Sound of Madness: A Dark Royal Romance

by Maria Luis

  For the first time in years, I hesitate.

  The siren shrieks and the door crashes open, voices corralling within the intel room, and still, I sit frozen. Because I know . . . Fucking hell, I know. This is no random security breach or some random break-in to raid the register at the pub.

  This is personal.

  This is war.

  The Bell & Hand is a heartbeat unto itself, the first thing my brothers and I ever truly owned; a legacy of our own creation that bears the stamp of our sweat and hopes and whatever few dreams we’ve ever allowed ourselves.

  “Damien,” Guy barks, over the cacophony of Hamish and Jude arguing, and the piercing alarm, and the awful thud-thud-thud of my pulse roaring in my ears. “Do it.”

  With heat barreling down my veins, I do.

  One click of the mouse on the security camera positioned on Commercial Street, across from The Bell & Hand, and every monitor in the room turns on.

  Hamish curses.

  Matthews gasps.

  Jude and Paul fall absolutely silent.

  And all the while, I feel what’s left of my heart snap in two at the sight of flames engulfing the pub.

  Trapped behind centuries-old paned windows, the fire flickers with life, crawling through the crevices to lick at the outside world with talons painted red. An untamed mistress, it dances along the corridors of Guy’s flat, visible to the naked eye, and teases the sky with outstretched arms that mask the clouds and the moon and the spire of Christ Church Spitalfields.

  “Who.”

  The single word from Guy is a battered whip that flays us all.

  “Who!” he roars again, twisting around to shove past a startled Matthews.

  He gets as far as the hallway when the siren is compounded with a sound that turns the fire in my veins to ice. Gunfire, nearby. It punctures the air in rhythmless beats, and I see the moment when my brother realizes what’s happening.

  His shoulders stiffen and his expression bleeds cold fury when he turns to Paul with deceptive slowness. “The drawbridge.”

  Pa’s old second-in-command visibly pales. “It’s down. I didn’t . . . It didn’t seem necessary—”

  Guy locks a hand around the older man’s throat. “You fucking fool.”

  “Priest,” Paul grunts, his fingers tugging fruitlessly at my brother’s wrists, “Jesus, man. We have bigger problems right now. Do you hear—”

  BOOM.

  The floor trembles beneath my feet. The secondary monitor drops right off the desk, crashing to the stone floor and shattering into a million little pieces. There’s no point denying it: we’re under siege.

  Before another grenade can hit and do us all in, I turn to Hamish. “Get the queen out. Now.” He nods, quickly, and cuts around Paul. I look to Matthews next. Of everyone here, he and Paul have been with Holyrood the longest. This is their home, as much as it’s been my prison, but there’s no time to grieve. “Get what you can.”

  The surgeon’s dark eyes burn with regret. “I won’t be able to—”

  “I know.” Bitterness slithers into my veins, and I force myself to hold his gaze. “Whatever the queen needs, you take that with you. Do you hear me?”

  Adam’s apple bobbing, he steps backward. “For the Crown.”

  My chin jerks in a clipped nod.

  For the Crown.

  I watch for only a second as he tears out of the intel room, and then I look to Guy. Though his hand is still clamped around Paul’s throat, his blue eyes are zeroed in on my face. Wide. Panicked. We’re locked and loaded in what’s about to become a battlefield, and it’s obvious that he’s stuck in the past, not seeing me as I am now but as I was behind Christ Church Spitalfields.

  Immobile.

  On the cusp of death.

  My blood coating the pavement a dark, glistening red.

  I hold his stare. “Go.”

  His head jerks, once, in rebuttal. “Fuck protocol.”

  “Go.”

  “Priest—”

  At Paul’s pathetic gurgling, Guy flings the older man to the side. Paul’s body hits the floor with a crack of his elbow against stone, but still, my brother’s attention remains pinned on me. He advances one step. “There’s nothing in this room that we don’t have elsewhere.”

  “You know we can’t risk it.”

  “Jesus.” He cuts his gaze away, long enough to see Jude dragging Paul from the intel room. Shoulders hunching, Guy reaches for the pistol holstered at his waistband, only to stop halfway. His hand curls into a tight fist at his side. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Fuck protocol, Damien. I won’t let you stay.”

