Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,50

still breathing.”

I don’t wait for a comeback, instead picking my way through tables and patrons, hope clinging to my icy heart that she’s simply caught up in conversation with Father Bootham.

But finding the priest in his office offers no reassurance.

His wide eyes glance up at me from behind his desk. “She left nearly an hour ago, Saxon. Told me that she was going directly to the pub to speak with you.”

“Fuck.”

The good father doesn’t even reprimand me for the language.

Cautiously, he settles his elbows on the desk and threads his fingers together. “I suspect I know where she’s gone.”

My gaze darts to his. “Tell me.”

The priest swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing roughly. “I told her . . . I told her that there’s been a—shall we say—a certain commotion at Queen Mary University recently.”

My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “Say that again.”

Father Bootham reaches up to tug at his priestly collar. “At Queen Mary, there’s been . . . some trouble.”

“Trouble involving what?” I demand, dread seeping into my veins like toxin.

“Not what but whom,” he says, still fiddling with his collar. “You, Saxon. The trouble involves you.”

The priest keeps rambling, but my brain is on a crash-course collision. Yesterday, Isla came to me with news that a group at Queen Mary wants me dead. I turned her away. Both for my own sake—killing loyalists is something I try to avoid at all costs, in respect for my own misguided vow to the Crown—and because the fact is, if I murdered every person who had it out for me, I would bathe in the blood of my enemies for the next two lifetimes.

But for her to hear the same story from Father Bootham, tangled with the irrefutable fact that she feels some strange compulsion to save me, there’s no doubt where she’s gone.

Isla Quinn isn’t a murderer, but that doesn’t mean she won’t find herself killed in the process of trying to do the honorable thing.

That strange, sickening sensation swirls in my gut once more. The one I felt when I spotted her curled in the fetal position in front of Buckingham Palace. And the one I felt, even stronger, when I dragged her into my arms for the first time and prayed that I might still find her alive.

I meet Father Bootham’s dark eyes. “Tell me everything. Now.”

18

Isla

As I pass the Clock Tower on Queen Mary’s campus, wind whips my hair into my mouth and rain turns the grass soggy beneath my feet.

If the weather’s anything to go by, coming here was a very bad decision.

“In, out,” I mutter to myself, for the third time since I got off the Tube.

That’s the plan, at least.

Father Bootham knew just enough to describe the group’s gathering place as a grand room with a domed ceiling and busts of literary figures peering down from the upper two galleries.

There’s only one place like it at Queen Mary: The Octagon.

Bowing my head to keep my face from being splashed by raindrops, I follow the paved path toward the back of the Queen’s Building. It’s eerily quiet out, the stormy weather keeping everyone indoors.

Everyone but me, that is.

Because you’re a stubborn fool.

No, not stubborn. Just incredibly persistent.

Saxon might not care to know what the plan is to kill him, but I do. I don’t allow myself time to reason out why that might be; nor do I allow myself time to dwell on the adrenaline rushing through my veins as I duck past a bicycle rack.

I visited The Octagon once with Peter for a concert, when he first started attending uni. The strings of the violin and cello and harp rose like heaven-sent chaos. Otherworldly. Beautiful. And amplified by the glass ceiling until it was impossible to feel anything but dwarfed by the splendor of each note. We’d sat at long, bench-style tables, alongside every other attendee.

Today that’s the last place I should be. I need to get myself to one of the two upper floors without being caught.

My feet slosh through a shallow puddle but I’m too busy scanning the side of the brick building to do anything but shake out my leg like a dog and keep trudging forward, ignoring the rain pelting down on my shoulders, ignoring the paranoia that sweeps around me, like a lover might, and demand that I turn around and leave.

I lock sight on the front door then search for another, more covert entrance than—

A hand comes down on my shoulder, hard enough to rattle my teeth.