar and laid the blade on the black stone, point toward the sky.

Then I took off my belt with the wire, the knives and the sheaths, and I dropped it on the grass.

"What are you doing?" said Osric.

"What my mother did."

I walked across the open turf toward my husband, and the entire world went quiet.

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