Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,168
. . .” Mouth dry, I reach a hand for my trousers’ pocket. Remember belatedly that my last pack of cigarettes went down in a blazing flame of glory along with the rest of me beneath Tower Bridge. “You want to stage a coup?”
Hands pressing flat on the table, Guy straightens to his full height. “You’re not wrong—taking out Edward Carrigan is a suicide mission that’ll get us all killed.”
“Then what are you—”
“We need him ruined. Publicly. Politically.” Exhaustion paints shadows under my brother’s eyes and tension brackets his mouth, but his movements are smooth and precise as he rounds the head of the table. “What do you think those three-hundred anti-loyalists are going to do when they realize that their PM has been snatching their friends and family off the street?”
Awareness prickles my skin. “The patients from Broadmoor . . . they’re your leverage?”
“Caren Fitz said he’d speak.”
My gaze goes to Saxon, who’s yet to move a muscle from his post at the door. “You already spoke with him?”
With a small, decisive dip of his head, Saxon passes a palm over his jaw. “We took an oath to protect the Crown, but we can’t just . . . Christ, we spent ten years serving anti-loyalists at the pub. And The Bell & Hand may be gone but we know—we know that only a tiny fraction of those people ever made a move on the king. Most of them woke up and got pissed and went back to their homes. Carrigan doesn’t deserve to walk free after what he’s done to them.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “You think Isla’s parents might still be out there?”
“No.” His scarred knuckles whiten where he grips his elbows. “No, her parents are dead. Long buried.”
He’s hiding something.
But when it comes to his relationship with Isla Quinn, it seems better to fake ignorance and carry on than pry for information. Whatever secrets my brother carries about Isla’s parents, nothing they’ve done can be worse than killing the king. And Isla already unlocked that particular lifetime achievement award.
Ignoring the thudding pulse of my thigh, I turn back to Guy with a grimace. “You tell the world that the prime minister imprisoned innocent people and the world will come for blood. Chaos. Revolution. It’ll be a plaster you can’t ever stick back on, and we’ll be locked and loaded in the middle of it all.”
He doesn’t answer, not right away.
Instead, his fingers skim over my open laptop. The expression on his face is inscrutable but the way his throat works tells me that whatever his thoughts are, they’re lodged somewhere in the past. Paris, maybe. The tiny old flat in Whitechapel where we were born and raised. Pa’s murder.
“There are three things we know,” he finally says, using one finger to shut the laptop with a near-silent click, “and three things that we don’t. We know that Carrigan was waiting for you at Westminster and we know that he’s responsible for the death of Rowena’s mum, along with what happened at Broadmoor with the anti-loyalists.”
My throat is dry when I ask, “And the things we don’t know?”
“His connection to Ian Coney. The bargain he offered Robert Guthram. And the hand he played on the night of the fire at Buckingham Palace.” Guy leans against the table, one booted foot hiking up to rest on my abandoned chair. “But the first three are enough to nail his ass to the—”
“Four,” I cut in.
Saxon’s hard voice comes from behind: “For which side?”
“Clarke.” The name falls from me strangled and raw, even as I hold Guy’s gaze. “He told the queen that Carrigan plans to see her dethroned on the grounds of her being mentally unfit to rule, remember?”
Blue eyes study me with laser-focused intensity. Then, “And you said that I’m the one who’s lost my bloody mind. Half of Parliament wants her dead. Or did you forget that part?”
“And the other half wants her anointed like some god who can do no wrong.” I let out a soft, dark laugh. “You want chaos and revolution, brother? Then long live the fucking queen.”
53
Rowena
“You want Margaret to speak to the MPs?”
Damien sits on the edge of our bed. His shirt is gone, exposing his still-bruised clavicle and all the ridged muscles that ripple under the raven and the skull. With his hands propped behind him and his dark hair falling messily over his forehead, he appears more like a sullen pagan god come to collect the sacrifices owed to him