Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,57

Dad’s knife.

The knife that nearly killed me. I swallow, hard.

Green eyes find mine as he hands it over. “You follow me. Every step. Every pause.”

I drag in a sharp breath, only to hiss between my teeth when the hilt collides with my wound. Still, I grip it firmly. Steadily. With every ounce of strength that I have left in reserve. “Where are we going?”

“No questions, just follow.”

Severing eye contact, he turns, his big frame hunched like a rattlesnake poised to strike.

More sirens echo in the near distance, sending a chill of fear rappelling down my spine.

The Octagon will be all over the news by nightfall.

Saxon doesn’t need to tell me that he left no survivors—he couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to, not with the chance of them telling the police our identities. Also my fault. Saxon hadn’t wanted to do anything about the loyalist group, even with the mounting target on his back.

I hate that I dragged him here, that I forced more spilled blood on his hands and on my own.

Selfishly, though, I know there was no other option.

I recognized Ian Coney because I’d seen him at The Bell & Hand. And he’d seen me, too. How many others are there like him? How many supporters of the Crown are lurking, biding their time, within the pub that Saxon and his brothers set up as a safe haven for anti-loyalists?

If I hadn’t shown up tonight, who knows when they might have attacked.

Perhaps today, tomorrow, three weeks from now.

But they would have, and they would have managed to catch Saxon off guard, perhaps fatally, and I don’t know what it says about me that I would rather have the blood of Ian Coney on my hands—literally—than discover that he’d stripped Saxon of his life.

The man in question shoots out an arm, blocking me from further movement.

“Do you hear something?” I whisper.

He tilts his head, listening. “An ambulance,” he rumbles, “which means someone isn’t dead.” Twisting toward the brick wall, he comes just short of punching it. At the last second, his fist curls behind his nape, pressing deep into the flesh there. “Fuck!”

“Understatement of the year,” I choke out. “They know who we are.”

“I know.”

“I’ve got to get home. Peter, Josie, they—”

Twisting around, Saxon’s fingers find my chin, his thumb grazing the skin just below my bottom lip. The sudden, unexpected contact clams me up, snapping my mouth shut. “We get out of here and I’ll send Guy to them,” he says, his gaze searching mine. “But me and you—we need to hustle.”

“Hustle.” When I nod, his thumb slips over my wet skin and my heart stutters. “I can do that. I don’t crack, remember?”

His hand falls to his side, the ghost of his touch erased by rain. “Now’s your chance to prove it. Don’t disappoint me.”

21

Isla

I don’t disappoint him.

As lightning shatters the sky, Saxon leads me from snickelway to snickelway. Though we’ve left the sirens behind, it’s done nothing to soften our pace. Two months ago, I assassinated the king in a plot that I’d planned for months, ever since it was announced that he would be speaking at a rally, in full sight of the thousands gathered to see him. Today, there is no planning—only the controlled chaos that Saxon sets into motion to shuttle us away from Queen Mary’s campus.

I step in a puddle, and dirty street water promptly drenches me from toe to ankle. “Bollocks.”

My clothes are soaked, my hair is nothing more than a bedraggled rat’s nest that sticks to my face, and if I’m ever able to dry out these boots to wear again, it’ll be a miracle of epic proportions.

Holding up a hand for me to stop moving, Saxon peers out onto Mile End Road, his dark head shifting from right to left. I walk this street nearly every day on the way to the Tube, but it all feels . . . foreign. Like I don’t even recognize my own borough.

“We can’t run all day,” I whisper to his back. “At some point, we’re going to have to stop, regather.”

And save Peter and Josie, too.

I haven’t forgotten Saxon’s promise that he’ll send Guy for them. And while Saxon’s older brother isn’t exactly on my list of chums that I’d love to grab a pint with, I know that he cares deeply for his family. If he’s sent for my siblings, they’ll be in good hands. Safe hands.

I hope.

Distracting myself from thoughts that may send me into a downward spiral, I press