Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,39

deceptively mild. “Working for one of Saxon’s many projects to take down the Crown?”

If she’s surprised by Guy jumping straight to the chase, she doesn’t show it. “Something like that, yes.”

“How intriguing.”

And then he turns to look at me, and it’s only through an entire lifetime of knowing him that I read every bloody thought crossing his mind.

I’ve never pulled an outsider into Holyrood business, and certainly never a woman like Isla.

Never. Not once in over a decade.

He knows it, just as I do.

Guy smiles. It’s slow and crooked and just this side of menacing, and the invisible ropes cinch tight, threatening to cut off circulation. “Has he told you everything, then?” he asks Isla while still staring at me. “How we’ve spent years working toward protecting the—”

“Guy.”

He stops, lifts a brow, and there it is, in all its glory of complete self-destruction: the ultimatum he’s prepared to throw in my face should I not back down.

Either I agree that I won’t put myself in more danger by personally protecting Queen Margaret or he’ll tell Isla, who believes in the allure of the Priests, that we’re loyalists at heart, loyalists bound by a duty spanning over a century. He’s crazy enough to do it, too, of that I have no doubt.

I want to murder him.

But would you act any differently if the roles were reversed?

I want to say yes. I want to believe that I would put the queen above all else, but that isn’t true. My brothers come first. They will always come first, no matter what—the queen and the monarchy be damned.

Bitterness and acceptance rise in my chest as I issue a short nod of acquiescence.

Guy grins for real this time, relief flickering through his blue eyes before he turns toward Isla and lies through his teeth: “We’ve used The Bell & Hand as a stronghold for anti-loyalists since we opened it. It’s the only thing like it in the City. Have another drink, and I’ll tell you everything.”

14

Isla

Saxon hasn’t taken his eyes off me since his brother invited me to another drink.

Leaning against the cabinets, he grips the lip of the counter in a pose that’s deceptively casual: heavy boots crossed at the ankle; arm muscles corded and straining under the thin fabric of his shirt; head dipped just so, so he can keep vigilant watch over me while his brother rambles on about The Bell & Hand and its origins.

Awareness ripples down my spine, no matter that he’s only in my periphery.

I feel him.

Feel his sharp gaze blazing a trail over my frame. Feel his desire to drop his hands onto my shoulders and keep me seated on the bar stool. I don’t need to look in his direction to know that he’s questioning why I’ve shown up a full day before we were scheduled to meet.

With my stomach tied in knots, I roll the tumbler between my hands and watch the amber whisky coat the glass, like water coasting over the shoreline, desperate to hold on but unable to resist the pull of the sea demanding its inevitable return.

“Enough about us,” Saxon’s brother says, elbows propped up on the kitchen island. He swirls his whisky, wrist hitched idly as he watches me with vivid blue eyes. “Where are you from, Isla? The City?”

Something tells me that this was his plan all along, to lull me into complacency with liquor and some harmless storytelling before turning the tables around and digging into my life. I don’t blame him—clearly, this is a quasi-interview of sorts to prove that I’m not some elaborate loyalist schemer plotting to bring the Priest brothers down.

Even so, I don’t trust Guy worth a damn.

I don’t trust the way his hard, unforgiving gaze brushes over me, as though he would like nothing more than to toss me, arse-first, out of his flat—despite the fact that he smiles congenially and pours me another shot as though we’re all good mates.

And I don’t trust the way he tore into his brother either.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Saxon, it’s that he doesn’t cater to the bullshit. He says it how it is, or he says nothing at all. Dad always told me that power resides in silence, and I’ve never felt that to be truer than when I turned to Saxon, swept my eyes over him, and watched vulnerability skate through his unholy gaze.

He said nothing and yet . . .

And yet, I’d felt his rage as my own, as though it were a