Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,56

my palm, the metallic scent of drawn blood hanging in the air.

Move.

Move now!

I move, ignoring my quivering limbs and growing fatigue, and hook my legs around Coney’s hips. Using his surprise to my advantage, I roll him beneath me and pin his legs down. Alarm splices across his face and he struggles against the restraint of my legs hooked over his, but I hold on. I hold on. Self-preservation kicks in, overruling all else, and I circle my hands around his neck, the same as he did to me.

And I squeeze.

Until his face turns a ghastly, unnatural shade of purple. Until my arms beg for relief. Until I feel tears coat my cheeks because maybe I could convince myself that I wasn’t a murderer after shooting King John, but now I have two victims, and there’s no hiding from the truth staring back at me with lifeless brown eyes and bruises shaped like my thumbprints already blooming on his throat.

I shot King John.

I strangled Professor Ian Coney.

Saxon’s words from yesterday haunt me now: Sometimes we simply amount to what we’ve always been destined to become.

A ragged, watery sob catches in my throat, just as strong arms wrap around my waist. “We have to go,” Saxon grunts in my ear, “right now. Before the Met gets here.”

He lifts me off Coney’s dead body.

I struggle to breathe. “I killed him. Saxon, oh God, I killed him.”

Large hands frame my face, jerking my attention up to meet pale green eyes. “You’re alive. Right now, focus on that.” His nose bumps mine as his thumbs cradle the hollows behind my jawbone. “We’re going to run. Do you hear me, Isla? If you can’t do it, I’ll carry you myself. But we have to go now.”

So, I run, with only one glance back at The Octagon.

Beauty meets chaos. Heaven meets hell.

And dead bodies litter the ground.

We weave through campus, my hand clasped in Saxon’s, the heavy rain erasing our sins.

My over-imaginative brain paints nonexistent faces in the windows, all gawking at us as we run past, cataloging our bloody clothes and the tears streaking down my face and Saxon’s hard expression that never once cracks.

Has the Met been called yet?

No sooner have I had the thought than sirens break through the monotony of rain pelting pavement.

Saxon slows, his head twisting as though he’s pinpointing exactly where the sirens are coming from, and then he drags me to the right. I stumble over an overgrown tree root. “Go,” he bites out, pushing me in front of him.

My gaze flies over the narrow snicket. A metal dumpster sits on the opposite end, blocking the exit. “That’s not going to work. There’s no way we’ll be able to get out—”

“We’re going to crawl.” Hand to the space between my shoulder blades, he pushes me forward. “Unless you want to be caught when those coppers come barreling down on us.”

As if to prove his point, the sirens escalate, louder and louder, until one police cruiser, then the next, flies down the campus road we just vacated.

“Get down,” Saxon growls, “before the next one happens to look over and sees us fucking meandering our way to safety.”

This time, I don’t defy him.

I drop to my hands and knees and crawl my arse toward the dumpster. Gravel bites into my wounded palm, and I try not to think about the possible infection I’ll be battling if I don’t clean it soon.

Fighting off the urge to whimper, I opt for a desperate dose of humor. “So, come here often?”

A big hand lands on my arse, just short of slapping the cheek, and urges me to move faster. “Only you would crack jokes at a time like this.”

I keep my eyes on the ground in front of me, evading shards of broken glass. “It’s either that or cry. I’m doing us both a favor.”

“I don’t need any favors,” he snarls, and immediately, I’m assaulted by the visual of livid, unholy eyes and a scarred, tortured mouth bearing down on me, from behind, “I need you fucking alive.”

My heart skips a beat. “Because you care?”

“Crawl, Isla,” is his curt response.

We reach the dumpster, and Saxon moves around me, up onto his knees. The rain has dampened his shirt to the point of translucency. Muscles stacked upon muscles, which are put on more prominent display when he reaches toward his hip and retrieves a gun from its holster. Pistol in one hand, he dips a hand into his pocket and reveals the bloody hilt of