Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,4

wiring was dialed with enough voltage to initiate instant cardiac arrest—and someone bypassed all of it.

I wrench open the heavy oak door, its hinges squealing with age and regret. Guy told me to remain at the Palace, but if Saxon were here, he’d understand. We were raised to put the Crown above all else.

If war is in my blood, then Holyrood is embedded in my bones.

The wooden planks of the drawbridge groan beneath my feet. Heavy fog conceals the moat, just as it shelters the surrounding forest and swallows the stars. The first time Pa brought me and my brothers here, to the Palace, he convinced us all that ghosts haunt the property.

Nowadays, I know better.

The living are the monsters that the dead could never be.

Shadows tunnel my vision, but the crunch of gravel snaps my attention to the darkness enveloping the front drive. Unmistakably footsteps, but none that are familiar. If it were anyone from Holyrood, they’d be running—either because they had the queen, and she was injured, or because she was dead, and we’d all failed her.

I reach for my firearm.

Cock my head when I hear another rustle of gravel.

The hairs on the back of my forearms stand tall, but my heart doesn’t hammer with fear. Seven months of being locked away hasn’t erased the familiarity of dancing with the devil. A dance that I once welcomed with reckless abandon.

Weapon raised, I prowl across the drawbridge on silent feet.

Come out, I ache to purr, come out, wherever you are.

A snapping twig draws me forward.

A smothered hiss strokes adrenaline down the length of my spine.

Let me see you.

My eyes adjust to the night, tracking the curve of a tall bush and then, finally, a figure emerging from the fog.

No, not emerging but dragging.

Doubled in half, a hand clutched at its middle, it creeps forward with a distinct limp that renders me momentarily motionless. A hand shoots out to grasp the bush, as though praying for stability, but the branch doesn’t hold. It yields with a snap! just as the figure teeters.

“Don’t move.”

Labored footsteps inch closer.

“One more step,” I say, my tone thick with warning, “and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

“Please.” That voice—feminine, raspy, pained. “P-please. Are you—”

“Your name.”

“Holyrood,” she says instead, the second syllable breaking on a fragile gasp, “I’m l-looking for Holyrood. Please.”

If there was moonlight, I’d demand that she reveal herself. But she’s nothing but shadow, nothing but a strange woman appearing on our front lawn in the middle of the night, all while asking about a secret agency that she should know nothing about.

“Give me,” I growl, “your name.”

“Rowan.” The name teases forth a memory, but I barely have time to grasp it with both hands before she exhales on a shattered breath, “Rowena Carrigan . . . and I have the queen.”

And then she falls, hands meeting gravel on a broken cry, and the fog—and the moat—swallow her whole.

3

Rowena

I’m being flayed alive.

Razors scour my flesh, digging, prodding, scraping.

My back bows.

Lips part on a strangled cry.

And then a calloused hand fits against my bare shoulder and lowers me back down with a firmness that speaks to a lifetime of being obeyed.

“Don’t move.”

A command I may have heeded, if not for those razors hacking away at my spine, until there’s nothing left but the sensation of being butchered. Stop. Please, stop. Temples pounding furiously, I fling out an arm and strike something sharp.

Metal crashes to the floor.

“Jesus. She needs—”

“She doesn’t need a damned thing, Matthews.”

“You bloody well may be a genius, but you’re not the doctor here. I am.” Metal meets metal with a startling clang. “And I’m telling you, she needs to be sedated.”

“No,” I gasp, slicking my tongue along the dry roof of my mouth. “No more.”

Matthews curses under his breath. “She shouldn’t be awake. Not yet. Give it here, Godwin, before I string you up by your bollocks.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Steel cloaked in velvet. That voice belongs to the sort of man who baits you to the edge of a cliff with nothing but a husky purr and a curve of his lips before hurling you into the swirling waters below. Even now, I feel the crash of the waves threatening to pull me under, to drag me so far deep where no hope exists.

Godwin, Matthews called him.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

In this moment, with my naked back exposed to a pair of strangers, my fate is in the hand of God.

“The sedative,” Matthews persists, “give me the blasted