Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,39
Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock. The switch audibly clicks, signaling the arrival of light that I can’t see, and then those footsteps return, momentarily pausing beside me before continuing.
The sofa creaks again.
And then I sit forward, elbows propped on my parted knees. “Take a good look,” I murmur, “at what happens when you don’t follow through on bloody intel.”
“Good God.”
I raise my brows, and promptly ignore how the skin on my forehead pulls uncomfortably tight. “Anything else you want to add?”
“You look—” A hard swallow that I couldn’t miss, not even if I lived halfway across the world in the States. "Well, that’s to say . . . You’ve . . . looked better.”
A harsh laugh climbs my throat. “I liked your brother more.”
The ensuring silence is punctured by the audible grinding of teeth. “I’ve never thought otherwise, Rowan.”
I refuse to feel guilty for saying what’s in my heart. For speaking up when, for years, I swallowed the truth until I choked on it. “I almost died,” I growl, pointing at my face, at my ribs that are covered by the same loose swing of fabric that I’ve worn for three days now. “She almost died. And Clarke—fuck.”
“He’s not one of us.”
“Does it matter?” I pinch the bridge of my nose, then smooth my palm over my shorn hair. Gone, all of it. I won’t mourn something that’ll grow back in a matter of months, but still, it feels like yet another loss that’s stripped something from me that I didn’t willingly give. “He’s dead,” I say sharply. “He’s dead, just like Margaret almost died, and all because you—”
“Kidnapping, Rowan. I had word that she was going to be kidnapped, not that the entire place was going to bloody blow up! I wouldn’t have sent you in there alone if I’d known.”
“Well, you did,” I grit out, leashing my temper before it unravels completely, “and now the Priests have the queen. We have one job. One job and so far, we are spectacularly cocking it up.”
“It’s not . . . Bloody hell. They’re impossible to kill!”
I think of rough hands on my back. A big body pushing me into a cool, glass window and stealing the very air from my lungs. Broad features and the softest pair of lips I’ve ever touched. It ought to be illegal for a man to have lips that soft, particularly when they belong to someone like him.
The villain.
The enemy.
“They’re flesh and bone,” I utter softly, “which means they’re just as fallible as the rest of humanity.”
“I don’t like the look on your face, Rowan. The last time you looked like that, I ended up knee deep in a pile of shite. Metaphorical shite, obviously. Not literal.”
“Coney.”
“It’s goddamn eerie.” I hear him shift around awkwardly. “Your stare, I mean. Are you really blind?”
Goddamn, I miss Ian something fierce. Unlike his younger brother, Ian Coney was magnificent to watch in the field. A fighter. A peacemaker when he needed to quiet the always present hum of rebellion amongst our members. A friend to me as much as Margaret has always felt like a sister.
And now I’ve lost both Ian and Mags to the Priests.
Damien can tell me all he wants that Father had it out for Ian, but I know the truth. Jack, the arse who worked for the Priests at The Bell & Hand, watched it all unfold from the upper galleries at The Octagon. It was that woman Isla Quinn who strangled Ian, and Saxon Priest who killed my other men before sweeping her away to safety. And now Margaret . . . Margaret is in their so-called Palace, a place she begged me to bring her, without me realizing who they really were until Damien revealed himself.
How can she be so naïve?
This Holyrood . . . this vision they have of themselves is nothing but a lie.
Swallowing the lick of worry that rises swiftly, I dig my fingers into my thighs. “We took an oath, Hugh. Repeat it for me.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I think . . .” He clears his throat. “Well, I’ll be honest, Rowan. I don’t remember it.”
My hands ball into fists and I grit my teeth so hard that I’m surprised my molars don’t turn to ash. What I did to lose Ian and be stuck with his brother for all eternity, I don’t know. Penance, maybe.
Pressing my fingers into my pounding temples, I exhale slowly. “In the king we trust,” I say slowly, emphatically, “for the king we obey.”