Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,125

handled that well.”

I cut a wry glance toward Dr. Matthews. “You really have no shame.”

“Would you believe it if I said that I was hard of hearing?”

“If you were, then you wouldn’t have thrown me into a cell just to get rid of me.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Touché, Miss Carrigan.” Bringing his gaze to the room again, he stews on his silence for all of three seconds. “Loss is a funny thing, isn’t it?” He asks it in such a way that I know it’s a rhetorical question. “We treat our grief like it’s a curse.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We obsess over it,” he says with a roll of the shoulder that isn’t pressed against the wall, “to the point that it consumes us. Where death is permanent, grief is a constant renewal of life that thrives on our pain.”

My heard thuds against my ribcage. “That’s . . .”

“Reality.” Another small shrug. “He’ll come around, Miss Carrigan. Just give him time.”

But time is something we desperately don’t have, especially when Damien and Guy break away from the fold and head my way not even five minutes later. From the matching grim expressions on their faces, I know that they’re ready.

If death is permanent and grief is life, then betrayal is misery—and Silas Hanover may be wishing he already took his last breath by the time the Priests are through with him.

“So,” the eldest Priest brother drawls, “we finally meet again.”

Opposite Guy, Silas Hanover is strapped to a chair in the undercroft. With his back to the stone wall, he sits with his nails biting into the armrests and his knees turned inward. Flickering gas lamps cast shadows across his face. And for every breath I take, his angry dark eyes find their way back to me again.

It might, however, have something to do with the framed picture of Mum that I angle toward him on the sideboard, so that he has no choice but to acknowledge what he’s done.

You didn’t go down as easily as she did.

Fury clamps my fingers into tight fists that I shove behind my back. The Priests are leading the brigade on this interrogation, but I can’t stifle the threat that crawls up my throat. “Did you know,” I murmur, “that this is the only place in Holly Village where the walls are so thick that no sound escapes?” With his gaze centered on me, I push away from the sideboard. “You scream, and no one will hear you. You beg for mercy”—I drop my hands atop his on the armrests—“and no one will see your tears. You are alone, Silas, just as she was. And if it were up to me, you’d die alone too.”

His mouth tugs up on one side and, with his eyes narrowed, he spits on me.

Bastard.

Damien releases a feral growl but I stop his approach with a raised hand. Then, with the back of the same wrist, I wipe away the spittle from my cheek. All-out defiance radiates from Hanover. No show of remorse. Not a single display of regret. Father always did choose his associates well, and Silas Hanover is no different. He’s coldhearted, a murderer, and—

“She was innocent,” I hiss, feeling the wrath of hell propel my hand forward to clutch his neck, as he did to me at Broadmoor. “She was innocent in all of this and you . . . you helped him kill her, and for what? A house?” Against his throat, my hand visibly trembles. I’m aware of Damien and Guy staring but I can’t—oh, God, I can’t suppress the anger, can’t pretend that it doesn’t overrule every sense of reason when, deep down, I want this man to die a thousand little deaths as I have. “Whatever my father promised you, he lied. My only inheritance was this property, and if you think”—I draw a heavy breath—“if you think, for even one second, that I won’t enjoy seeing you suffer here, then you’re wrong. Justice is dying in the same house that you killed her for. You deserve no better.”

My shoulders heave and the undercroft remains ominously silent, and then Hanover dips his chin, thrusts his neck farther into my grip, and drawls, “Are you done?”

All the rage, all the hate, knocks loose from my bones.

I’m weightless, gasping for air and finding none.

“Rowena.”

I turn slightly, my hand still locked around Hanover’s throat, and find Damien.

How—how can a man commit such evil and feel nothing? How can he betray those he loves—Henry Godwin and