  Beyond the open door, the Palace shudders under the impact of another grenade. In the century that Holyrood has held Ightham Mote, no one has ever identified our location. We’ve played up the stories of being an insane asylum. We’ve bolstered the fears of the locals, keeping them far away from the estate with electrical fences and traps set out in the surrounding forest to discourage trespassers. The ancient walls of the medieval manor, sturdy as they are, won’t withstand much more.

  We have only minutes.

  “Everything we have is in this room.” With the stroke of a few fingers, I could rain hell down across all of England. Explosives would be the least of our countrymen’s worries. That magnitude of power, especially in the wrong hands . . . “No one can get in here, brother. No one.”

  Something desperate flares in Guy’s face, and I anticipate his attempt to stronghold me into submission a second before he launches forward.

  Ducking under his outstretched arm, I grab his dominant hand and fold it behind his back. My knee drives into the soft flesh of his right leg. His weight crumples and a grunt bursts from his mouth, and then he teeters forward, his lean frame grappling for control.

  I don’t let him have it.

  With a hard elbow to his lower spine, I force him out in the hall. Regret burns in my lungs as I snag the doorknob at the same time that his head snaps up, those blue eyes of his making me feel as though I’ve peered into a mirror.

  They reflect fear.

  All-consuming despair.

  Guy lurches to his feet, my name an anguished shout on his lips, and I give him the smallest slice of hope I can offer before I slam the door in his face: “Don’t bury me before I’m gone.”

  15

  Damien

  The siren blares incessantly as I turn for the shadowed wall to the right of the desk.

  Dark paneling stretches from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. A quick glance gives nothing away, but I know this room inside and out. It’s been my haven when I had none, and my refuge when I was desperate to escape. There isn’t a scratch I don’t know or an uneven stone that I haven’t marked a thousand times over. And so, with efficient ease, I dig the heels of my hands into the right notch and feel the wall give way under the pressure.

  Dropping to my haunches, I begin piling up equipment on the threshold of the safe.

  The armored vest, which I draw over my head. The myriad of weapons, which I dump into my kit, sealing off its Velcroed pockets with a practiced flex of my fingers. The small wooden box, which sits inconspicuously in the corner.

  Let it go.

  Except that I’m already reaching forward to knock off the flimsy lid and fist the silver chain from its bed of plush velvet. The metal glints under the overhead lighting as I thrust Mum’s necklace into the front pocket of my vest. Clamping a hand around the sniper rifle resting behind the box, I draw the weapon close to my chest.

  The rules of Holyrood dictate that I stay in this room—die in this room—with our secrets. But, like Guy said: fuck protocol.

  With one last glance at the intelligence room that I designed from the bottom up, I drift toward the opposite wall. Pressing a palm to a hand-sized scanner, the stone shifts before my eyes and cracks open to reveal a hallway known to no one but me. I step through, then shove the solid stone back into place with both hands.

  Only then do I plug the code, 503, into
the dial pad positioned at waist height.

  The existence of the intel room is extinguished with an almost quiet groan of despair. Material crashes against stone, the implosion destroying everything within, and dust sweeps beneath the makeshift door to settle at my feet.

  There’s no time to mourn.

  Hugging the shadows, I follow the trajectory of the hallway as it winds toward the inner perimeter of the manor before forking off in two different directions. One leads to an underground tunnel that’ll spit me out in the forest, just beyond the gardens, while the other heads for the Palace’s interior courtyard.

  I go left.

  Gunshots echo like cracks of thunder, disturbing the peace and rattling the calm.

  Picking up the pace, I sprint the remaining distance, then sling the rifle across my back as I slip through the narrow gap in the outer wall and grip the steel ladder. The cool breeze from the open courtyard kisses my face while the butt of my rifle clanks against the retainer wall.

  And then I begin to climb, up and up and up, until I’m reaching for the metal rod fitted to the Palace’s steeped roof and hauling my body to a flat, horizontal position.

  Sparse moonlight guides my forward momentum.

