Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,58

my back into the building that lines the snicket. My teeth chatter from the chill that’s swept over my body. The longer we move, the colder I become. The adrenaline ditched me somewhere near the Stepney Tube station, leaving nothing behind but festering fear and mounting dread.

What have I done?

“Saxon.” When he doesn’t answer, I reach for his back, laying a hand on his spine to snag his attention. The contact to my throbbing palm has me hissing out a short, uneven breath. “Saxon, please. Where are we going?”

With his hair plastered to his temple, and his skin pebbled with pearls of rain, Saxon looks like an ancient warlord reincarnated. Broad shoulders, hard chest, thick thighs. The scarred mouth and intense stare that he levels on me only fuels the feeling that he could save me, or break me, if he so chose.

He indicates the opposite side of the street with a tilt of his chin. “There.”

Slack-jawed, I stare at the appointed brick building.

It’s not unlike the tens of others we’ve passed in the last half hour. A phone shop on the ground floor—two stories above it. Narrow, single-paned windows meshed with a decided lack of character or charm. From our vantage point, it’s hard not to miss the crumbling brick façade and the string of rubbish strewn along the pavement. The store’s windows are completely boarded up.

My own flat isn’t exactly posh, but this . . . “It’s a hellhole.”

Saxon leverages a hand over his pistol, re-holstering it in one smooth move. “Tonight, it’s our hellhole.”

“You’re taking the piss, aren’t you.”

“Not even a little.”

“The ceiling looks like it might cave in at any second!”

“Only imagine the opportunities if it did,” Saxon murmurs, slicking a wet hand over my shoulder and giving me a nudge forward. “Chances to fake your own death don’t come around every day.”

I take it back. All of it.

Saxon Priest isn’t a coldhearted bastard—he’s certifiably mad.

Tempted as I am to dig my heels in and demand that he bring me home, I trail him across the busy street. Home is dangerous . . . or it soon will be. Realistically, it’s only a matter of time before the survivor from The Octagon gives the police our identities. And while the Priest brothers seem to have experience with successfully erasing themselves from the public eye—or, at least, the internet—the same can’t be said for me. Even after killing the king, I carried on with my routine, hoping that acting normal would translate to normal all around.

Simply put, I’m fucked.

Throwing a hasty glance to the right for oncoming traffic, I spot The Shard’s hazy silhouette on the horizon. It stretches toward the sky like a beacon—of what, I have no idea. Stability, perhaps. Normalcy. Not that any part of this day has been remotely normal.

“You do have a key, don’t you?” I ask.

He approaches the run-down phone shop with quick, measured strides.

“Saxon?” I scurry behind him, picking up the pace. “Saxon, breaking and entering is not going to be what turns this day around for the better. Do you know the owner? Are they on our side? Because I’m telling you right now, I hope you trust them with everything that you are, or we are so fu—”

I grind to a halt when he stops before the shop’s front door, swipes his dark hair back from his face, and waits.

I almost miss it. No, I would have missed it, had I blinked a second earlier. The door—the glass door—reflects Saxon’s grim expression before turning a shade of red along the perimeter of his body. An outline of glowing neon that dims a moment later.

What the hell?

Slowly, the door cracks open as though invisible hands have tugged on the handle from the inside. Saxon pushes it wide. “Go in.”

Déjà vu.

Not for the crazy, high-tech door or this wild, insane day, but for him.

The car, the confessional, this boarded-up phone shop. Each time he’s told me some variation of “get in,” I’ve found myself more deeply embroiled in this world of chaos. This time, unlike the others, however, I don’t have the luxury of turning him down—not that I’ve done so, yet.

Within hours, I’ll be a wanted woman. A criminal. Just as I feared after murdering King John.

I slip past Saxon, my fingertips accidentally grazing his hip as I knot the fabric of my shirt to squeeze out the excess rainwater. “Well, are you going to explain how all that worked?”

He closes the door behind us, flipping the deadbolt. “Security