Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,171

Though his expression barely twitches, he touches a palm to his left clavicle like he’s reliving those final moments down in the Bascule Chambers when he was locked inside a body that would not obey him. Vulnerable. Paralyzed. His blue eyes gleam with suspicion when he lowers his arm. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because you’ve given your life to the protection of mine, and it’s a debt that I . . .” Her eyes slam shut on a shuddering breath. With hands that visibly shake, she shoves her blond hair behind her ears. “I let you drown, didn’t I? You’ve been treading waters for months, ever since that bounty ended up on your head, and I let you drown. However I look at it, I put you on that hospital bed.”

“Your Majesty, it’s not—”

“Father was paranoid,” she interjects, pressing a hand to her abdomen, “and he was right to be paranoid. After twenty-five years of doing everything in his power to avoid the same fate as Evie, he was killed too. Murdered. Assassinated. But he wasn’t right to think that you would ever hurt me. If he’d just listened to you at St. James’s . . . God, if he had just listened to what you had to say instead of spinning theories in his head, none of this would have happened and he’d still be alive.”

The truth is insidious.

King John turned Damien away and then came to me to deliver the Priests their fall from grace. My mission brought Isla Quinn into direct contact with Ian, and then Hugh nearly killed us all in his grief for his brother. And my father, the greatest puppeteer of all time, made Silas Hanover jump through hoops for his freedom and started Damien down the road of vengeance months before we ever crossed paths.

Margaret may be the queen, the woman born to take the throne and reign over all of Britain, but she remains my oldest friend. She earned my loyalty the moment that she freed me from my bedroom in Golspie. Twenty years of friendship. Twenty years of sisterhood. She deserves the truth about Isla, but it won’t . . . Oh, God, it won’t come from me. My gaze moves to Damien and all the air in the greenhouse feels like it’s been eviscerated.

I can’t breathe.

Turning in Isla means ending all chances of Damien walking free. Margaret will burn down all of Holyrood if she learns what we’ve kept from her, and I’ll be the first to go for my betrayal. Treason. It would be treason. And I’ll die knowing that I chose Damien Godwin above all else.

If war is hell, then love is carnage, and the blood that’s spilled belongs to us both.

“If you agree to do this,” Damien tells Mags, his voice gruff, “then there’ll be no rewinding the clock. You’ll back the anti-loyalists from Broadmoor in the same breath that you tell the MPs that Carrigan wants you stripped of your crown. Nothing will be left to chance, and we need every person in the Commons feeling like Carrigan is gunning for them personally.”

Margaret’s stare falls to the potted orchids.

The orchids sit, waiting to be placed in the soil and allowed time to flourish. In the months since Isla killed King John, Margaret has hidden herself from the world, same as the king once hid her away in the Highlands for safekeeping. She’s become a monarch in name only, and a queen who refuses to rule will soon find herself without a throne.

“You want me to start a war,” she says, softly.

“No.” I swallow, hard, and feel Damien’s gaze on me like I’ve spent hours bathing in the sun. It warms my soul and flames my courage. “No, Mags, my father started the war. We only need you to end it.”

54

Rowena

Caren Fitz wears a mask of nausea.

In other words: he looks like absolute shite.

Dressed in a three-piece suit, the infamous London hotelier jerks hard on the lapels of his jacket as he stops in front of me. Against the backdrop of the Palace of Westminster, he looks rich and untouchable. Regal. Only the sunken hollows of his cheeks and the scar bisecting his left eyebrow tells the story of a man who was ripped away from his life and forced into a world of deceit and treason.

I lower my sunnies and tuck them into my handbag. “Mr. Fitz.”

Carefully, he allows his gaze to roam the contours of my face. It’s obvious from the way his