Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,45

my legs to twist in the stranger’s grip. One glance upward reveals that the bastard out for my blood is huge. Arms like tree trunks; thighs like bloody anchors. I’m no shrinking violet, but the man has to outweigh me by at least two stone. A rarity that sparks a thread of unease. Spotting my expression, a sinister grin splits across the bastard’s face. The silver moon, now out to play, highlights crooked upper teeth.

“I’s been waitin’ for this day.” He cranks one hand off my leg. “Waitin’,” he says, his brows diving together over the sharp bridge of his nose, “and waitin’. And Rowan, she tells me, over and over, ’ave some patience, Gregory. But patience is just—” His fist collides with my chin, snapping my head back. Blood explodes in my mouth, the gunmetal taste smearing over my teeth. “That’s what I ’as to say. No patience, Priest. None for me.”

Rowan.

The name—her name—resonates through my ringing skull seconds before Gregory swings his fist again. This time, I manage to dive to the right before he can make contact. Tiles come loose under my weight, turning the dangers of a pitched roof into a twisted game of Russian Roulette where one wrong move means instant death.

I roll again, evading another kick, and pry at a tile with a prayer burning in my throat. It loosens with a shrill squeak. Fingers curled over the sharpened edge, I turn and snap it forward like a projectile.

The tile nails the bastard in the throat.

His big frame wavers, wobbling in place, and I launch to my feet.

Invisible needles prick my throbbing skull. You’re going to fall. You’re going to collapse and it’s going to be just like last—

Goodbye for now, she’d said.

Rowan. Fucking Rowena.

Vision swimming with the memory of violet, I manage five steps toward the ladder when a burst of air suddenly rushes past my ear. With a low curse, I weave my body to avoid the punch. More tiles give way under my right foot, the broken fragments hurtling down the sloped roof to disappear over the edge.

Jesus.

I’m going to die.

I knew this would happen. With enemies like Carrigan and Guthram, I’m a man working on borrowed time. But some part of me—so deep, so buried, so easily ignored—hoped it would feel differently than that day behind Christ Church Spitalfields. I wanted a bed. I wanted my brothers close. I wanted anything but the same aggression surging in my veins, calling for me to destroy and survive and fight until the very end.

Then and now, I’ve been sentenced to death by the Carrigan family.

Refusing to glance down, I dart across a narrow ridge board that’s barely as wide as the width of my hand.

“Coward!” the bastard growls behind me.

I hear his shoes scrape the crossbeam. Keep moving. Don’t slow down. Lowering to my thighs, I slip down the valley rafter, only far enough so I can jump onto a perpendicular ridge, this one even narrower than the last. Oxygen drives into my lungs. My arms swing outward, level with my shoulders, as if that’ll keep me airborne when the bloody roof buckles beneath me.

This goddamned house.

Seven months of house arrest and now—

Gregory’s meat-sized hand pummels my right shoulder, exactly where Carrigan’s men stabbed me, and then I’m falling, falling, falling.

Tiles slip and slide, scattering everywhere and providing no opportunity to stop my descent. Nightingales sing, and a hoarse shout climbs my throat, and in that split-second before I go over the side of the ancient roof, I spot Gregory’s satisfied expression.

His smirk deepens and he yells something that I can’t hear over the thunderous roar in my ears, and it wouldn’t matter even if I could.

We both know I’m a dead man.

And it was Rowena Carrigan, my very own Trojan Horse, who damned me to hell.

16

Rowena

“Tight.” Chin tucked down, I press my palms to the stone table for balance and hold myself still. “Wrap it tight. Please.”

“Rowan . . . With your rib, you really oughtn’t put any—”

“I’ll be fine.”

Like every other member of our motley crew, Dr. Sara Grafton does as I say with mute obedience. Tearing a new bandage from the pack on the table, she tugs on my shirt to indicate that I hold it up for her. With a hard swallow, I grasp the hem and lift, already dreading the moment when—

Her low gasp is exactly what I feared.

Another hard swallow. “Well?” I ask, feeling her cool fingers graze one of the gashes from the shattered windows