Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,3

Priest,” she hisses, her own fingers jotting upward, as though to make a grab for the fake hair, despite being a second too late.

With casual dismissiveness, Guy tosses the wig to the side, where it slides across the floor and catches under the leg of the coffee table. Only then does he offer a dramatic dip of his head, playing the part of ever-dutiful servant.

For fuck’s sake.

The queen’s blond hair is in disarray, locks strewn this way and that and sticking up like prey confronted by something bigger, meaner. “That—that was unacceptable. If my father—”

“Your father’s dead, Princess.”

Princess. As if she didn’t watch her father be brutally shot down in front of her—and an entire rally—just two months ago. The blood that spattered her face and clothing in the aftermath has been stitched into every highlight reel on the telly ever since. I look at her now, eyeing her expression critically, and wonder how many times she’s tried to eviscerate the memory.

Hundreds, I imagine.

More, probably.

And now my brother, ass that he’s been since birth, is throwing sludge in the already gaping wound.

I elbow him to the side. “What Guy means to say is that you shouldn’t be here, Your Majesty.” I shoot a pointed, fucking-behave-yourself look in my brother’s direction. Nothing in his expression gives me any reason to believe that we’re on the same page. Blowing out a frustrated breath, I give him my back. “It’s too dangerous. You ought to have gone through the usual channels. We put Clarke with you for a reason.”

Queen Margaret flinches, and I nearly start a mental countdown for the inevitable hysterics. “I needed to come here myself,” she says, her voice nothing stronger than a break in the wind. “Your father . . . I remember that he used to visit St. James’s whenever there was something troublesome to discuss.”

It’s my turn to withhold a flinch.

I step back, putting distance between myself and the queen before I do something regrettable. Like remind her that it’s my family that’s been sacrificed time and again for the sake of hers.

Sacrificed, splintered, and forever altered.

“Those days are over.” I move to the sink, then pour myself a glass of water from the faucet. I don’t drink it, but it’s best to focus on something else when I speak, otherwise the words might stop coming. Just as they did when the blessed king branded me. Habit has me wanting to lift my fingers to the raised flesh behind my ear. Self-control, however, wins out. As always. “We run a pub widely known for its political leanings. What do you think would happen if someone caught us at St. James’s? Hell, if someone catches you here?”

“Boom,” Guy answers, his thumb cocking the safety of a fake finger pistol that he touches to his temple. Then, planting his hands flat on the counter, he juts his chin forward and stares the queen down. “We don’t exist to you, Princess. This”—he shuffles a finger between them—“shouldn’t be happening. We’ve spent years establishing this place, its reputation . . . our reputation.”

“Which is what?” she asks softly.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Guy leans in, wordlessly baiting her to do the same—the way I’ve seen him do countless times in the past, just before he snatches a man by the shirt collar and bashes his head against the closest flat surface. But instead of pulling that maneuver, the same one he taught me the summer I turned eleven, he only issues a slow, humorless smile. “We want to see you break.”

She flinches again.

Weak, so fucking weak.

If I weren’t so desperate to keep my country from crumbling, I’d tell the queen exactly what I think of her: she’s timid, as poor a fit for the throne as her deranged father was before her. He ruled as a dictator and, so far, she’s ruled like she’s terrified of her own shadow. We’d all be better off with her still prancing about in the Scottish countryside, doing whatever the hell she’s been doing for the last twenty-some years. With the monarchy disassembled—

No.

The condensation on the glass dampens my palm, turning it slick like the blood that coated my nape when King John carved a number into my flesh.

502.

The fifth generation of spies in my family to work alongside the Crown under the umbrella of Holyrood, an off-the-books agency that was originally named after the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. It’s where my great-great-grandfather was awarded a medal of valor after saving Prince Robert’s life during the