Road To Fire: Broken Crown Trilogy, Book 1

by Luis, Maria

  The first server I try waves me off with a dismissive, “Busy, sorry. Can’t help.” The second doesn’t even stop as she balances a tray heavy with croissants and coffee.

  It’s not until I’m at my wit’s end, boldly stepping in front of a middle-aged woman with vibrant red hair and clear green eyes that I get anywhere. Tucking the tray beneath her armpit, she throws an impatient look at a new group entering the pub. “Look,” she starts, flustered, “if you really need it, the office has all the Priests’ numbers listed on a whiteboard behind the desk.”

  She’s gone before I can even thank her.

  Not that it matters; I’m already hightailing it down the hallway.

  The longer I stay, the greater the chance that someone might alert Guy or the other brother, Damien, that I’ve stormed enemy territory. It was a risk coming here, but compared to scaling the sixteenth-century walls of the Palace—and that bloody drawbridge, of all things—The Bell & Hand seemed like a safer bet.

  The soles of my shoes step to the same staccato as the anxious ringing in my ears. Hand to the brass knob, I push the office door open and—

  My eyes go wide at the figure standing behind the desk, one hand rifling through a drawer. I know that bushy gray beard. Those brown eyes stinging with animosity. The craggy features that declared war before we’d even been formally introduced.

  As if he doesn’t care that he’s been caught, Jack offers an indulgent smile. “Well, well, look who’s come to join the party.”

  “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “The same could be said for you.”

  “What were you doing?” I ask, leaving the door ajar as I step inside the office.

  His smile turns brittle, all trace of indulgence gone. He looks old—older, even, than the last time I saw him. Beard straggly and unkempt. A red mark extending from the underside of his chin to halfway down his neck. With a quirk of his gray brows, he plants his arse on the corner of the desk, as if he owns it. Beside him, the drawer remains open as he treats me to a once-over.

  “Body like a twig, personality like a rock,” he drawls, fiddling with the corner of the desk. “Priest’s lost his damn mind over ye, and for nothin’.”

  Coming from anyone else, the insult might land a solid jab to my self-esteem, but Jack is the last person whose opinion I care about. Chauvinistic bastard. “Jealousy isn’t a good look on you.”

  “Trust me, I ain’t jealous.” Sneering, his crowded front teeth make an appearance. “Not of you.”

  “Of course not.”

  At my dismissive shrug, he pushes away from the desk with the backs of his thighs. “That right there?” He jabs a bandaged finger in my direction. “That’s why I don’t like ye. High and mighty, thinkin’ you’re better than e’eryone else. You ain’t the queen, love. You ain’t even the dirt beneath her shoes.”

  “I wouldn’t dare to think I am.” The second his features turn rapier sharp, I know that I should have ditched the sarcasm. Shite. Clearing my throat, I send a sideways glance to the drawer he’s yet to close. “You really shouldn’t be here.” A small pause then, with a step to the left, closer to that desk, I add gently, “You were let go.”

  “Because of you.”

  He spits out the words with such force that actual spittle flies from his mouth. Instinct begs me to turn around and escape out the door, but pride, fickle emotion that it is, cements me in place. “Blaming me won’t do you any good. I don’t even work here, so whatever problem you think you have with me, I suggest that you shelve it.”

  “Shelve it, eh?”

  “Or don’t,” I say, palms lifting to the ceiling. “We aren’t mates. I honestly don’t care what you think of me, but if you think I won’t tell Saxon that you’ve been here, going through his office, then you have another—”

  “Bints like you, thinkin’ you can come in and change things”—the tips of his boots graze my shoes, intimidation charging the air with high-voltage friction—“but I’ve been workin’ this place for years now. There ain’t one thing about this pub I don’t know.”

  “Then maybe you ought to take what you’ve learned and apply it someplace new.”

  “I had plans here. Big plans.”

