Road To Fire: Broken Crown Trilogy, Book 1

by Luis, Maria

  “What did you do?” Dread pervades the rush of adrenaline when I clutch Saxon’s thigh. “Saxon, answer me. Please.”

  He ducks down, swiftly bending at the knees, so that we’re at eye level. “I chose,” he rasps, pressing a soft, devastating kiss to my mouth, “and I chose you.”

  Framing his face with my hands, I stop him from retreating. “But what did you do?”

  His unholy gaze flickers between mine, once, twice, before he clasps my hands. Mine are sweaty, his cool to the touch. But I feel them trembling, as though he’s seconds away from coming undone. Then he physically pulls back.

  His absence hits me like I’ve been dunked in a frozen lake.

  “You need to leave.”

  Violently, I shake my head. “Get in the car. Come with me, dammit!”

  His hand curves over the door frame. “The devil always collects his due, sweetheart, and I bargained everything I had on you.”

  Before I can edge out another word, he slams the door shut and the car—the car that should not be moving without my foot on the accelerator—shifts into gear, all on its own, and slowly takes off down the dark, tree-lined road.

  Darting a glance to the rearview mirror, I spot Saxon standing there, with what looks like a remote control in his hand. He waits no more than a beat before dropping it to the ground and smashing his heavy boot down upon it. The car immediately jerks in response, as if the control has been revoked, and unexpectedly swerves to the right, toward a tree.

  “Shite!”

  Instinct has me latching onto the steering wheel and yanking hard to avoid collision. I manage, just barely, but my heart . . . my stupid, bloody heart is locked on what I’ve left behind.

  The last I see of Saxon Priest are figures stepping out from the dense thicket to surround him. One catches him behind the kneecaps, nailing him down to the ground. Another grasps him by what looks like his shirt, hauling him forward across the dirt path. The thick wood gathering behind me insulates the scene after that, and a sob breaks from my throat.

  What have I done?

  38

  Saxon

  Dulled pain registers in my hamstrings seconds before I hit the ground.

  Familiar bodies circle me, men whose faces I’ve known for years, but are now silhouetted by splintered moonlight. They swarm like locusts, all frenetic energy and pulsing anger. I stare through them all, as if they don’t even exist, and watch Isla’s taillights fade into the pitch-black night.

  She’s gone, safe, and I’m—

  “You helped her escape!” Roughened hands bunch the fabric of my shirt, jerking me forward. Thin nose. Hollow, weathered cheeks. Jayme Paul’s pungent breath wafts over my face, whisky soaked. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  The same as I’d thought when I found her, unconscious and curled on her side, in front of Buckingham Palace. Nothing. Nothing beyond an inexplicable need to see her safe—even if safe entails sending her far, far away from me.

  The devil.

  The monster.

  The man who doesn’t even deserve to kiss the ground she walks on.

  When Paul, my father’s old replacement, shakes me like I’m nothing but a rag doll, I clamp a warning hand around his wrist. “Let me go, old man.”

  “She killed the fucking king, you dimwit. The king!”

  “She did, but she doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “Doesn’t deserve to die?” Startled astonishment flatlines Paul’s rabid expression. With his fingers still clasping my shirt, he gapes at me, then at Jude and Benjamin, another of our agents, before visibly pulling himself together. “Did you hear that, lads? Apparently, Isla Quinn doesn’t deserve what’s coming to her, even though she murdered the one person we’re sworn to protect.”

  “Utterly daft,” Jude clips out.

  Benji shakes his head. “You risked everything—our location, our mission, each of us—and for what? Half-rate pussy? Come off it, Priest, you’re better than—”

  The rest of his sentence hinges on silence when I lunge for him, practically taking Paul along with me, and undercut my throw to nail him in the chin. His head snaps backward; his body sways in place. Like any Holyrood agent, he’s formidable, lethal, and instead of retreating, he grabs my arm and digs his thumb into the shallow flesh wound left behind by Isla’s knife.

  I see red.

