Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,142
Sara’s door open and Gregory slips inside first, lowering Damien to the exam table with startling care before stepping back out to give the doctors room. Both Sara and Dr. Matthews are dressed in scrubs and I taste only panic when I think of the grime down in the Bascule Chambers—the same grime that dirtied my hands as I tore at Damien’s shirt to hear his heartbeat and the same grime that’s buried beneath my fingernails even now.
Fuck me.
On a burst of movement, I dart past Guy for the sink, where I shove my hands under the faucet.
“Three gunshot wounds,” Sara mutters to Dr. Matthews over the sound of running water. “We’ll need to get him scrubbed up and ready for surgery.”
My hands are still sopping wet when I twist back around. “You’ll save him.”
She throws me a sympathetic look. “He’s lost a lot of blood but I promise that I’ll do my best.”
“No.” I snatch paper towels from the rack and dry off my fingers. “No, Sara, you will save him. I don’t care what you have to do but he will—”
“She can’t.”
Dr. Matthews utters the remark so softly, with such resolution, that I’m entirely taken aback. The sole of my right trainer squeaks against the tiled floor as I turn to find him standing with his head bent over Damien’s prone body. Gingerly, Dr. Matthews’s gloved fingers peel back Damien’s shirt.
“He’s alive, Doctor”—the paper towels crumple in my fist—“which means he can be saved.”
For a moment, he doesn’t respond. He plucks at the bloodied shirt, prods at the wound on Damien’s chest, and then his somber dark eyes meet mine. “He can’t, Miss Carrigan.”
“I don’t . . .”
I don’t understand.
The air squeezes from my lungs when I bring my attention to Guy. His dark head is bowed, his bloodied hands clamped into fists as his sides. His shirt is torn, his trousers ripped at the left shin. This man just helped me carry his brother up from the depths of Hell, and while we have no connection beyond that, I swallow, hard, and say his name. The single syllable trips off my tongue as a question.
Blue eyes lift to collide with mine and, in them, I see only the shadows of ravaged misery.
“Don’t give up on him, remember?” I choke out. “Guy, he’s still breathing.”
His wide shoulders flinch. “He’s dying.”
“Of course he is!” The words explode from my core, and Sara’s feet physically come off the floor as she reels backward in surprise. “We’re standing around him like he’s not bleeding out. Meanwhile, his damned doctor won’t even try to—”
“Rowena,” Guy grits, “he’s been dying.”
“No.” The ground splits open wide beneath me and my entire world teeters on its axis. “No, he’s not. There’s nothing—”
“You hunted him, didn’t you? For months, you fucking hunted him.”
The vehemence in his voice sends me stumbling backward. “I don’t—”
“And didn’t you ever think it strange,” he continues harshly, “that you and your little mates always saw Saxon and me at the pub while never once coming across Damien anywhere in London?”
“The bounty—”
“This has nothing to do with the bounty!” he roars. “This has to do with your fucking father sending men to take Damien out because he wouldn’t kill the king. This has to do with Damien stabbed and poisoned just steps away from The Bell & Hand. I found him unable to move, Rowena”—the visceral pain glittering in his blue eyes nearly brings me to my knees—“and I clung to him then just as you did down in those chambers.”
I can’t speak, can’t breathe.
Damien’s shoulder, the scar that I pressed a knife to while I begged him to trust me. He hadn’t felt the tip of the blade; had admitted as much when he begged me to mark his left side instead of his right when we had sex.
Paralyzed.
His body heavy like stone.
My periphery distorts with tears as I collapse against the counter. He had to have known. If he’s been through this before—whatever this is—then he knew, down in the Bascule Chambers, and still he carried me in his arms until he could no longer stay on his feet.
Just like he could have left me to die at Broadmoor Hospital but came for me instead.
Wherever you are, I will find you.
Mistaking my silence for doubt, Guy growls, “Do you think I forced him into the Palace for all these months because I felt like it? Do you think I enjoyed watching my brother lose pieces of himself every bloody day?