  When his hand presumptuously touches my shoulder, I duck away on light feet. Meet his stare, head-on. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

  “Or what?” Jack watches my backward trajectory with nary a blink. But he follows. One step, two, tracking me across the room. I feel the hair raise on the backs of my arms. “You think Priest will be here to save ye?” he taunts, moving closer. “It’s me and you, little bird. Me. And. You.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  An unidentifiable emotion nips away his earlier frustration, something cold and deranged settling in its place. Trailing a finger along the desk as he nears, he goes so far as to close the drawer with an audible snick. And then, “Will you scream as loud as last time?”

  As loud as last time?

  A sick sensation lands in my gut, twisting, mounting. I stare at him, visualizing his face in an entirely different setting. One with gorgeous herringbone floors and octagonal walls and galleries that allow secret visitors to never show their faces to those down on the ground floor.

  But there’s no way . . .

  We would have seen him. Heard him, at the least. Right?

  Those astute brown eyes shine with delight as I shuffle backward, adding another meter between us. And they positively gleam when I shoot a hasty look toward the door, marking the number of steps it would take me to flee.

  One.

  Two.

  “Screaming—really?” I swallow, as I make step number three. “I hate to say this, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “A little reminder, then.”

  I don’t move fast enough.

  He launches toward me, catching me around the middle, and drives me to the ground with so much power that we skid, together, across the tile. My head glances off the desk’s corner leg.

  Pain ricochets though my skull and the ceiling, it spins and spins and—

  A hand seizes my nape, his thumb digging into my pulse while my fingers scrape the floor, determined to drag myself away.

  “Get off! Get off!”

  “Won’t you scream for me?” The question comes in a heavy pant beside my ear. “The way you did for Ian?” When I stiffen at the name, the implication truly settling in, Jack releases a noisy, sinister laugh. “Oh, yes, I was there. Up on the gallery. I watched you fight to live, little bird. Shaking legs. Graspin’ hands. Even from up there, I could see it all.”

  My lungs pump for oxygen, dragging in air through my nose.

  Saliva builds in my mouth, from his hand locked around my throat, but still I manage a choked, “A-a loyalist.”

  Another laugh, this one accompanied with more spittle that lands on my cheek. “An opportunist. I go where the money takes me, and I had it real good, workin’ them both. But then Priest sacked me because of you.”

  “J-jealous.”

  His other elbow clamps down across my back, roughly angling my cheek into the hard floor. “I turned on him before he even met you,” he hisses. “You think you know e’erythin’, and I already told ye”—he squeezes my neck, and a gurgling noise erupts from my throat—“I ain’t jealous. Now scream for me, little bird, just like your priest did.”

  Father Bootham.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. OhGod.

  “You k-killed him—”

  Lips land on my temple. Wet. Chilled. They part to whisper, “Suppose I am a little jealous. The good father did nothin’ to me. Always said ’ello when I saw him. But it’s yer fault, anyway.” Panic wells within me, and I thrash my legs beneath the weight of his, barely able to raise my hips from the floor. “Had you just been in your flat when I showed up, the priest wouldn’t be dead. How was I goin’ to get information for the lads when I was sacked? No information, no money. You had to go. You have to go.”

  My vision bl
urs.

  My heart stampedes.

  I’ve crossed Lady Luck too many times now to expect another slice of mercy.

  The knife. Grab the knife.

  A stifled moan reverberates in my chest. I have seconds, no more, before those deceitful hands squeeze the life out of me. My head feels swollen, a balloon on the verge of imploding. No one is coming for me, not this time.

  Josie and Peter—

  Oh, dear God. The twenty-minute countdown.

  Move, move, move.

  With weak fingers, I fumble for my trousers. For Dad’s blade that I stuck in an oversized pocket. I find the handle, pulling it out, but my grip is so weak that it clatters noisily to the floor.

  Jack’s hold on me imperceptibly slackens when he realizes what I’ve dropped.

  Silence reigns, a throne of impending doom, and then he lunges for the knife while I drag myself away on unbalanced hands and knees. I sway. Elbows giving out beneath my weight. I can’t breathe. I can barely see, not with the dancing black dots swarming the office.

  Run. Run. Run.

