Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,152

I press the antidote to my chest. Beneath my knuckles, my heart hammers a quick tattoo as I shift to the right. “Now, get out of my way or—”

Lean fingers wrap around my bicep, stalling my flight.

Guy jerks me close, his voice low and rough when he husks, “You heard what Matthews told us.”

I tip my head back, meeting his stare. “I did.”

“Jesus, Rowena—you’re setting yourself for bloody heartbreak.” Jaw clenching tight, he shakes his head. “You have to let him go. We have to let him—”

“Back up, brother.”

Brows furrowing, Guy’s head swings toward Saxon. The tension in his jaw prompts a visible tic of muscle, and I swear that I can hear his molars grinding to ash. “You went with her,” he edges out, releasing me to face his brother, “and for what? To spite me?”

Saxon brushes past me, so that the breadth of his shoulders becomes a fortress between me and the eldest Priest. “I went with her,” he growls, “because I have goddamn faith.”

“You have no idea—”

“No, I don’t, because you didn’t bother to tell me that my own brother has had one foot buried in the grave for months!”

It’s the first time that I’ve heard Saxon’s voice raise above cool, calm, and collected. Even when he threatened me away from Isla, his eyes had burned with a fury that never crossed his lips. All that leashed aggression seems ripe to finally explode.

I step back, colliding with Isla, who tilts her chin toward the hallway. “Go find Matthews. I’ll hold down the fort.”

She doesn’t need to tell me twice.

With a quick nod of thanks, I sidestep the brothers and escape down the corridor. The antique door to the drawing room is thrown open but the gathering space is ominously empty. Somber silence permeates the house—no heavy feet padding on the first floor or rambunctious voices filtering through the walls. We lost Samuel last night and, regardless of the destruction that he wrought, we lost Hugh too.

Two men who were very much key figures in our organization—both gone forever.

Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I push Sara’s door open and come to a dead stop when I spot a familiar blonde seated beside Damien’s hospital bed.

The queen.

My best friend.

The woman who turned her back on me at the Palace, as though I haven’t proved my loyalty to her time and time again over the last twenty years. I nearly died for her, I burned for her, in the most literal sense of the word, and she left me to fucking rot.

Slowly, as though realizing that she’s no longer alone, Margaret twists at the waist to look back at me. Before she even has the chance to speak, harsh words are already tripping off my tongue: “It figures that you’d invite yourself where you aren’t wanted.”

Her shoulders snap back with queenly conviction. “I’ve never needed an invitation.”

“That was before you let me sit in a cell like a goddamned criminal.”

“Rowan—”

“You shouldn’t be in here.” Not with Damien, who’s been hunted because he refused to kill the king, and not with me, after she willingly believed the worst, even after everything that we’ve been through together. Slipping the antidote into my pocket, I clamp my fingers over the door and hold it open in a wordless gesture for her to see herself out.

Though her blue eyes drift to the empty hallway, her arse never leaves the stool. Then, softly, she utters, “Cowards hide in the dark.”

My mouth falls open.

“You did not just call me a-a—” Any chance of uttering the word coward disappears as indignation grips my lungs in a vice. Twenty years of having her back when King John sought to hide her away from the world, of sisterhood when life took a massive shite on us both and hope ceded way for grim acceptance. That she could . . . that she thinks that I’m some—

I slam the door shut.

Roughly fisting the collar of my jumper, I tug the wool down to expose my blistered collarbone. Look at me, I want to scream. Look at what my loyalty to you has done to me!

Instead, a caustic laugh escapes me as I cross the room. “You think that I’m a traitor?” I demand. “A coward? I was ready to die in that bloody stairwell, Mags. Do you know how easy it would have been to bring you down with me? But I didn’t—I couldn’t let you die—and do you even know why?” Breathing hard, I put a hand