Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,161
I wanted to be good. Better. And when we were down in the chambers, I finally understood what my mum never did. Love is sacrifice, and even knowing what comes next, I’d do it all again.” His breath is hot against my mouth, his gaze even hotter as he holds me captive in his embrace. “For you, Rowena, I would surrender my soul. I would take all of your pain and bear all your misery, and I would do it because I . . . because I love you.”
The declaration falls at my feet, gritty and raw, and then he wrenches himself away.
Immediately, I feel bereft.
“You can’t say that!” The words are hurled at his retreating back but they manage to stop him in his tracks all the same. “You can’t say that you love me and then turn away as if I don’t even exist.”
“Don’t exist?” Slowly, he looks back at me over one broad shoulder. His brows are knitted, his eyes narrowed. “Don’t exist? R-Rowena, you stumbled into my life and the world stopped spinning. You speak, and I look for you. You smile, and I fucking ache. When I was d-dying, it was you who walked with me through the darkness. And all I wanted was to hold you just one m-more time, even when I knew it wouldn’t be enough. For us, it will n-never be enough.”
I don’t dry the tears from my cheeks.
Don’t stifle the anguished cry begging for escape.
“I want to live with you, away from the chaos and all the death. I want to be old and gray, and at your side. I want . . .” Sunlight casts golden warmth over his face, revealing the brilliance of his blue eyes just as it exposes the fatigue that’s carved hollows of his cheeks. He puts a fist to his heart, as though the words are a new oath that he takes for me alone. “I want yours to be the last name I speak after I’ve spent an entire lifetime loving you.”
“Then why do I feel like you’re saying goodbye?” Frustration battles desperation, leaving me rattled and trembling as I close the distance between us to grasp him by the shirt. I’m on my toes, face thrust close to his, and still not close enough. “You have nothing to prove to me. I see you, all of you, and—”
“I dug her up.”
My breath catches in my throat. “What?”
Shame flickers across his handsome face. “Under a starless sky in Paris,” he confesses, his voice low, “I took a shovel and broke c-consecrated ground. The dirt went into a pile that rose and rose. I dug until I stood atop her. I d-dug until I cracked open the coffin. And twelve years after we buried her, I looked down at the woman who birthed me, and I smiled.”
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Madness.
“I did it all for this.” He snatches the silver chain from the altar, holding it aloft between us. “Because it felt like k-karma, taking what she loved most when she loved me not at all. And you . . . us . . . I won’t love you from the dark, Rowena, hiding what I’ve done. Not after the Bascule Chambers. Not after you risked your own life to save mine.”
Baron Hastings.
The Reaper himself.
I swallow, painfully. “I did what needed to be done.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he growls, slamming the necklace back on the altar. “You should have left Holyrood to d-deal with it—to deal with me—because the thought of you . . . Jesus, Rowena, you walked away from that life. You p-promised yourself that you’d never let someone take a piece of you again. And even though Saxon told me that you didn’t promise your body to that bastard, I can’t let you—”
“They gave up!”
At my outburst, he reels backward but I won’t be deterred. “Dr. Matthews gave up,” I bite off, wishing I could eviscerate that day from memory, “your brother gave up. You were as good as dead, they said. They’d already tried for months, they said.” I jab the tip of my forefinger into my chest. “But I didn’t give up on you. Not once. So, yes, one day Baron Hastings will knock on my door and, yes, he’ll demand payment, but it’ll be worth it, Damien. Whatever he asks for, however much it costs me, it will be worth it to have you.”