  On my elbows and knees, I crawl into place and mount my rifle against one of the wooden beams that line the old roof. One glance down reveals the drawbridge extending over the moat, both exposed to slivers of night sky.

  There’s a harsh yell followed by a panicked tread of feet.

  I wait long enough to catalog the hair and build. Recognizing that he’s not one of ours, I aim, pull the trigger, and fire.

  The man collapses with an audible cry.

  No mercy.

  When I draw forward for a better angle, the toes of my boots scrape the ceramic tiles. The sound is whisper-soft, barely audible against the backdrop of screams mingling with chirping nightingales in the surrounding forest. The grim melody strikes a shiver down my spine. A breath later my eyes narrow when I catch sight of two men emerging from the Palace onto the drawbridge. Their conversation is lost to the fray, but there’s no mistaking the rhythmic way they step, haul something along, then move again.

  It’s a body they’re dragging.

  A body that’s still alive, based on the way the legs kick and jerk within the shadows.

  “Look at me,” I growl under my breath, “look at me, dammit!”

  As if heeding the demand, moonlight casts a warm glow over the man’s face.

  Matthews.

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  The men pause. One bends down to yank Matthews’ medical bag from the doctor’s arms before hurling it into the moat. The other grasps the surgeon’s bicep and snaps him upward. Words are exchanged but don’t reach my ears.

  It’s a bloody impossible shot.

  They grab Matthews again, towing him along like a rag doll, their voices muffled by gunfire and chirping birds and the sound of my heartrate spiking. Dark shadows splice across the drawbridge. The surgeon’s battered cry cinches my lungs into a vice.

  They’re going to kill him.

  Matthews, who’s been with Holyrood for over thirty years. Matthews, who brought me back from the brink of death. Matthews, who routinely reminds me that humanity is not a given but a choice.

  I line up the shot, prepared to damn the surgeon to hell, even in my attempt to save him, and—

  Pain explodes in my spine.

  A groan rumbles deep in my throat, and I make a desperate grab for the rifle as a booted foot skates past my periphery. The firearm clatters over the edge of the roof while unfamiliar hands grip my shins, dragging me backward. Then a voice, dark and sinister, cuts through the night:

  “Looks like I found me a runaway Priest.”

  Instinct kicks in and I slam a palm down to catch hold of one of the tiles, a last-ditch effort to stall my backward momentum—only, instead of gaining leverage, the tile pops loose completely.

  Fucking hell.

  Rolling onto my back, I allow my legs to twist in the stranger’s grip. One glance upward reveals that the bastard out for my blood is huge. Arms like tree trunks; thighs like bloody anchors. I’m no shrinking violet, but the man has to outweigh me by at least two stone. A rarity that sparks a thread of unease. Spotting my expression, a sinister grin splits across the bastard’s face. The silver moon, now out to play, highlights crooked upper teeth.

  “I’s been waitin’ for this day.” He cranks one hand off my leg. “Waitin’,” he says, his brows diving together over the sharp bridge of his nose, “and waitin’. And Rowan, she tells me, over and over, ’ave some patience, Gregory. But patience is just—” His fist collides with my chin, snapping my head back. Blood explodes in my mouth, the gunmetal taste smearing over my teeth. “That’s what I ’as to say. No patience, Priest. None for me.”

  Rowan.

  The name—her name—resonates through my ringing skull seconds before Gregory swings his fist again. This time, I manage to dive to the right before he can make contact. Tiles come loose under my weight, turning the dangers of a pitched roof into a twisted game of Russian Roulette where one wrong move means instant death.

  I roll again, evading another kick, and pry at a tile with a prayer burning in my throat. It loosens with a shrill squeak. Fingers curled over the sharpened edge, I turn and snap it forward like a projectile.

  The tile nails the bastard in the throat.

  His big frame wavers, wobbling in place, and I launch to my feet.

  Invisible needles prick my throbbing skull. You’re going to fall. You’re going to collapse and it’s going to be just like last—

  Goodbye for now, she’d said.

  Rowan. Fucking Rowena.

