Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,94

want to stay hidden forever. That’s not the sort of life any of us deserve. And, hell, Father Bootham deserved his ending least of all.

He did nothing wrong. Nothing besides believing in his queen and supporting her right to keep the throne. Now he’s dead, and I may as well have been the one to deliver the final blow.

“If we have any hope of coming out of this unscathed, we need to figure out how he was murdered,” I mutter beneath my breath.

Maybe he was slaughtered inside my flat. Maybe he was brought there after the deed was already done. Either way, my nerves twist and my calm disintegrates like a water balloon striking a hard surface, and it’s as I’m drawing in a deep rush of air that I catch a blur of navy blue launching toward Saxon.

“Peter, no!”

My brother ignores me completely.

His arm swings, fist at the ready, and aims for Saxon’s face. I flinch, expecting to hear the crunch of cartilage breaking or a pained growl from the man who brought me to orgasm, multiple times over, just an hour ago.

I should have known better.

With quick reflexes, Saxon bobs the punch, grabs Peter by the wrist, and yanks my brother around until his back is flush with Saxon’s chest. Bigger, stronger, Saxon binds an arm across Peter’s front, forcing my brother’s arms to dangle uselessly by his sides.

“Let me go, you bastard!” he cries, wriggling in Saxon’s immobile hold. “You did this. You did this.”

I step forward, only for narrowed green eyes to pin me in place. “Don’t move.”

At Saxon’s order, I go deathly still, my stare flitting to Peter, whose face crumples with misery. Red cheeks, flared nostrils. His eyes are squeezed shut but if they were open, I know they’d be bright with fury. And that fury would be directed at the wrong person. Saxon did nothing. He offered me a position when I begged. He saved me—twice—when I faced down the proverbial barrel and was seconds away from inevitable death. He brought us here and gave us shelter, when he could have easily walked away and wiped his hands clean of all things Quinn.

Saxon isn’t the devil in this situation.

No, that honor belongs only to me.

“Peter.” When he doesn’t so much as acknowledge my existence, I repeat, more urgently, “Peter, look at me.”

His blue eyes snap open, zeroing in on my frame. “I told you,” he says, the words escaping on an angry hiss, “I told you what would happen if you struck up with the bloody Priests and you didn’t listen!”

Behind him, a vein throbs in Saxon’s temple.

I defy his command and take another step in their direction, laser-focused on my brother. “You’re right, I didn’t listen. But it was my choice to make and I did what felt right.”

He barks out a humorless laugh. “How’s that worked out for you so far? You’ve killed a man and now another man—a priest, Isla, a fucking priest—is dead in our bloody flat. Who killed him, huh? You? Is all this talk just some elaborate ploy to play the victim card?”

My legs shake and my heart pounds feverishly fast and, still, I stand my ground, unwilling to break. “You know that I wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t you?” he snaps back, jutting his chin forward with rash teenage abandon. “After this last week, I don’t even know who you are. My sister isn’t irrational. My sister wouldn’t hurt anyone, let alone play God and take someone’s life. And my sister wouldn’t be fucking a goddamn Priest!”

Saxon’s grip on Peter visibly tightens, his features so frighteningly cold that I’m surprised my brother doesn’t immediately turn to ice. “You don’t know anything, lad. And if you speak to her like that one more time—”

“You’ll what?” Peter snaps, thrashing his arms but making no dent in Saxon’s ironclad hold. “You’ll fuck her again? We all heard. Me, Josie. The bloody queen probably heard.” Angry blue eyes land on my face. “You had it all, Isla. The job, the money. Maybe we weren’t rich but killing people? You talk about it like it’s nothing. I figured the self-defense thing was a lie—an exaggeration, maybe—but now I know that it isn’t true at all. Mum and Dad would be disappointed, you know that?” He spits at my feet. “You aren’t the girl they raised. You’re not even half of that girl.”

Air seesaws in my chest, clouding my vision until all I see is the boy who I held throughout the night when