Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,46

at Buckingham Palace. “How bad does it look?”

“You shouldn’t even be alive.”

Truer words have probably never been spoken.

Then again, I’ve spent thirty-three years dying in a thousand little ways. And each time that I’ve grasped life with both hands, too blasted stubborn to let go, I find myself resurrected once again. A chameleon adopting new shades; a magician willing to put forth new tricks to entertain a perpetually restless crowd.

Here, under this roof, I’m the king’s chosen one.

Never to be denied, always to be obeyed.

“Probably looks a good deal better than it did the first night. Which I guess isn’t saying much.” Refusing to reveal any discomfort, I force a smile over my shoulder. “Anyway, it’s really not that bad”—lies, my soul screams, stop lying—“but when the cuts rub against fabric, it’s just that I . . .”

I could cry.

“You need to rest,” Sara mutters, proficiently tucking my shirt into the band of my sports bra. “And, before you argue with me, I already know that the likelihood of you actually following orders is non-exist—”

“They killed Ian.”

“Goddammit.” Sara’s breath comes hard and fast on my right, her elbow knocking into mine when she jerks away to tear open the bandage’s plastic wrapping. “It’s too soon, all right? I know what you’re going to say and it’s too soon.”

If only emotions could wait on the sidelines until we’re ready to face them in all their glory. A lever we might switch on and off whenever hate swarms our hearts and defeat pools in our guts and we’re nothing more than anger primed by madness. But that sort of luxury isn’t meant for people like us—rebels, loyalists, spies—and the hollow smile on my face turns grim. “The Priests killed Ian, Sara, just like they killed your father.”

“Rowan, stop—”

“They killed Frederick and Russ and Victor and Gregg. Nineteen. Gregg was nineteen. Do you know he’d never even left England? Not that he could with our borders being closed. But still. He wanted peace and he wanted hope and he bloody well wanted to get pissed in Amsterdam, but instead he . . . instead he—”

Tears threaten and I stiffen my jaw, hoping to eradicate the sorrow before it swells and consumes me whole. What happened that day at The Octagon wasn’t murder—it was slaughter. Like a pack of animals deemed utterly useless. Strangled. Shot. Diced and sliced. No matter what Damien says about Holyrood protecting the Crown, I know the truth.

Misguided monsters make the most horrific heroes.

“I’ll rest when we’ve got the queen.” And only then.

“You’ve a strained rib.”

“Trust me,” I mutter, my lips twisting, “I can tell.”

Silently, Sara wraps the clean bandage around my stomach to bring together over my spine. Huffing under her breath, she says, louder, “You’re covered in blisters. Don’t listen to me, if you don’t want to, but at least listen to your own body.”

Rest. Recuperation. Rebirth.

I’ll do it all when I’ve fulfilled my oath to the king.

“I haven’t any on my legs,” I tell her, thinking of how I sat in my room four nights ago, after the Holyrood agent left me at my Hurlingham flat, and ran my hands over my body to feel the extent of the damage done by the fire. “My forearms and stomach got the worst of it from when I was caught under the beam.” And my hair, and the upper half of forehead, but there’s no point in acknowledging the obvious.

After adhering the bandage to my back, Sara steps away. “They’ll all leave scars—”

“And show I’ve lived. That I live still, and sometimes that’s all we have going for us. We’re alive, we’re breathing. My heart beats. So many others can’t say the same.” I take an experimental step away from the table and peer out into oblivion, tugging my shirt back into place. When the material doesn’t graze the cuts for the first time in twenty-four hours, since I tried to re-bandage myself, I nearly sob with relief. Smothering any trace of weakness from my voice, I say, “The lads will be back from Sevenoaks soon, and we need to be ready for the worst.”

“They can handle themselves.”

“We said the same thing just weeks ago and we both know how that turned out.”

“Nothing can be worse than The Octagon,” Sara utters quietly, and I know that she’s thinking of her father. Dead from a bullet to the heart. It’d be poetic, if it weren’t completely devastating.

Wishing I could burn that day from my memory, all I offer is the