Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,127
can’t breathe. I can barely see, not with the dancing black dots swarming the office.
Run. Run. Run.
“You’ll scream,” Jack growls from behind me, “and then maybe I’ll drop yer body at Saxon’s house, for a little present. A dead priest. A dead bitch. Oh, Ian would be so happy.”
The air beside my right ear sings—
And the knife plummets south a meter past me, having only just missed its mark.
Me.
I need to hustle.
I need to run.
Heavy footsteps stalk around me, blocking my path to the door. Not wasting time, I turn and rise on trembling legs. There must be another way out. Saxon, Guy—neither of them would allow only for a single exit point. I gasp for breath, swinging right, then left.
“Nowhere to go,” Jack drawls casually, like he’s enjoying himself immensely, “no one to save you.”
I whirl around, hands raised to ward off another attack. Only, I shouldn’t have bothered.
Sunlight from the window catches on the silver pistol in Jack’s hand. A pistol that is unerringly pointed . . . at me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper, winding backward on legs as weak as a newborn fawn’s. “Please, Jack, you don’t have to—”
“You killed Ian. You killed my brother.”
My mouth parts in shock then clamps shut. The two look nothing alike, but that’s saying nothing. Both men are unhinged. And both men want me dead because of my relationship with Saxon. If only they knew . . . if only they knew of Holyrood, that they’re all on the same side.
The queen’s side.
I slide my gaze south, to the gun. “Jack, don’t. You don’t understand. Saxon, he’s with you. It’s all a front. A ploy. He’s loyal to the—”
“Scream for me, little bird.”
The gun erupts, and I hear myself cry out when I lurch away. I scream, just as he demanded, as a trail of fire explodes within me. Burning sensations crawling over my flesh. Heat, so much heat. I glance down, just for a second, and all I see is red. Red oozing from the ring-sized hole in my chest—a deep, dark maroon. Nearly black.
I clutch my chest, smearing the blood as I stumble. Collapse. Arms and legs sprawled as my lungs heave with the effort to breathe.
A blurry figure steps above me. There are two of them, swaying, bending, coming closer and closer, until his face is all that I see.
Jack.
My murderer.
My own ruthless, broken monster.
“Sweet dreams, Isla.”
A hand presses down on me, driving into the wound itself, and another cry shatters the room. My tears. My pain. I’m sinking. Drowning. Gasping for air, for life itself. And then there’s nothing . . . Nothing but agony and darkness and the deep, endless abyss of oblivion.
43
Saxon
I feel no better leaving Christ Church than I did stepping within its hallowed walls.
William Bootham will never attend another mass, hold another confession, or—fuck—just breathe. Selfish. It was so bloody selfish of me to use him, knowing that if anyone were to find out, it would end just as it did.
Quietly, I slip the door closed and step out into the sunshine.
Considering my dark mood, it ought to be storming. Black clouds, heavy downpour. I want to soak in the misery, let it consume me. If not that, then let it try and purge the guilt away.
Scrubbing a palm over my jaw, I step onto the street. Life without Holyrood hasn’t settled in yet. I have more money than I know what to do with. More time, too.
I could do without the latter.
Every unhurried minute of the day only allows for more time spent thinking about Isla. Does she sleep in Oxford, at the secret safehouse that I sent Peter and Josie to, knowing that my brothers have no idea of its existence? Has she brought her siblings somewhere else, somewhere she can grow roots and start a new life, away from the anger and the vengeance and the deceit?
Does she miss me?
My chest squeezes with a ragged breath. Anxiety. Another newfound emotion that Isla has given me a name for. A feeling I could do well without.
Lifting my hat, I thread my fingers through my hair before resettling the brim back in place. Briefly, I shoot a glance to The Bell & Hand. Another loss, there. I shouldn’t miss it—the needy customers and the waitstaff that drove me insane with their random requests. But still I stand here, on Fournier, stuck between two folds of my past.