Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,12
One angry snap of her fingers and it would all be over—the oath, what four generations of Godwins have sold their souls to see live for yet another day. No fuck is worth risking the survival of Holyrood. No fuck is worth risking the people of Holyrood.
The simmering heat in my blood flares and, having closed the distance to my brother, I drop my hands to the table and shove my face close to his. “You knew he was fucking her,” I growl, my voice so low that it emerges as a thunderous rumble, “and you never stopped him?”
“I planned for it.”
“Planned for what?”
“The queen’s predictability.” His blue eyes fix unerringly on my face. “She didn’t let me down.”
“Explain.”
“Blond. Boyish good looks.” The corner of my brother’s mouth hitches humorlessly. “Every man the queen has ever dated matches Clarke’s description. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to assume that she’d be attracted to him.”
“You put Holyrood at risk.” Disgust curdles in my stomach. “Jesus Christ, you put all of us at risk, and for what? Because you wanted to interfere with someone else’s life? Clarke’s life? The queen’s?”
“This is nothing like your—”
“We both know you’re not some matchmaker, which means that you sent Clarke because you wanted him to fuck her.”
“I told him to put a leash on her—however he saw fit.”
A leash.
Like the one he clipped to my proverbial collar the minute he demanded that I stay trapped within these walls.
Seven months.
Seven bloody months.
“She’s a liability,” Guy continues, pushing away from the table. I don’t miss the way he takes his pistol with him, re-holstering it in a single move as he heads for the sideboard—and the alcohol. “She was a liability as John’s heir and she’s even more of one now. We need her compliant.”
“No, you want her meek while you play puppeteer.”
Expression stony, my brother uncaps a bottle of Glenfiddich. “If we want her alive, then we need her to do what she’s told. Compliant. Meek. Whatever the hell you want to call it, it’s all the same.”
“She doesn’t want to die,” I snarl, “which means she’ll do whatever she’s told. No lying. No subterfuge. You shouldn’t have jumped straight to the mind games.”
“Those mind games gave us information we wouldn’t have had otherwise.” He pauses. “Clarke was our emissary.”
“And now your emissary is fucking dead.”
Instead of answering, Guy pours three fingers’ worth of whisky into two tumblers. One he downs immediately; the other he shoves to the side in a silent offer for me to drink with him.
I don’t move.
My thumbs dig into the antique wood, and the sharpened edges of the rubies pinch my calloused palms. I welcome the sting with an indrawn breath, and I more than welcome the burn of flesh ceding as my grip reflexively tightens.
Better to feel pain than to give in to the rage.
There’s no code I can rewrite to turn this night around. No amount of surgery I can do with my untrained hands to resurrect Clarke from his palatial grave.
He died in that fire, and for what?
On orders not from the Crown, but from my oldest brother. Because, as in all aspects of his life, Guy Godwin isn’t content until everyone in his path kneels in deference to his great, unparalleled wisdom.
Rightly assuming that I won’t be taking that shot of whisky, Guy wraps a hand around the second tumbler and tosses back the Glenfiddich in one pass. He hasn’t even swallowed before he’s reaching for the bottle to pour himself another pairing.
“Is the guilt already eating you alive? Or are you celebrating another life that you’ve managed to ruin while playing King of Holyrood?”
He pauses with the tumbler halfway to his mouth. “I did what was necessary.”
“Life is fragile, and you shat all over it.”
One second he’s holding the glass and, in the next, it’s shattering against the closest wall. He whirls around, his face a mask of the same fury that’s swirling in my gut. “There are casualties in war, brother. Pa was a casualty. Mum was a casualty. Clarke—”
“Mum was weak,” I grit. “If she was a casualty, then she has only herself to blame.”
Guy’s fingers grab the front of my shirt and maybe, if we weren’t the same height, he’d have better luck dragging me forward. As it is, he drives his face centimeters from mine and hisses, “You have no bloody idea what you’re talking about.”
But I do.
I remember everything—the whispers that she hurled my way whenever my brothers fled our tiny,