Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,119

Unable to stop myself, I allow mine to wander from one to the next.

One person in the first room, three huddled in the second.

I recognize the face in the third.

Run to her. Chase her.

But my heart is lodged in my throat and I can’t turn away from the window, can’t turn away from Caren Fitz, a famed London hotelier, who went missing three years ago. Until his disappearance, he’d been a frequent visitor to The Bell & Hand. Slowly, as if aware that he’s being watched, his head lifts from where he’s seated at a desk. His gaze collides with mine.

It takes him only two seconds to recognize me.

Face paling, he rushes to the oval window and pounds his fists on the door. “Priest,” he shouts, his voice muffled, “get me out! Help!”

Sirens begin to blare, shrieking their ferocity, and I send a dark look down the hall. The guards have already turned the corner and fucking hell. Rowena. I need to find Rowena.

I watch Fitz’s expression crumple as I move away, see it shatter completely when I turn.

With each step that I take after the guards, I force myself to stare into the passing rooms. Some I don’t recognize but others, like Caren Fitz, are people who’ve come time and time again to The Bell & Hand. All known anti-loyalists in relatively affluent posts in society. Men and women both who have gone missing over the last few years, their faces plastered across all of Britain to see on the telly, in the newspapers.

Only, they aren’t missing at all.

My grip on my rifle turns tight at the thought of Rowena being shoved into one of those holding rooms. I felt her terror when Guthram plucked the red poppy brooch from her jumper, saw the fear reflected in her violet eyes just before everything went upside down when the guard crushed the camera beneath his shoe. Instinct propeled me from the car before my next breath, heedless to the fact that I’m the country’s most wanted fugitive. I thought of her, nothing and no one but her.

Wherever you are, I will find you.

A promise. A vow that I’ll never break.

When I turn a sharp corner and see the shoulders of the guards standing uniformly in a row, rifles raised, adrenaline pumps through my veins, only to be replaced by fear the likes of which I’ve never known.

Beyond those black helmets, a pair of slim arms reaches toward the ceiling in surrender.

Scarred skin. Yellow fabric.

No. Jesus Christ, no.

Her name leaves me on a violent roar.

As one, the guards whip around. Any scrap of hope I had of doing the right thing, the good thing, disappears instantly. I tear through them all, one after another. Beyond the cry of the siren, bones shatter and limbs sever. I duck beneath outstretched arms and slide my knife from its holster to jab between first and second ribs, there and gone again before they even realize that they’ve been struck. I use bodies as shields, letting the dead fend off attempts from the still-living until there is no one left standing but me.

And her.

Huddled in the corner of the hallway, with her bare arms raised over her head to shield herself from the spray of gunfire, Rowena Carrigan lives.

I stagger toward her.

Breathe her name on a hoarse whisper.

Her shorn head lifts, those violet eyes of hers red-rimmed as she chokes back a sob. Before I can cross over to her, she launches to her feet and hurls herself at me. Lingering fear guides my bloodied hands to the back of her head as I step into her space, my right palm smoothing down to between her shoulder blades, my left still cradling her skull.

“I was dead,” she whispers raggedly into my chest, “I was seconds away from dying and you—”

“I’ll chase you, Rowena. Wherever you are, however you got there, I will find you.” Against my sternum, her heart thrums an incessant beat that matches the pace of mine. Over the crown of her head, I scan the empty halls. Carnage is a disease, and within these walls, I’ve opened festering wounds. “We have to go before more come. Can you run?”

“We can’t get out. There’s no way—”

“Do you trust me?”

She pulls away from my chest to nod. “With my life.”

“Then follow me.”

I manage two steps before she tugs on my arm. When I glance back, she shifts her gaze to the bare corridor. “Silas . . .” She touches her tongue to her bottom