Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,21

clearly enjoying himself because he exclaims, “Thank God you’ve shut her up,” with all the palpable giddiness of a kid opening gifts on Boxing Day. And maybe it’s the hopelessness of the situation or the brokenness of my body, but either way I crash to my hands and knees. Hard.

Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give—

“Self-pity isn’t a good look on you.”

Godwin’s harsh words flay me alive, more sharply than the razor he used ever could, and then muscular arms fit under my stomach and haul me off the floor. No compassion. No empathy. I swallow, tightly, when his hand lands on my shoulder, his touch careful but somehow still unbelievably arrogant.

“Walk,” he commands, his voice pitched low next to my ear, “or I’ll drag you.”

I bundle my fear in a knot, then shove it so far deep that it’ll never resurface. “That’s not much of a choice.”

“It’s an ultimatum, Miss Carrigan. You’re all out of choices.”

With dread swimming in my gut, I walk.

Godwin guides me out of the cell, his hand rooted on my shoulder, and I swear Barker releases a breath of maniacal laughter when the door snicks shut behind us, locking him inside and leaving me to deal with the devil at my back.

If I were on my way to freedom, I’d ask Godwin what Barker did to deserve imprisonment. My cellmate revealed little more than what I prodded out of him—that he’s a father of two and that he was caught by Holyrood over a month ago—but kept his mouth shut otherwise. And I was locked in that cell right alongside him as though I haven’t spent years supporting the royal family.

Thieves and liars, brutes and murderers, all of them.

Words uttered by my father within Westminster’s Jewel Tower just two months ago when asked about the escalating number of anti-loyalist uprisings. The fourteenth-century stone walls had echoed with his booming voice and the ancient floors had trembled under the onslaught of his expectation for more. More independence from the Crown, more control. All around me, members of Parliament had nodded and hollered their support, all while draining their glass tumblers completely dry. King John stripped them of their power five years ago and now my father seeks to return it to them.

But not at the expense of Margaret’s life.

It isn’t true. It can’t be true.

Godwin is the brute here, the liar, not me.

The man in question tightens his grip, as if in silent warning for me to behave. Muttering “In here,” he turns me at a fifteen-degree angle and nudges me through a narrow door frame. Barely a second passes before the door clangs shut; the ensuing silence is all I need to know that we’re completely alone. For better or worse. Again.

He lets me go.

I stand in place, cuffed and straight-backed.

“Sit down,” he orders in the same breath that I demand, “What do you want with me?”

The scrape of a chair is my only answer. Its wooden feet wail against the floor, dragging closer and closer until anxiety doubles the pace of my pulse and—

A grunt escapes my lips when my knees abruptly collapse.

Unable to stabilize my weight in time, I tip backward and drop onto the chair that he so graciously shoved behind me.

Fury gathers in my gut.

“A gentleman,” I hiss, balling my hands into fists, “would never manhandle a woman.”

“There aren’t any gentlemen here, Miss Carrigan. You get me. Only me.”

“The world’s biggest bastard. How utterly fortuitous.”

I cock my head, hoping he’ll say something that’ll prove my point, but he doesn’t.

No, he laughs.

This deep, raspy chuckle that reminds me of thorny vines just aching to puncture my skin and draw blood. He laughs like I’m the butt of the joke; he laughs like there’s nothing he’s anticipating more than becoming my very worst nightmare; he laughs like I’m doomed, and we both know it, and I’ll be stuck here until he’s good and ready to do away with my dead body.

“What,” I bite off, “do you want with me?”

“We’re going to play a little game, you and me.”

The chain rattles as I clasp my fingers together. “I’m not interested.”

“Didn’t ask if you were,” he murmurs, and I have the immediate visual of him slipping his hands into his trouser pockets as he circles me like a predator confronted with its next meal. It’s all there in his tone—the way he plans to trot me along, toying with me like a cat would a mouse, until either I stumble and fall, or he