Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,48

audience into a fit of hysterics. But this isn’t a play, and this isn’t some fairytale with a happily ever after. We’re at war, and if the Priests still have Margaret then . . .

Fuck me, I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

Stumbling backward, I spin away from all the heavy stares that feel like knives jabbing into my spine. They watch, and they wait, as if expecting me to fly off the handle and lose my temper. Or, worse, cry.

But Rowan Carrigan doesn’t lose her temper and she certainly doesn’t cry.

Not this version of myself, at least, the woman who King John chose, the woman that the entire organization looks to for guidance in leading the cause. No, the woman I am today bottles up every trace of emotion until even the slightest dent in my armor reveals only another impenetrable wall. My nakedness—both the emotional and physical—is shown to no one.

Even so, my lips feel numb when I scrape together every last trace of composure and utter a single word: “How.”

“We . . . We checked every room,” Hugh says, a quiver evident in his voice. “All those we could find on our own and every one that was on that blueprint you had us find. She wasn’t there, Rowan, not even a trace of her.”

“Like she was a ghost,” Gregory adds.

Worst case scenarios pummel me from all angles, everything from death to torture. Was that the real reason why Damien wouldn’t let me see her? Because she hadn’t come out of surgery at all, as Dr. Matthews claimed, but because she’s dead?

Nausea curdles in my stomach.

My shoulders press backward; chin lifts another degree. Anything to pretend that my heart isn’t racing with fear. “We’ll go back,” I tell them, already mentally sifting through possible plans. “We’ll have to go back. But we’ll need to be stealthy. They’ll be expecting us.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

My head jerks in Gregory’s direction. “What are you saying?”

“We took care of them, didn’t we, mates?”

A litany of “yeses” infuses the room, a few shouted, others more subdued.

“Gregory,” I whisper, clutching the base of my throat, “what did you do?”

“I pushed ’im.”

The pure, unadulterated satisfaction in that one sentence is enough to weaken my knees. “Who? Who did you push?”

“The Mad Priest.”

Blood roars in my ears. “No. No, Gregory, I said to—”

“Bring ’im to you,” comes the surly reply, “but Rowan, ’e was up on the roof and shootin’ us, and I followed ’im up, yeah? And I was thinkin’ of Coney—not you, Coney, the other one—and I couldn’t just let ’im go.”

“You . . . you pushed Damien Priest”—I lick my lips—“off a roof.”

It’s not a question, and, at this point, further confirmation is pretty much unnecessary. But Gregory seems only too pleased to add, “Right over the edge, Rowan. ’e never stood a chance.”

I should be jumping for joy. Or, at the very least, pouring us all a drink to celebrate one Priest down and only two more brothers left to go. But instead . . .

Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.

The heel of my palm flies to my mouth, like that’ll be enough to keep the vomit down. People aren’t shoved off roofs, not in real life. Suspense novels, sure. Action films, absolutely. But in real life . . .

Fuck. Me.

Damien Priest—dead.

I’d planned to interrogate him. I’d planned to force his big body into a chair, his wrists tied behind his back, and take every one of his secrets, the way he’d done to me. I wanted him humbled, I wanted him vulnerable. Nowhere in my plans—in the assignments that I gave out before Gregory and the others left Holly Village for the Palace—was there an order to kill him.

Monsters hide in us all, Damien told me.

Right now, in this moment, I feel like the vilest monster alive.

“Rowan.” At Hugh’s smooth baritone, I turn toward him stiffly. “I know you wanted Priest for questioning,” he goes on, unfazed, “and obviously that didn’t work out like we planned—”

“’e ‘ad to die,” Gregory interjects, completely unrepentant.

“What I’m trying to say is,” Hugh mutters, raising his voice to be heard over Gregory, “we brought you someone else.”

Did Damien struggle the way Ian had during those last few minutes of life? Hell, did Gregory at least have the decency to kill him before pushing him from the roof? Or did his body hit the—

“Rowan. Rowan, are you listening to me?”

“You can’t take credit for Benjamin Lotts.” Somehow, I manage to sound completely at