Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,141
before he got to us.”
Around the bend, up near the metal stairwell, we learn how.
Much like Clarke at Buckingham Palace, Samuel sits with his back shoved against the brick wall. Head slumped forward, hands clasping his bloodied abdomen. Angled awkwardly against his outstretched legs is his firearm.
Dead.
Shame crawls into my marrow to mingle with grief.
As Damien carried me in his arms, hellbent on protecting me, I’d expected to see Samuel and Gregory turn the corner into the chamber. I expected them both to align with Hugh. And even when they didn’t appear, it never occurred to me that Samuel and Gregory might not have shown up to help because Hugh had already done them in.
The shame burrows deeper, and I feel sick with it.
Twisting my head, I seek out cold blue eyes. “He doesn’t deserve to be left here.”
“We have no other choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“The choice is Damien or Samuel, just as it was Alfie Barker or Damien.” A rough breath leaves Guy as he lowers his arm to gather more of his brother’s weight. “We bring Damien to Holly Village. Then . . . then I’ll see what I can do.”
Swallowing past the surging remorse, I nod stiffly.
With Damien caged between us, ascending the narrow stairwell proves near-on impossible. Our shoes clang against the metal rungs. We turn Damien sideways, shuffling him up, step by step, while never uttering a word about how much more we’ve left to climb. Or how, with each minute that we spend beneath Tower Bridge, Damien’s chances of survival worsen.
Needing to focus on the task at hand, I steel my heart against the hurt, the agony of loss.
I am a liar.
Though my feet may move in the right direction, I’m all too aware of Damien’s skin growing colder against my shoulders and the color fading from his handsome face. As if gravity has won, his lids fall shut—not that I’ll ever forget the haunting misery that glimmered in the blue when I tried to tug him back onto his feet. And so, I press his palm to my collarbone, as if the heat that I feel within my soul will somehow escape past the constellation of blisters to keep him alive.
We find Gregory, knocked out and unconscious, near the accumulator tower.
Without needing me to voice my request, Guy silently grasps Damien around the waist while I move to Gregory.
I drop to my knees.
Reach out to clasp his hand in mine.
“Come on,” I beg, “come on, you big bastard, wake up for me.”
Calloused fingers jolt against mine, and I throw my arms around Gregory with a relieved cry. His hand collides with my back, the gesture surprisingly gentle for a man so brutish, and he rubs in a small circle, as though I’m the one passed out in a dank, underground prison.
“Is ’e dead?”
Damien.
“No.” Feeling my lungs squeeze tight, I pull back onto my heels. “No, he’s not.”
“I’ll carry ’im with Priest, Rowan.”
It’s all he says before I’m forced to stand aside while they carry Damien to freedom. His booted feet trail behind him, the laces undone. His armored vest hangs open and loose at his sides. Every few minutes, Guy pauses to check his brother’s pulse.
He breathes.
He lives.
Just.
When I finally crawl into the backseat of Guy’s car, not fifteen minutes later, Gregory carefully shuffles Damien in beside me too. His legs are bent against the door, the size of him too large to be stuffed back here with me.
He doesn’t utter a sound.
Gently cradling his head in my lap, I run my fingers through his hair. My lips are pressed to Damien’s forehead when Guy rings Saxon, and my hand flat against his tattoo of Odin’s raven when Guy phones Dr. Matthews next.
I anticipate every inhale Damien gives me like it’s my own form of communion and dread every exhale that threatens to take him away from me forever. And I barter—with a god that I’ve never believed in and with myself too, for the lengths that I’ll willingly go to keep Damien alive.
Anything, my soul screams, I’ll do anything.
It’s a vow I will not break.
An oath I take for him and him alone.
43
Rowena
We reach Holly Village at daybreak.
Gregory carries Damien past the front door and immediately cuts left down the corridor toward Saxon’s exam room. Familiar faces peer back at me—those of my own men and others from Holyrood, whose jaws go slack at the sight of Damien—and I let their questions hit my back unanswered.