Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,122

what you’re trying to say is, we should forgive Priest.”

My heart pinches at the memory of Saxon being shoved to the damp earth. No matter how much I try, there’s been no forgetting that moment. And I’ve tried, over and over again, since leaving London. Since reading the message that he sent me, only to realize that he’d purposely cut off all other communication.

The damned man thought of everything.

On a whisper, I admit, “I think that he’s spent his entire life putting the Crown first. Tricking me into that cell was the equivalent of him jumping from the tree. Or, in my case, pulling the trigger on the king.”

But unlike Peter, who whined and griped about his scratchy skin beneath the hard plaster, or even me, who took to hiding in plain sight, Saxon faced down the consequences and flashed it the appropriate two fingers—knowing, all the while, that it would lead to his own demise.

I chose you, he told me. I chose you.

“Don’t cry,” Josie murmurs from beside me, her arm snaking around my waist, “please don’t cry.”

“I’m not.”

Peter kicks my foot with his. “You definitely are.”

Blast it, not again.

With my knuckles, I wipe away the dampness from beneath my eyes. “I’m all right. See?” The smile I give them threatens to crack my cheeks in two, as if I’m made of porcelain and not human flesh. “Just fine. Really.”

“You love him.”

“I-I—”

“You love him,” Peter repeats, harder this time.

My vision shimmers and my breath quickens, and tearfully, I confess, “I do. I love him with everything that I am.”

And then I crumble, right there before them both. For years, I’ve held myself composed. The rock of the family. The foundation keeping us all afloat. Any hope of turning my emotions to stone disintegrates completely when Peter takes the empty cushion beside mine, hugging me on one side while Josie maintains her post on my right.

Their arms surround me, a tight cocoon.

For the first time since Mum and Dad died, and I stepped up as head of the family, I let my siblings catch me.

And then, as true siblings do, Peter coughs not so delicately into my neck, muttering, “You really need a shower.”

“I was just thinking that,” Josie says, on the other side of me. “It’s quite bad.”

“Like rubbish.”

“No, like B.O.”

Laughter climbs my throat. “I can hear everything you two are saying.”

Peter grumbles, “I’m hoping you’ll get the point.”

“The point being,” Josie adds, patting my leg like I’m a dog, “that I want crisps more than anything and you need a shower. Immediately. Right now. Before I pass out from sitting too close to you.”

“Duly noted.” Chuckling for what feels like the first time in weeks, I push up from the sofa and smooth my palms over my shirt. Maybe this is what we need—the chance to eat out like nothing is wrong, that I’m not a criminal on the loose, or that my heart wasn’t captured by the devil himself.

I can pretend, for a few hours, that I’m happy.

“Isla?”

At Josie’s sweet-tempered voice, I turn on my heel. “Yes?”

Her blue eyes pin me in place. “Everything you’ve done, everything that you’ve sacrificed . . . We would do the same for you.”

Perhaps it was an omen, foreshadowing at its finest, that Josie would repeat the same words that I said to her, weeks ago.

It takes twenty minutes for me to wash all the grime from my body.

Another five before we’re on the road.

And only thirty seconds for Peter to switch on the radio and for us all to hear the same, bone-chilling announcement: “The Metropolitan Police have just come forward with a shocking update on the murder of Reverend William Bootham. During a second autopsy, which was apparently required after complications with the first, dried blood was discovered under Bootham’s fingernails. Police Commissioner Marcus Guthram has confirmed that Isla Quinn, whose flat Bootham was discovered in, is no longer a suspect in the case. The DNA belongs to the infamous anti-loyalist, Saxon Priest.”

“Isla! Isla.”

Hands slide over mine, gripping tightly, and twist the car back into the two-lane road.

“Pull over.” Peter’s tone leaves no room for rebuttal. “Isla, pull the bloody car over right now. You can’t drive like this.”

With trembling hands, I pull the car over, rolling into a grassy embankment.

“He lied,” Josie says from the backseat. “Saxon didn’t kill the priest, did he?”

Leaning forward, Peter drops his forehead onto his upturned hands. “No. He took the blame, so—”

“I would go free,” I whisper. Free of Father Bootham, he’d