Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,145
slows my hasty escape. No, not frustration. Reluctant understanding. Didn’t I speak about this exact thing with Damien when I asked to apologize to Holyrood for all that I’ve done? Apologies are given without any expectation of acceptance, and I’ll be a right hypocrite if I don’t give Isla the chance to get it over and done with.
With a low growl, I force my feet to turn back around.
She stands exactly where I left her, looking completely unruffled by the fact that I can’t be bothered to make pleasantries.
Play nice, Rowan, and get on with it.
A pained smile stretches unnaturally across my face. “If you’ve come up here to ask for forgiveness, then you have it. I forgive you, Isla. Now let’s just call this quits before—”
“I’ll help you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
It’s the same reply that Silas Hanover gave us down in the undercroft, over and over again, even when we knew he lied through his teeth. The same lies that he took with him to the grave, just hours ago, at Guy’s hand.
Isla must recognize my unease well enough because she retorts, “Yes, you do.”
Feeling the knife at my ankle and the revolver tucked into the waistband of my trousers like time-ticking explosives, I breathe, “You don’t know anything about me.”
The smile that she gives me isn’t sweet or kind. It’s the look of a warrior before she steps into battle. Fierce. Determined. If I had any doubt about her before, it’s long gone now. This is the woman who killed King John, who murdered Ian. “I know that I would kill anyone who hurt Saxon,” she says, “and I would do it without thought because I love him.”
My skin prickles with heat that has nothing to do with the wool jumper I’m wearing and everything to do with the growing ache in my chest. No matter what I do, I can’t unsee Damien down in the Bascule Chambers.
I see him on his knees, his calloused hands clasped in mine.
I see the panic in his gaze just before he crashed down on the dirty brick.
Had he felt my hands on his body? Had he heard the terror in my voice when I begged him to live? The idea that he might not have, that his last few moments were filled with only condemning silence, makes my heart palpitate.
“I left my brother and sister in Oxford,” Isla says, approaching me slowly, “because when I saw Saxon’s face after Guy rang him about Damien, there was no other choice. He needed me and I ran, Rowena. But I’m standing here now—with wine that I stole from your kitchen as a shite excuse to stop in—because I overheard what you said to Matthews.”
There’s no stemming the tears that bleed to the surface, not when Isla stops in front of me, less than an arm’s length away, and murmurs, “You’ll fight for him.”
I don’t need to ask who she means.
Always, always Damien.
Monster.
Villain.
The man who is more a hero than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Would you die for him?”
I’m no longer the girl who once went wherever her father pointed, not even the spy who spent a night at Buckingham Palace in the hopes of saving a queen. In her place is a woman who has been to hell and back, whose beauty is scarred by fire but driven forward by courage.
Slowly, I allow my gaze to meet Isla’s. “My heart died the second that he fell, and I don’t think it will beat again until he stands at my side.”
She cocks her head. “You love him.”
Throat as dry as sandpaper, my hands tremble as I press them to my stomach.
Love, the king told Damien, is carnage. It must be true. I descended the metal steps to the Bascule Chambers with hope brimming in my heart and an unfamiliar lightness in my soul, only to emerge from the wreckage shattered and bruised.
Each minute that Damien succumbs to the inevitable threatens the very fiber of my being. Each moment where I don’t hear his silken voice promises to leave me permanently gutted. I ache in a way that I never have and burn so hot that not even the flames of a fire could compare.
He breathes and I mourn for him.
He lives and I don’t know whether to grieve or go full steam ahead, my heart raw and my soul screaming, to save him from the abyss.
We are tethered, Damien and I, bound, for better or worse.