Chapter 31 · Crowned in Ash

"Don't touch the crown." Julian caught my wrist before my fingers reached the black metal.

His grip was hot. Too hot for a man who had spent the last hour bleeding onto a stone floor.

I looked down at his hand, then up at him. "You want to try that again?"

"Gladly." He stepped between me and the crown. His shoulder blocked the seal set into the wall behind him. "Put one finger on it, and every guardian left in this city will come for your throat."

"They already came for my throat. Your people put a blade through my mother and called it a holy judgment."

His jaw tightened. "My people didn't do that."

"Your father did."

The words hit harder than my knife ever had. Julian's fingers closed around my wrist, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me he could.

The crown sat on a slab of scorched stone between us. It wasn't gold. It was darker than that, made from thin black bands twisted around a pale center.