Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,174
large. The beat of my heart echoes in my ears. Nerves bundle into a tight knot in my belly. Every scar and fading blister from the fire at Buckingham Palace leaves me exposed and vulnerable.
If I am ruthless, it’s because Father turned me cruel.
If I am cunning, it’s because Father taught me all the ways that I’d be bested.
And if I show weakness, it’s because a sliver of my soul will always be the little girl who beat her fists on a window, screaming to be saved from the fire that would swallow her whole.
Slowly, with methodical nonchalance, I allow my gaze to crawl over my father’s body. His sleeves are rolled up to his forearms and his suit jacket buried under a stack of folders at his left elbow. His collar is undone, just one button, and his face is bristle-free. At the Jewel Tower, I’d stood back far enough that I missed the signs of age that have claimed him.
I see them all now.
The loose skin at his jowls and the gray peppered in with the black of his brows. His hair, thinner than it was a decade ago, is combed over to the right in the same style that he’s worn for years. It hides a patch of baldness from when Mum tried to cut his hair and stabbed him with the shears instead.
Young Rowena cried over the spilled blood.
I wish that I still possessed even a quarter of her blissful innocence.
He killed that too.
With the sly smile that was once my trademark, I lean back on the bench and spread my arms wide across the back. Ownership. A line drawn in the sand from one opponent to another. And then my smile deepens, and I meet a pair of eyes as effervescently blue as my own, and oh, the satisfaction I feel at seeing all the rage locked behind a stare so sharp as his.
“Hello, Father. Have you missed me?”
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Rowena
His reaction is instantaneous.
Gripping my arm, he shoves his face close to mine. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Pointedly, I look to the place where he’s holding me. “Your hand.”
“What?”
“Your hand,” I repeat, emphasizing the statement with a kick of my chin toward our audience. “I’d hate for the world to realize that you aren’t pleased to see me when it’s been so long.”
“I’m not—”
Only, he doesn’t have the chance to finish that thought because Gregory has already pried him loose. Looking like a windup toy caught in a pair of big paws, Father’s cheeks turn a blustery red as he grapples for control, never releasing his hold on the precious paperwork clutched in his arm. “What is the meaning of this?” he snarls, slapping one hand back at the man restraining him. “Release me!”
“Should I, Rowan?”
Instead of answering Gregory, my pumps sink into the soft rug as I stand. In every direction that I look, there are faces peering back. Puzzled. Uncomfortable. They stare as if I’m the shite beneath their shoe, that which they thought they’d already scraped off before stepping indoors. Unfortunately for them all, they’ve been harboring a cockroach in their midst. I’m nothing more than the trail of seed prepared to lead them down the path of no return.
“You all may be wondering what you’ve done to deserve my presence today,” I say, raising my voice to ensure that every seat in the Commons will hear me, “and the answer is justice.”
“Rowan!” Father hisses, wrenching his body fruitlessly against the restraint of Gregory’s power. “Rowan, stop this bloody nonsense right now.”
Too late, Father. You’re years too late.
I turn my back on him, the same as he’s always done to me.
“Today,” I continue, flicking my gaze toward the Speaker, Belinda Bartholomew, who sits before the court on an ornate chair elevated above all the rest, “there will be no pomp or circumstance, and anyone who objects will learn that they’ll be doing so against the wellbeing of the constituents who’ve elected you to the very bench your arse now warms.”
There’s a gasp, a grumbling, and then from above: “What gives you the right to tell us what to do? You, Rowena Carrigan, who are little more than a bloody hermit!”
“Aye!” shouts someone else and then another and then yet another, until the room is swallowed by a cacophony of aggrieved chanting that feels like knives being scraped against my bare flesh. “Aye! Aye! Aye!”
The nerves in my belly grow, the sweat in my palms turning slick with fear.