Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,118

a Godwin, a Priest, the foundation of this godforsaken agency. You betrayed the Crown, not me.”

I smell the scent of whisky before I feel the telltale shape of a pistol on the nape of my neck. “Which is a crime punishable by death, according to Holyrood,” Paul says, drawing the pistol north until it sits at the back of my head. A silent threat. One wrong move of his finger and my brains will paint the night red. Boom. “How many agents have you killed for this exact transgression, Priest? Can you even count them all?”

Only two.

A number lower than expected, considering how many of us have sworn to serve the royal family, all across the country. I don’t regret much in life but them—Quill and Sanders—I do, still. Years later.

Tonight, the miscreant group of Holyrood spies, who have turned on the Crown, gains another reluctant member.

Me.

I don’t know what love is. Not the sort of love, at any rate, that appears on television with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or slow dances spent under the starry skies. What I feel is darker. Animalistic. The tightening sensation in my gut and the burn in my heart as though she’s personally set fire to the organ. I understand stark possession. Frenzied desire, too. I understand that, with Isla, I’m driven by an unidentifiable motive that asks for nothing in return—not a favor given, nor a favor owed. All I know is that as I stand here now, with my life hanging in the balance, there’s only relief swimming in my chest because she’s free.

Free to live.

Free to breathe.

Free to find love with a different man, a better man, who’s capable of sweeping her off her feet and buying the chocolates and the flowers and anything else she might ever want.

And that is enough.

It has to be.

Inviting death to the circle, I bow my head and drop one knee to the ground, then the other. Blood from my wound coats my sleeve. My pistol, the same one I’ve kept on me since returning from Paris, remains in my holster like dismissed sentry.

“Let’s not pretend,” I husk out, “that you haven’t been waiting for this moment for years.”

There’s an audible swallow from Paul and the distant, familiar whine of the drawbridge from the main house lowering. No doubt whoever it is will be joining the hunting party—where I’m the only course ready to be served.

“You’re mad, Priest. Utterly mad.” The pistol jams into my skull, making my ears ring. “You broke the law. You committed a crime. Don’t put any of that on me.”

“I’m accepting my due, aren’t I?”

“Your father would be disappointed in everything that you are,” he grinds out, ignoring Jude and Benji, his attention trained solely on me. “He died for the Crown and here you are, spitting in his memory for a woman who is everything that we—”

A scream splits through the night.

Masculine. Infused with pain.

Loud, so loud and so close, that it echoes in my ears, slow realization subsequently dawning that I’m sprawled out on the ground with Paul’s weight atop me. My chin slams into the dirt, coating my lips, the roof of my mouth.

Christ.

“Kill him,” declares a familiar, gruff voice, “and I’ll shove this knife straight into your heart and gut you where you stand.”

Damien.

Grasping fistfuls of dirt, I shove Paul off me and roll onto my hands and knees. One glimpse of the older man reveals the blunt handle of a knife sticking out from his thick, flabby shoulder.

Stunned, my gaze snaps to my brother. “You stabbed him.”

“Old bastard doesn’t know how to die,” Damien mutters, bending at the hip to rip the blade straight from Paul’s back. Ignoring the man’s anguished wail, Damien wipes the bloodied edge of the knife across his sleeve. Then, “Guy wants you out.”

Are you in or out?

Guy had asked me that before. Holyrood or Isla. Him and Damien or Isla.

I choose her. Always, always her.

Climbing to my feet, I purposely show my back to Jude and Benji. Of all people for them to support, fucking Jayme Paul. “Naturally. The Crown must always come first.”

Catching my sarcasm, Damien’s blue eyes appear almost translucent under the cast of the moon. “He heard what you did about that priest, Bootham.”

The muscles along my spine go taunt. “I did what I had to do.”

“You’re a dead man walking,” my younger brother tells me, re-holstering the knife to his forearm, “a total liability.”

I toss a look toward where the Palace is, behind the swath of