  “The big, bad Saxon Priest,” he sneers, “taken down by a woman with a set of balls bigger than your own. Has your knob shriveled up too?”

  “I don’t advise playing that game with me, Benjamin.”

  His dark eyes glitter in the moonlight. “A game? This isn’t a game. You helped her escape. You, a Godwin, a Priest, the foundation of this godforsaken agency. You betrayed the Crown, not me.”

  I smell the scent of whisky before I feel the telltale shape of a pistol on the nape of my neck. “Which is a crime punishable by death, according to Holyrood,” Paul says, drawing the pistol north until it sits at the back of my head. A silent threat. One wrong move of his finger and my brains will paint the night red. Boom. “How many agents have you killed for this exact transgression, Priest? Can you even count them all?”

  Only two.

  A number lower than expected, considering how many of us have sworn to serve the royal family, all across the country. I don’t regret much in life but them—Quill and Sanders—I do, still. Years later.

  Tonight, the miscreant group of Holyrood spies, who have turned on the Crown, gains another reluctant member.

  Me.

  I don’t know what love is. Not the sort of love, at any rate, that appears on television with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or slow dances spent under the starry skies. What I feel is darker. Animalistic. The tightening sensation in my gut and the burn in my heart as though she’s personally set fire to the organ. I understand stark possession. Frenzied desire, too. I understand that, with Isla, I’m driven by an unidentifiable motive that asks for nothing in return—not a favor given, nor a favor owed. All I know is that as I stand here now, with my life hanging in the balance, there’s only relief swimming in my chest because she’s free.

  Free to live.

  Free to breathe.

  Free to find love with a different man, a better man, who’s capable of sweeping her off her feet and buying the chocolates and the flowers and anything else she might ever want.

  And that is enough.

  It has to be.

  Inviting death to the circle, I bow my head and drop one knee to the ground, then the other. Blood from my wound coats my sleeve. My pistol, the same one I’ve kept on me since returning from Paris, remains in my holster like dismissed sentry.

  “Let’s not pretend,” I husk out, “that you haven’t been waiting for this moment for years.”

  There’s an audible swallow from Paul and the distant, familiar whine of the drawbridge from the main house lowering. No doubt whoever it is will be joining the hunting party—where I’m the only course ready to be served.

  “You’re mad, Priest. Utterly mad.” The pistol jams into my skull, making my ears ring. “You broke the law. You committed a crime. Don’t put any of that on me.”

  “I’m accepting my due, aren’t I?”

  “Your father would be disappointed in everything that you are,” he grinds out, ignoring Jude and Benji, his attention trained solely on me. “He died for the Crown and here you are, spitting in his memory for a woman who is everything that we—”

  A scream splits through the night.

  Masculine. Infused with pain.

  Loud, so loud and so close, that it echoes in my ears, slow realization subsequently dawning that I’m sprawled out on the ground with Paul’s weight atop me. My chin slams into the dirt, coating my lips, the roof of my mouth.

  Christ.

  “Kill him,” declares a familiar, gruff voice, “and I’ll shove this knife straight into your heart and gut you where you stand.”

  Damien.

  Grasping fistfuls of dirt, I
shove Paul off me and roll onto my hands and knees. One glimpse of the older man reveals the blunt handle of a knife sticking out from his thick, flabby shoulder.

  Stunned, my gaze snaps to my brother. “You stabbed him.”

  “Old bastard doesn’t know how to die,” Damien mutters, bending at the hip to rip the blade straight from Paul’s back. Ignoring the man’s anguished wail, Damien wipes the bloodied edge of the knife across his sleeve. Then, “Guy wants you out.”

  Are you in or out?

  Guy had asked me that before. Holyrood or Isla. Him and Damien or Isla.

  I choose her. Always, always her.

  Climbing to my feet, I purposely show my back to Jude and Benji. Of all people for them to support, fucking Jayme Paul. “Naturally. The Crown must always come first.”

  Catching my sarcasm, Damien’s blue eyes appear almost translucent under the cast of the moon. “He heard what you did about that priest, Bootham.”