  Vision swimming with the memory of violet, I manage five steps toward the ladder when a burst of air suddenly rushes past my ear. With a low curse, I weave my body to avoid the punch. More tiles give way under my right foot, the broken fragments hurtling down the sloped roof to disappear over the edge.

  Jesus.

  I’m going to die.

  I knew this would happen. With enemies like Carrigan and Guthram, I’m a man working on borrowed time. But some part of me—so deep, so buried, so easily ignored—hoped it would feel differently than that day behind Christ Church Spitalfields. I wanted a bed. I wanted my brothers close. I wanted anything but the same aggression surging in my veins, calling for me to destroy and survive and fight until the very end.

  Then and now, I’ve been sentenced to death by the Carrigan family.

  Refusing to glance down, I dart across a narrow ridge board that’s barely as wide as the width of my hand.

  “Coward!” the bastard growls behind me.

  I hear his shoes scrape the crossbeam. Keep moving. Don’t slow down. Lowering to my thighs, I slip down the valley rafter, only far enough so I can jump onto a perpendicular ridge, this one even narrower than the last. Oxygen drives into my lungs. My arms swing outward, level with my shoulders, as if that’ll keep me airborne when the bloody roof buckles beneath me.

  This goddamned house.

  Seven months of house arrest and now—

  Gregory’s meat-sized hand pummels my right shoulder, exactly where Carrigan’s men stabbed me, and then I’m falling, falling, falling.

  Tiles slip and slide, scattering everywhere and providing no opportunity to stop my descent. Nightingales sing, and a hoarse shout climbs my throat, and in that split-second before I go over the side of the ancient roof, I spot Gregory’s satisfied expression.

  His smirk deepens and he yells something that I can’t hear over the thunderous roar in my ears, and it wouldn’t matter even if I could.

  We both know I’m a dead man.

  And it was Rowena Carrigan, my very own Trojan Horse, who damned me to hell.

  16

  Rowena

  “Tight.” Chin tucked down, I press my palms to the stone table for balance and hold myself still. “Wrap it tight. Please.”

  “Row
an . . . With your rib, you really oughtn’t put any—”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Like every other member of our motley crew, Dr. Sara Grafton does as I say with mute obedience. Tearing a new bandage from the pack on the table, she tugs on my shirt to indicate that I hold it up for her. With a hard swallow, I grasp the hem and lift, already dreading the moment when—

  Her low gasp is exactly what I feared.

  Another hard swallow. “Well?” I ask, feeling her cool fingers graze one of the gashes from the shattered windows at Buckingham Palace. “How bad does it look?”

  “You shouldn’t even be alive.”

  Truer words have probably never been spoken.

  Then again, I’ve spent thirty-three years dying in a thousand little ways. And each time that I’ve grasped life with both hands, too blasted stubborn to let go, I find myself resurrected once again. A chameleon adopting new shades; a magician willing to put forth new tricks to entertain a perpetually restless crowd.

  Here, under this roof, I’m the king’s chosen one.

  Never to be denied, always to be obeyed.

  “Probably looks a good deal better than it did the first night. Which I guess isn’t saying much.” Refusing to reveal any discomfort, I force a smile over my shoulder. “Anyway, it’s really not that bad”—lies, my soul screams, stop lying—“but when the cuts rub against fabric, it’s just that I . . .”

  I could cry.

  “You need to rest,” Sara mutters, proficiently tucking my shirt into the band of my sports bra. “And, before you argue with me, I already know that the likelihood of you actually following orders is non-exist—”

  “They killed Ian.”

  “Goddammit.” Sara’s breath comes hard and fast on my right, her elbow knocking into mine when she jerks away to tear open the bandage’s plastic wrapping. “It’s too soon, all right? I know what you’re going to say and it’s too soon.”

  If only emotions could wait on the sidelines until we’re ready to face them in all their glory. A lever we might switch on and off whenever hate swarms our hearts and defeat pools in our guts and we’re nothing more than anger primed by madness. But that sort of luxury isn’t meant for people like us—rebels, loyalists, spies—and the hollow smile on my face turns grim. “The Priests killed Ian, Sara, just like they killed your father.”