Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis
Rowena
London, England
Flames nip at my heels and smoke incinerates my lungs.
I should flee.
Should run as far away as my feet can carry me—but I’m a fool. A loyal fool who values a twenty-year-old friendship over my own life, no matter the fact that Buckingham Palace is on fire.
“Margaret!”
I barely manage five steps down the corridor when the window to my left shatters. Shatters and splinters, shards of glass exploding, and I hurl myself to the ground, arms shielding my head, back rounded to take the brunt of the pain should it come.
And it does.
Like wrathful raindrops of hell that shred my flesh.
A cry wrenches from my throat, and my vision shimmers with unshed tears. It would be so easy to remain as I am. To become one of the dead, like the scores of others who won’t escape the palace tonight.
But I’m . . . I’m—
Crawling.
Crawling on my hands and knees, crawling through a sea of broken glass, crawling toward the queen. My best friend. The only person I call family.
Get up, Rowan. Get up!
I grit my teeth and push to my feet.
It hurts to breathe, hurts even more to move, and still I sprint toward Margaret’s rooms. Up the narrow stairwell, where dark, billowing smoke twines like vine around my legs. Down the next corridor, where I pass empty room after empty room, the doors swung open, the occupants having already fled. No one returned for Margaret.
No one except for me.
A quick glance to my left reveals fire licking at the windows. Those flames flicker, climbing higher and higher, until the night sky disappears behind a terrorizing swarm of orange and red and yellow. One wrong step, one wrong move, and the last memory I’ll have is the scent of burning flesh.
I cut around the next corner—and grind to a halt.
A hard body sits slumped outside Margaret’s door, legs splayed crookedly, head drooped forward. I know him instantly. That mop of messy blond hair. Those familiar military-style trousers.
“Clarke?” His name is a strangled sound on my tongue. “Clarke!”
Demolishing the distance between us, I collapse to my knees beside him. Grab him fiercely by the shoulders and shake. Blood thrums in my temple and my chest cleaves in two when his hand drops from his thigh to the floor.
Palm up. Fingers loosely curled.
Utterly and completely lifeless.
“No. Clarke, no.”
With trembling hands, I grasp his face, lifting gently, and meet unblinking hazel eyes.
Horror slithers through my veins, slow and lethal, until the suffocating sweat drenching my skin becomes only ice. Ice that splinters, ice that cracks, because it’s not the bodyguard’s blank stare that snares my attention, but the ring-sized hole marking the center of his forehead.
Nausea swirls as I stagger backward and land unceremoniously on my arse. Look away! But there’s no wrenching my gaze away from the blood trickling into one blond brow and smearing the bent bridge of his nose.
Buckingham Palace is caught up in an inferno and someone murdered him. And Margaret—
“Oh, God.”
Someone knew only Clarke stood in the way of reaching Margaret, and if a man like Clarke can fall . . . I don’t stand a chance.
I’m defenseless. Weaponless.
He isn’t.
Reluctantly, my gaze sweeps over Clarke’s limp frame. Just do it. Remorse burns in my lungs as I inch up his shirt and snag the pistol from the holster at his hip. The gun that I’ve never seen him without, in all the time that I’ve known him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper raggedly, hastily tucking his shirt back down before reaching for his hand. Head bowed, I fold one atop the other over his stomach. He didn’t deserve this.
No one deserves this.
Fighting back despair, I cut my stare to the floor, only to spy blood staining the rug, leading opposite the way I had come.
Either Clarke managed to wound his attacker or . . .
Don’t go there. Don’t you dare go there.
With Clarke’s pistol clamped between my hands, I follow that trail of red down the hall, around the next corner, until, finally, I stop before a darkened stairwell.
My finger finds the trigger.
The sole of my shoe hits the first rung, and I grimace when the wood whines beneath me.
I glance down, over the smooth bannister, and debate how long I have until the flames reach this floor. Even now, I can hear windows shattering. Crack! Crack! Crack! Each one louder, closer, until the implosions match the frenetic stutter of my heartbeat.
One step down, then another.
“Margaret?”
Then, so faint I nearly miss it: “Rowan . . . I-I’m here!”