  The muscles along my spine go taunt. “I did what I had to do.”

  “You’re a dead man walking,” my younger brother tells me, re-holstering the knife to his forearm, “a total liability.”

  I toss a look toward where the Palace is, behind the swath of trees. Like a king, it’s obvious that Guy has sent Damien to do his bidding. “No one leaves Holyrood, not alive.”

  “Well, today is your lucky day, brother. You’re allowed to leave—and not in a body bag.”

  “The catch?”

  “You’re banned from Holyrood. Persona non grata. And if you ever come back . . .” On the ground, Paul emits a soft groan, to which Damien lifts his booted foot and grinds it down on the wound. Hard and harder still, until Paul passes out cold. “You’re dead.”

  39

  Isla

  The tears won’t stop.

  “You have until Loudwater to pull it together,” I tell myself when I pass the exit for Iver Heath, some forty minutes outside of London.

  Loudwater comes, Loudwater goes, and I remain an utter wreck.

  Mile after mile, I’m plagued with the visual of Saxon, a man so composed and indestructible, being driven down to his knees.

  Did they hurt him? Will his brothers throw him to the wolves as a traitor?

  And the question that won’t be silenced: is he alive?

  “Please,” I whisper, strangling the steering wheel, “please, please be alive.”

  It takes me another fifteen miles to accept the fact that I’m an emotional disaster who shouldn’t be on the road. Foggy-headed and drunk on a debilitating cocktail of grief and adrenaline, I pull off the motorway at Stokenchurch and drift through the village until I spot a white-stucco pub with a large car park.

  Seeking privacy, I back the car beneath a tree with a great canopy of branches.

  I want to rage, to harness the fury that’s propelled me forward for years now. But it’s gone, replaced with a bleak emptiness more terrifying than all the hate in the world. At least before, I had a plan. At least before, I didn’t know what it feels like to mourn the living.

  Tears well again.

  With my sleeves already soaked through, I stretch across the gear shift and fling open the glove box, in search of tissues.

  Stacks of banknotes tumble out, falling to the mat below.

  “What in the world—”

  I pick them up, one by one. Lay them out on the passenger seat, in a line, as though that might help me make sense of it all. It doesn’t. I count five hundred thousand quid. A proper fortune. Enough to skate us by for years, if we watch our spending and avoid extravagant things.

  “Damn you, Saxon.”

  My heart teeters in my chest, torn between feeling grateful for the unexpected gift and guilty for even considering accepting it. This sort of money could move us to America, just as I’d planned five years ago. It could set us up somewhere new, in a country not wracked with political turmoil and death around every corner. Peter could transfer universities. Josie could take that gap year she so wants, exploring the States or Canada or anywhere, really, that isn’t England. And I could . . . I could start over, couldn’t I? A fancy new job, perhaps—something in my field. Rent a flat that isn’t on the verge of collapse—or stacked with the bodies of dead priests.

  And then Saxon will be gone forever.

  I drop my forehead onto the backs of my hands on the wheel.

  “Stop crying,” I order, but I’ve been a liar for so long that I last only seconds before I’m drying my eyes with my wet sleeve for what must be the hundredth time. Tissues. I need tissues.

  Leaning back over, I stick my hand into the glove box and riffle through the junk. Papers, a smattering of receipts, a pair of sunglasses, and then—

  A mobile?

  My palm closes over the object, and sure enough, it’s a phone. New. Sleek. Did Saxon put this in here for me? I brush my thumb over the glass, watching as the wallpaper illuminates from the pressure of my touch. The picture is basic: a set of roses blooming—a stock image, at best—but it’s the unread message that captures my attention.

  With no password to plug in, I swipe the text open:

  I’m a Godwin.

  I once heard someone ask the question, what’s in a name? According to a book Guy stole from a library in Paris, Godwins are fierce protectors. Ironic that thanks to a fluke chance during the Second Boer War, we became our name in truth.

  Fierce. Deadly. Guardians to the Crown and whoever claimed the throne.

  But it wasn’t until you that I realized the scope of being a Godwin.

