Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,1
feet move of their own accord, the gun steady in my grip. And then I see her, the woman who’s always felt more like a sister than a friend—and my worst fear is confirmed.
“You’ve been shot,” I breathe.
Half-slouched on the stair rung above her, with her hands pressed to her bloodied abdomen, Margaret offers a weak laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Clarke—”
“That I know,” she whispers, jerking her face away before I can see emotion ripple across her features. But I know her too well—just as she knows me—and her grief is palpable. Absolute. “I know.”
I’m so sorry.
The words beg to be free, but now isn’t the time to give them life. Instead, I dart forward and snake my arm under hers. Despite the heat enveloping the palace, her skin is frigid. I swallow tightly. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No.” She plants a feeble hand on the curved wall. “The palace . . . take me to the palace.”
“Mags,” I mutter, biting back a pained hiss when she loops an arm around my back and catches the particles of glass still lodged in my skin, “if we stay, we’ll be dead. Now please just—”
She slides out of my grasp, her body pitching forward.
“—Margaret!”
My fingers grasp the back of her shirt, but it’s not enough to defy gravity.
We tumble forward together.
Elbows crashing against stone, knees dragging and rolling over my shoulder. Clarke’s handgun slips from my grip, clattering somewhere out of sight. And then my head bashes against the wall, and I roll once more, landing on my back with a thud that drives the air from my lungs.
Fuck me, everything hurts.
Arching my spine to relieve the stinging pressure, I claw onto all fours and get no farther than my elbows and shins. My forehead greets the wooden stair rung as I drag in deep gulps of air. The grain of the wood is slick with something that smells suspiciously like blood. No doubt my own.
Focus. I need to focus.
“Mags?” On trembling limbs, I drag myself over to the balustrade and peer down the stairwell. “Mags!”
She’s facedown, her white-blond hair a near ash-brown in the dim light, her arms splayed wide.
My heart lurches.
We need to flee. We need to run. But when I finally reach her side and ease her onto her back, her face is devoid of color and her lips part on jagged, uneven breaths. Dazed blue eyes find mine.
“The palace,” she whispers again.
I choke back a wretched laugh. “We’re here!” I wave my arm at the empty stairwell, frustration sharpening my tone. “We’re already bloody here, and we’re going to die here if we don’t move. So please just let me—”
“In Sevenoaks,” she utters on a battered breath, her fingers circling my wrist, “the Palace. Take me . . . take me to the home with the drawbridge and t-the moat.”
A . . . moat?
I tip my head back and stare at the ceiling, two stories above us. Hopelessness sits like a shroud upon on my shoulders. Margaret is delirious and in no shape to walk anywhere, and I’ll never leave her to suffer alone. Sisters, always, no matter our lack of shared blood. Which means . . . this is it.
This is the end.
I don’t know what it says about me that instead of blind panic, all I feel is the sting of relief.
God knows my father won’t mourn the loss of me, and Mum—well, I suppose this is a rather fitting end.
Like mother, like daughter.
Both Carrigan women swept away in a blaze hot enough to smother our screams forever.
“Holyrood.”
“What?” Startled, my gaze snaps to Margaret’s ashen face. “You want to go to Edinburgh?”
Offering a weak shake of her head, her blue eyes slide shut. “Not Scotland. Bring me to Holyrood,” she breathes, panic prompting the words from her faster, more urgently, “bring me to the Godw—”
“We won’t make it.”
“I saved you. I saved you—remember? S-Sevenoaks,” she repeats with a desperate squeeze of her fingers around my wrist, “the house with the . . . moat. Take me there.”
My throat goes dry. “We’re going to die. You know that, right?”
She answers, softly, “I know.”
We both know.
She’s bleeding out and I’m five steps away from losing consciousness, and still I shove myself to my feet and pull her up until she’s half-balanced against me. Debilitating pain erupts across my body, like sharp-edged knives dancing over the pearls of my spine.
Stay strong. Do not fall.
I glance over the bannister—at the two remaining flights of stairs