me to handle the scope of his demands all on my own. Or maybe he expected you to fail and didn’t see a point in bothering to help. Like a spoiled child lashing out with his hurt, heedless to the consequences of the whip he snapped. The thought feels like lead in my stomach, and I force it into nonexistence with a mental crush of my fist.
Regardless of what the king intended, I’m proud of what I’ve built—even if it is, essentially, all for nothing. But that doesn’t mean we’re Holyrood. To think we can provide Damien with resources that his own family can’t is ridiculous.
I open my mouth, prepared to tell him just that, when he speaks.
“The king sent me to Westminster because he suspected the prime minister of foul play.” His voice is painted black with unveiled secrets. Dark, enthralling. Edged with a fire that heats my skin like the flames at Buckingham Palace never could. “But when I got there, your father was already waiting for me. Told me that if I didn’t want anything about that night to be revealed to the public that I’d kill the king.”
“My father? You’re saying that my father told you to assassinate King John?”
“He was there, in the middle of the night, waiting. And when I told him to sod off, he made good on his promise.” Damien’s fingers dig into my waist, pulling me closer. “He made me the Mad Priest. He turned me into this, and I need to know if it was all a coincidence—that the last seven months are exactly what I thought they were—or if I was damned to this hell because the king set me up for a betrayal that was all in his fucking head.”
“And you think that my father started the fire at the pub?” I shake my head. “If he’s already backed you into a corner, why would he bother destroying The Bell & Hand on top of it?”
“I don’t know but I intend to find out.”
“You need me,” I breathe, clarity hitting me like a sledgehammer to the chest. “You need me because you need access to my father.” The man who used me for years, who turned a blind eye when I went to him, four years ago, in a frail moment of hope to salvage our fractured relationship, and who ignored me again at the Jewel Tower. The man whose actions have sent me on a path of ruination for which I’ve yet to recover.
Edward Carrigan, widower by choice, and father to none.
A flurry of heat warms my body.
Not lust, not desire, but anger.
Anger on behalf of the little girl who only wanted love and acceptance and found none. Anger that blossoms in my heart and fuels my soul and hastens my breathing. Finding Damien’s hand on my hip, I squeeze it tightly. “Even if I let you stay, it doesn’t erase the fact that it’s a bad idea. What good are resources—what good am I to you—if you’re dead?”
“You assume I can’t handle myself.”
“I assume that one against sixteen aren’t great odds.”
The bridge of his nose finds the back of my ear. “Are you worried about me, Miss Carrigan?”
“No.” The lie leaves me on a forceful exhale. “No, that’s not it at all.”
“Is it guilt I wonder?” he husks, a bemused edge to his tone. “Or something else completely?”
I feel as powerless as I did when he held me in one hand and dangled me in the air. “Maybe you’re delusional,” I manage past a dry throat, “and maybe I don’t want to handle the cleanup after they inevitably kill you.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
“Careful, your ego is showing again.”
“Then agree to the terms.”
I lift my head. “What could you possibly say that’ll keep me from scrubbing your blood from my floors for the next week?”
The bite in my tone pulls a dark laugh from him. It twines around me like smoke, wrapping tighter, knitting closed, until I feel his hand slip out from under mine. One settles over my breastbone, like he seeks the rhythm of my heart, and the other . . .
The other cups my face.
A startled breath escapes me when his thumb grazes my bottom lip. “Damien . . .”
“If they hurt me, then I’ll touch you, and I won’t wait for an invitation.”
Oh, my God.
Like a jar that’s been unlatched, butterflies flutter to life in my belly. The rasp in his voice. The heat of his chest against my back. That damned