Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,167

top of her, forehead to forehead, heart to heart, and I give her all of my soul: “I love you without mercy, Rowena, and I’ll never let you go.”

52

Damien

“We strike the day after tomorrow.”

Stew spills over the side of my bowl when Guy drops into the chair opposite mine, his elbows landing hard on Holly Village’s kitchen table. Cursing under my breath, I grab a paper napkin and run it over my laptop keyboard. Shoving the computer out of the way, before my brother can do more damage, I scrape together the strength to force the words from my tongue: “Strike what the day after tomorrow?”

“Westminster.”

With the paper napkin still in hand, I jerk my gaze up to meet my brother’s. The look on his face tells me he isn’t taking the piss. Jesus. “You’ve lost your goddamned mind. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me if I walk into the Commons?”

“String you up by your bollocks, no doubt.”

Shoulders tensing, I glance over to find Saxon hovering in the doorway. With his arms crossed over his chest, and his shoulder propped up against the frame, his hard gaze never wavers from Guy when he adds, gruffly, “I told him it was a shit idea but here we are, petit frére.”

Fucking hell.

Scrubbing my hands over my face, I blow out a heavy breath and shove the stew away. Beneath the table, my leg is a jittery mess that jumps and twitches with absolutely no provocation. Matthews did his best but I won’t be scaling roofs anytime soon. It’s been a week since I was gunned down in the Bascule Chambers and I’m lucky if I can jog up the stairs without breaking into a clammy sweat. Rowena’s taken to tagging along for my new nightly ritual, her lips my reward for every successful pass that I make up and down the old servant’s stairwell—but still.

“The last time I walked into Westminster, I ended up with a bounty on my head.” I grit my teeth. “Eight months, brother. Almost eight fucking months of house arrest and I’m no better off now than I was then. So, if I don’t seem enthusiastic about tossing my ass into the ring for round number two then—”

“We didn’t have the leverage eight months ago that we do now.”

“Leverage?” I jab a finger toward the abandoned laptop. “I’ve just spent the last ten bloody hours backtracking through Marcus-fucking-Guthram’s entire online blueprint. The whole goddamn city is searching for London’s favorite police commissioner and you—”

“The bodies are gone,” he counters, his voice low and curt, “and the place has been scrubbed. No Guthrams. No Coney. No Barker. Even if the Met is somehow tipped off to check the Bascule Chambers, they’ll have no reason to pin it back on us.”

I shake my head. “I’m the king of suicide missions, but this is . . .”

“Genius.”

Genius is spending weeks at my desk, corroborating on different reports and determining the right angle to dismantling a person before they even know that they’re being hunted. This is just madness. “We all know that I want Carrigan’s head on a goddamned platter,” I mutter, resting my weight on my fists as I push up from the table, “but I won’t have anyone else dead because of me. Enough is enough.”

Samuel’s body was retrieved from the chambers and laid to rest at Highgate Cemetery two nights past. He had no family that Rowena or I could find—no one but the people in this house—but that doesn’t make his death any easier to swallow. He didn’t deserve what Hugh Coney did to him, and the same goes for Alfie Barker, who may have tried to kill the queen but his two little girls . . .

I squeeze my eyes shut.

They do not deserve to grow up fatherless because I made their old man a pawn in my quest for freedom. The guilt of that decision . . . the ramifications of making that judgment call will haunt me. And my conscience—once unburdened by all things even remotely emotional—can’t handle the possibility of another person dying just to see my wrists unshackled.

It’s a line that I won’t cross. Not again.

I’m halfway to the door when Guy’s cool baritone hits my back: “There are six-hundred-and-fifty seats in the Commons, and at least three-hundred are known anti-loyalists.”

The soles of my boots grow bloody roots as I slam to a stop.

Slowly, I look back at him—only to find him unmoved from the table. “You want