  There is not a man I wouldn’t kill, a mountain I wouldn’t scale, a pain I wouldn’t endure, to keep you safe.

  I’m loyal to the queen out of habit—out of an expectation, an oath, spanning generations—but you are the only person, man or woman, who owns me. I was cold until you. Numb. Like the skin the king scarred, like my heart which wouldn’t beat.

  One touch from you—one kiss—and you’ve left me burning, still.

  You are my first, Isla Quinn, and my only.

  Breathe for me, sweetheart, and know that somewhere I’m inhaling and taking up the torch for us both.

  A noise like a wounded animal shatters the quiet, and it’s only after a moment that I realize that the sound belonged to me. I sit with my legs drawn up on the seat, my entire body curled around the mobile as though it’s my only lifeline. Tears coat my cheeks, and I don’t need to look in the mirror to know that my eyes are red-rimmed.

  Acting on instinct, I tap on the phone app and wait for the callback.

  It rings, only to answer with a curt, “The number you have dialed is not in service.”

  I try again.

  And again.

  Each time more fraught with dread and frustration, until I throw the mobile onto the passenger seat, atop all those banknotes, and scream at the top of my lungs.

  He’s left me with more money than I know what to do with, a car to shuttle me away to safety, and a note that’s effectively torn me in two. In return, he stole my heart—and I’m never, ever getting it back.

  I don’t know how long I sit in that car park, watching the tree limbs sway in the breeze. Despite the late hour, customers go in and out of the brightly lit pub: couples holding hands, mothers pushing their babies in prams, fathers hoisting their toddlers up onto their shoulders.

  I roll down the window and draw in fistfuls of fresh air.

  And I dream: of ducking down before a pram of my own to stare at a baby boy. A son with his papa’s black hair and his unholy, glittering green eyes; of the solid weight of my husband standing behind me, his fingers playing with my hair as he stares down at the boy who is the perfect blend of us both.

  Brave and stubborn and loyal, to a fault.

  You are my first, Isla Quinn, and my only.

  With my elbow planted on the open window, I press my mouth to my balled fist. There’s nothing but the hum of activity from the pub and the gentle wind blowing into the car, which teases at my hair. It’s quiet. Safe
. Peaceful.

  Inside my chest, there is nothing but chaos and desperation and aching need.

  “I love you, Saxon Godwin,” I whisper, to myself, to the empty car, to the midnight sky with its diamond stars and faraway galaxies. I whisper the words like a prayer, as if, by saying them out loud, they might summon him to me.

  They don’t.

  By the time I pull up to the safehouse he plugged into the GPS, with Peter and Josie spilling out from the cottage and rushing toward me, I whisper another, “Please come for me, Saxon. Please, please come for me.”

  He never does.

  40

  Isla

  “How long do you suppose she’ll let the sadness get to her and go without bathing?”

  “Oh, so that’s the stench I keep smelling. I thought you’d forgotten to take out the rubbish.”

  “Peter Quinn, I’ll have you know that you’re a proper arsehole.”

  “As opposed to what? An improper arsehole?”

  “I can hear you both, you know.” Cupping a mug of steaming tea, I glance over my shoulder to where my brother and sister are hovering in the doorway. “Jos, no cursing. Peter, I’ll bathe when I feel like it.”

  Which will be right around the time I swallow my misery and stop thinking about Saxon around the clock. At this rate, I’m looking at the prospect of never.

  Red hair dancing behind her as she skips to the sofa, Josie swings herself over the arm and plops down beside me. She bends her knees and perches her chin atop them. “Tell me, since you’ve killed the king, I think I should be allowed certain freedoms. Like the right to say arsehole whenever I feel like it.”

  I arch a brow. “Is that really the bargaining chip you want to use?”

  “At least it’s creative.” Peter chuckles as he bypasses the sofa and props himself up on the coffee table, his gangly legs sprawled out. “Especially since you’ve dragged us to the middle of nowhere.”

  Grimacing into my mug, I take another sip. “It’s Stokenchurch, not Thurso.”