Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,16

I come back.”

7

Damien

The queen is sprawled out on the four-poster bed.

Pillows cushion her blond head and heavy blankets shield her body.

If anyone told me that I’d finally meet Queen Margaret while she was holed up in bed, and looking like death, I would have laughed.

There’s no laughter now. Not a single spark of joy anywhere to be found.

Thirty-one years of personally serving the royal family, of bending over backward to keep them all alive, and here we are in the end—Guy shored up by the bedroom door, me seated on an uncomfortable armchair by the fireplace, and the queen, tucked beneath her covers, looking like a child terrified of the ghosts lurking beneath the bed.

Or maybe it’s us who terrify her. Tough to tell when she’s barely said a word since we knocked on her door.

Finally, she asks, “Where’s Saxon?”

Living in Oxford with the woman who assassinated your father.

I meet Guy’s stare with a subtle jerk of my chin. Now isn’t the time to confess that we had Isla Quinn in our grasp and let her go free. Or, hell, that we know she murdered King John in the first place.

Our tangled webs are growing bloody roots at this point.

“There were some rumblings up in Aberdeen,” I lie, maintaining a neutral expression. Rumblings. Fake murder plots. So long as it keeps her from asking too many questions about why Saxon isn’t at the Palace—and won’t be here for the foreseeable future—then I have no problem blurring the truth. “He’ll be back when it’s all sorted.”

“Right.” Her mouth visibly tightens with displeasure. “Of course.”

“He rang when he saw the news.” That, at least, is the truth. Guy may have kicked Saxon out of Holyrood, but my middle brother hasn’t put down the torch—not officially. Frustrated as I am that he chose a woman over our oath, Saxon will always have my loyalty. “I told him to stay in Scotland.” Another lie. Another smooth excuse that rolls right off my tongue. I don’t look at Guy when I add, “We’ll take care of what happened tonight.”

“What happened?” The displeasure spreads from the firm tilt of her mouth to her blue eyes. “What happened is that Buckingham Palace exploded. What happened,” she grits out, “is that I’m nobody’s fool. Someone tried to kill me last night. No one would have ever found my body. No one would ever know that I didn’t just burn alive.”

Against my will, I think of Rowena Carrigan.

The queen may have been shot, but the prime minister’s daughter . . .

Burned alive is somehow fitting and still lacking in every single way. Matthews had gagged as he cut away her shirt from the ravaged skin beneath. The fabric had melded to her forearms and abdomen, her flesh an adhesive glue that took the older man over an hour to fully clean out.

I hadn’t gagged. Hadn’t replied to Matthews’ mutterings as he worked diligently over her prone body. But I’d watched, unable to turn away from the woman who looked like she’d barely escaped the devil’s lair, and I’d waited to feel something more. Pity. Compassion. Empathy for a fellow broken soul.

In that moment, I’d burned alive too.

For vengeance and hate and the anticipation of seeing Edward Carrigan finally fall. Hell if it doesn’t feel like the universe didn’t drop Rowena into my lap with a curt, “Do your worst.”

And, God help her, but I fucking plan to.

“What happened,” Guy says with his arms crossed over his chest, drawing my attention back to the conversation, “is that if it weren’t for Clarke, we would have found out too late.”

I almost bark out a dry, humorless laugh.

After a year of pestering Clarke to come up with a code word to signal if the queen was in danger, the bastard finally picked one after the king died. He’d chosen Dunrobin, the Scottish castle where Queen Margaret lived after her sister’s assassination.

Twenty-four hours ago, I’d no idea that his choice hid a sentimentality for a woman he never should have touched. And then, with one text sent after two in the bloody morning—

I pin my gaze on the queen.

One mention of Clarke and she can barely look me in the eye. By all accounts, she should have died there beside him. She definitely shouldn’t have made it to Kent, let alone survived the damage done to her internal organs.

As he stitched her up, Matthews had called her a miracle.

I don’t believe in miracles or fate or a monarchy anointed by God. Don’t believe