  “You’ll scream,” Jack growls from behind me, “and then maybe I’ll drop yer body at Saxon’s house, for a little present. A dead priest. A dead bitch. Oh, Ian would be so happy.”

  The air beside my right ear sings—

  And the knife plummets south a meter past me, having only just missed its mark.

  Me.

  I need to hustle.

  I need to run.

  Heavy footsteps stalk around me, blocking my path to the door. Not wasting time, I turn and rise on trembling legs. There must be another way out. Saxon, Guy—neither of them would allow only for a single exit point. I gasp for breath, swinging right, then left.

  “Nowhere to go,” Jack drawls casually, like he’s enjoying himself immensely, “no one to save you.”

  I whirl around, hands raised to ward off another attack. Only, I shouldn’t have bothered.

  Sunlight from the window catches on the silver pistol in Jack’s hand. A pistol that is unerringly pointed . . . at me.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I whisper, winding backward on legs as weak as a newborn fawn’s. “Please, Jack, you don’t have to—”

  “You killed Ian. You killed my brother.”

  My mouth parts in shock then clamps shut. The two look nothing alike, but that’s saying nothing. Both men are unhinged. And both men want me dead because of my relationship with Saxon. If only they knew . . . if only they knew of Holyrood, that they’re all on the same side.

  The queen’s side.

  I slide my gaze south, to the gun. “Jack, don’t. You don’t understand. Saxon, he’s with you. It’s all a front. A ploy. He’s loyal to the—”

  “Scream for me, little bird.”

  The gun erupts, and I hear myself cry out when I lurch away. I scream, just as he demanded, as a trail of fire explodes within me. Burning sensations crawling over my flesh. Heat, so much heat. I glance down, just for a second, and all I see is red. Red oozing from the ring-sized hole in my chest—a deep, dark maroon. Nearly black.

  I clutch my chest, smearing the blood as I stumble. Collapse. Arms and legs sprawled as my lungs heave with the effort to breathe.

  A blurry figure steps above me. There are two of them, swaying, bending, coming closer and closer, until his face is all that I see.

  Jack.

  My murderer.

  My own ruthless, broken monster.

  “Sweet dreams, Isla.”

  A hand presses down on me, driving into the wound itself, and another cry shatters the room. My tears. My pain. I’m sinking. Drowning. Gasping for air, for life itself. And then there’s nothing . . . Nothing but agony and darkness and the deep, endless abyss of oblivion.

  43

  Saxon

  I feel no better leaving Christ Church than I did stepping within its hallowed walls.

  William Bootham will never attend another mass, hold another confession, or—fuck—just breathe. Selfish. It was so bloody selfish of me to use him, knowing that if anyone were to find out, it would end just as it did.

  Quietly, I slip the door closed and step out into the sunshine.

  Considering my dark mood, it ought to be storming. Black clouds, heavy downpour. I want to soak in the misery, let it consume me. If not that, then let it try and purge the guilt away.

  Scrubbing a palm over my jaw, I step onto the street. Life without Holyrood hasn’t settled in yet. I have more money than I know what to do with. More time, too.

  I could do without the latter.

  Every unhurried minute of the day only allows for more time spent thinking about Isla. Does she sleep in Oxford, at the secret safehouse that I sent Peter and Josie to, knowing that my brothers have no idea of its existence? Has she brought her siblings somewhere else, somewhere she can grow roots and start a new life, away from the anger and the vengeance and the deceit?

  Does she miss me?

  My chest squeezes with a ragged breath. Anxiety. Another newfound emotion that Isla has given me a name for. A feeling I could do well without.

  Lifting my hat, I thread my fingers through my hair before resettling the brim back in place. Briefly, I shoot a glance to The Bell & Hand. Another loss, there. I shouldn’t miss it—the needy customers and the waitstaff that drove me insane with their random requests. But still I stand here, on Fournier, stuck between two folds of my past.

  The Bell & Hand. Christ Church Spitalfields.

  I turn away from them both, only to freeze mid-step when I spot a familiar car parked along the curb. Eyes narrowing, I move to the left, searching for the number plate.

