Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,157
chest. Easy, Godwin. Take it slow and take it easy. I try again. “You were m-my . . . my—”
A clipboard appears between me and Saxon, and I turn to see that it’s Guy holding it out for me. His expression remains inscrutable, that familiar mask of his already lowered into place.
“Write it down,” he grunts.
Taking the clipboard, I balance it against my thigh. Fumbling for the pen that Guy tucked under the metal trapping, my hand trembles as the ball tip touches the paper. I grit my teeth. Regrip the pen. Then allow the ink to bleed life across the page in a shaky scrawl that proves that while the poison might be gone from my body, its aftereffects are currently here to stay.
With little fanfare, I shove the clipboard at Saxon.
His gaze falls.
A beat passes and then yet another, and then his shoulders rise while his Adam’s apple bobs down the length of his throat. “You’re not . . . Christ, Damien, you’re not—”
His eyes squeeze shut, and he scrubs his hand over his scarred mouth. Saxon has always been the one person who I’ve never been able to predict, or read, but as he stands before me now, I watch him visibly crack.
The clipboard clatters against the bed’s metal railing a second before he clasps the back of my neck to reel me in. We’re forehead to forehead, the way Pa once did to us as children. And like Pa, Saxon’s eyes glimmer an unholy green as he keeps me locked against him. “You’re not responsible for the pain I’ve felt,” he says roughly, “and it’s not on you to protect me from suffering any more than I already have. We’re brothers, Damien. Your pain is my own.”
IVs tangle with my forearm as I lift my left hand to clamp it down on his nape. Only, as I stare at him, with our foreheads still pressed together, I think of him not as he is now but as he was after the butcher took the knife to his face.
I cried when I saw him.
Not out of fear but from an unparalleled rage that I couldn’t control. Someone had hurt him, and I was powerless to do anything but watch shame and misery flicker over his young face. Saxon spent years covering his mouth whenever we stepped out in public—and I spent those same years slipping through the darkness to pummel anyone who dared look at him the wrong way.
The day he was scarred was the first time that I felt hate bloom in my heart for someone who wasn’t Mum, and instead of ripping out the emotion by the roots, I nourished it. Thrived on it. The boy genius with a heart of gold who was always destined to become the Mad Priest.
“Je t’aime, frére.”
The same words that I whispered to him after the butcher’s attack, and by the way his eyes widen, I know he recognizes their significance. When one bleeds, the other endures the same agony. Holyrood may have hardened us, but for the first time in years, Saxon wears his emotions on his sleeve. Squeezing the back of my neck, he rasps, “I love you, too, little brother.”
He lets go, and I’m not surprised to see Guy and Matthews huddled in the corner of the room, giving us some privacy. Grabbing the clipboard, I scrawl a note below the last. How many dead from the chambers?
Saxon angles the clipboard so that he can see what I’ve written. “The commissioner,” he answers, “along with Barker and Samuel. The big bastard—Gregory—made it back.”
Guilt stabs me in the gut.
I asked for both men to be there, and while Samuel had volunteered, I’d dangled Barker’s daughters before him like an enticing carrot. Those two girls are orphans now, and I make a mental note to find their closest kin. An anonymous deposit into a bank account won’t bring their mum or dad back but the alternative is to leave them to the wolves. And I can’t . . . Fucking hell, I won’t let them struggle. Not after I’ve played a part in destroying their family.
Hugh Coney? I underline his name twice.
“Dead,” Saxon says.
Good.
Without giving him the chance to walk away, I write my next question as fast as I can. What did Rowena do for the antidote?
Immediately my brother reaches up to thread his fingers through hair as dark as my own. “Not yet,” he mutters, avoiding my gaze. “When you’re better, we’ll—”