  Isla’s car.

  Something twists inside me, all-consuming and devastating, all at once. If she’s in there, I’m going to . . . to—

  Kiss her.

  Demand that she never leave me.

  —rip the passenger’s side door open, fuming.

  At the sight of me, Peter practically spills out of his seat. “Bloody hell! What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” I jab a thumb into my chest, bending low so I can look him in the eye. “What the fuck are you—”

  “Language, Saxon,” quips a female voice from the backseat. Josie. If I ever reproduce, I pray not to have a daughter like her. Full of sarcasm. Headstrong. On second thought, she’s a younger version of her older sister. And when have you ever thought about children of your own?

  Swallowing a hot retort, I return my attention to Isla’s brother. “You’re supposed to be hundreds of miles away right now. On the other blasted side of the island. Anywhere, anywhere, but here.”

  Peter folds his lanky arms across his chest. “She heard what you did.”

  I stare at him, unblinking. “I stuck her in a jail cell then left her to die.”

  “You didn’t, though,” Josie pipes up, sticking her face between her brother’s seat and the open door. “Because you love her, which is clearly the only reason why you told the world that you killed that priest when you didn’t.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You have hearts in your eyes right now,” Josie adds, cutting me off. Bravely, she flicks her finger near my face, twirling it in a half-circle. “Big pink ones. Googly-eyed ones.”

  Do I?

  The fact that I’m considering that she might be right has my mouth tugging to one side. “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Because I—”

  “We came because she figured one of the staff must have your mobile number.” The youngest Quinn blinks up at me, wriggling her brows. “She misses you. She hasn’t bathed in days.”

  Peter smacks a palm over her forehead, gently shoving his sister into the backseat. “Don’t tell her we mentioned the bathing thing. She’ll never forgive us.”

  She misses you.

  Bloody fucking hell. I’m a total goner. She’s turned me into a sap—the sick, annoying kind, at that—and I find my palm rubbi
ng my chest, right over my heart. Happiness, something so entirely elusive, settles within me. Unicorns. Treasure chests of gold. I could die here, in this moment, and I would at least know what it feels like to be adored.

  She didn’t bathe because she missed me.

  My mouth curves upward, and though I catch Peter’s poorly concealed blanching, I don’t take offense. Isla wants me just fine, deformed upper lip and all.

  “I’ll get her now,” I say, pulling back. “Two minutes.”

  Isla shouldn’t be anywhere near London, but she’s single-handedly weakened my resolve. She’s here. I’m here. And, clearly, there’s no choice left on the docket but to kiss the hell out of her.

  Releasing an aggrieved sigh, Josie mutters, “We’ll be here. As was already promised.”

  Long strides bring me to the front door of The Bell & Hand, and I experience only a moment of self-doubt when I step inside. Damien may be battling a severe case of regret over me leaving Holyrood but the same can’t be said for our older brother. In the days since I left the Palace, I’ve not heard a single word from him.

  No phone calls. No text messages. Not even an email.

  This pub was never Damien’s passion, but it was mine and Guy’s. We bled hours into The Bell & Hand. Found the best chefs in the area. Hired waitstaff that could have hacked it at London’s premiere restaurants, had they ever decided to leave us. Though it started as nothing more than a front to entice anti-loyalists into our midst, The Bell & Hand was our tiny slice of normal. Here, we were business owners. Here, we were brothers—not spies for the Crown.

  Will Guy run it on his own?

  Is he here now, upstairs in his flat?

  My heart doesn’t race. My palms don’t sweat. But I’m acutely aware of a . . . a sort of loss that threads through my body. The same that I felt when Mum took her last breath. Back then, at nine, I’d turned to my older brother and soaked his shirt through with my tears.

  This time, I don’t cry.

  “Saxon? Is that you?”

  I turn at the sound of my name, and find one of my servers, Sara, standing beside an empty table. I draw the brim of my hat lower, to ward off any curious glances. “It’s best if you don’t mention me being here to anyone.”