by Maria Luis
“I want information,” I clip out, sidestepping honesty to leave it dead and strangled behind me. I have a mission, a goal. And Rowena Carrigan is not a new addiction I can afford. Grabbing the book off the nightstand, I tuck it under my left arm. “Who do you take orders from?”
Scoffing, she lets her head fall back against the wardrobe. “You’re delusional if you think you can barge in here and interrogate me in my own home.”
“If handcuffs aren’t involved, then it’s not an interrogation.”
She doesn’t look amused. “I have nothing to say to you, Priest.”
“Really?” Sardonically, I raise a brow. “Nothing at all?”
Her jaw tightens mutinously. “Are you wanting an apology?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad start.”
Just to keep her on her toes, I make a point to grab the spindle-backed chair from the desk and set it down in front of her. Sit with my long legs to the left of her outstretched one, leaving space between us. Because I need this conversation not to devolve into an argument; because if I touch her, hear that goddamn whimper of hers again, I might—
Don’t fucking go there, Godwin.
“I’ll hand it to that big bastard of yours,” I drawl, opening the book in my lap to the dogeared page, “he tried.”
“And failed.”
At her grim tone, my lips twitch with morbid humor. “I caught the drawbridge’s pulleys on my way down. Total stroke of luck. Couldn’t recreate the moment even if I wanted.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’re cocky.”
“Don’t let that stop you—I’m waiting.”
Nostrils flaring, she clutches her knee like it’s either that or tackle me to the ground. I watch with silent fascination as her shoulders lift with a slow inhale. Then, in a tone carved from mock reverence, she murmurs, “Damien, I am so sorry . . .”
Satisfaction flares. “Wasn’t that hard, was it?”
“. . . that the pulleys got in your way.”
Every comeback, every scathing retort, dies on the tip of my tongue.
And the blasted woman knows it too.
Her full lips lift into a cunning smile that leaves me feeling strangely winded. I press a hand to my chest, fingers drifting up to clutch my right shoulder. Before I even have the chance to scrape together a mediocre response, she primly adds, “Your ego, Damien. It’s seriously overinflated.”
Jesus.
I open my mouth, then clamp it shut.
Rowena only taps her fingers against her kneecap. “Now that that’s out of the way, should we begin with our non-interrogation?”
The she-wolf strikes again.
Torn between applauding her little performance and dragging over her my lap, ass up, I grit my teeth. “This is the way it’s going to work. You aren’t going to scream and I’m not going to—”
“Threaten me?” she offers, one dark brow arched. “Intimidate me and then remind me of all the ways you can put me in a corner and make me cry?”
“Yes.”
“To which part exactly?”
“All of it,” I bite off. “These are peace talks. You, me, and our good mate transparency. Think you can manage that, Rowan?”
At my deliberate use of her nickname, Rowena leans back, head bolstered by the wardrobe behind her, one wrist propped atop her bent knee. She looks cool, poised. A queen prepared to squash a revolt with just the toe of her shoe.
“I have nothing to hide,” she replies smoothly, “and now that we’re both fully aware that you can’t stomach the thought of actually killing me . . . Well, it looks like I have more leverage than I previously thought.”
My chest tightens.
Lowering my voice, I growl, “Talk like that some more, Miss Carrigan, and I’m going to look at it as an invitation to take you down a peg or two.”
Her gaze shifts, locking with mine, however incidentally, and I feel pinned in place. Known without being seen; understood while having told her none of my past. Unchained for the first time in so many years that my wrists actually ache from the release of their phantom shackles.
“I didn’t think a man like you would need an invitation.”
“It’s my only courtesy before I bring a woman down to her knees.”
A wash of color darkens her cheeks. Then, with an audible swallow, she straightens her shoulders. “I want to know how you found us. You couldn’t have followed Gregory here, not without risking getting caught.”
“Alfie Barker.”
“What?”
A dark smile curves my mouth. “You didn’t think we let prisoners go untapped, did you?”
Her reply is slow, measured. “What exactly do you mean by . . . untapped?”
“I track them.”
“Hunt them, you mean.”
With my feet on the rug, I drop my elbows to my knees and hang the book between my spread thighs. “Track,” I repeat, firmly. “A little device I insert under the skin, not even the size of a penny.”
“Where?”
“Wherever I think it won’t be noticed. Barker’s is just above his kidney.”
I watch as her tongue darts out to slip across the seam of her lips. Then track its return, a second later, when she does it again.
A nervous tic.
Ask the question, Rowena. I know you’re dying to.
Finally, she caves. “And mine?”
“What of it?”
“The tracker,” she grinds out, “where is it? Above my kidney like Alfie Barker’s? In my arse cheek?”
Nowhere at all.
She’d arrived at the Palace too wounded, and I couldn’t risk her getting an infection. But clearly she thinks that I’ve embedded it somewhere; with agitated sweeps of her hands, she runs her palms over the length of her legs, pressing here, digging there. The devil on my shoulder quips, “Tell me who you take orders from and I’ll give you a clue. Might even help you remove it before I leave.”
“Sadistic bastard,” she mutters, not quite under her breath.
Casually, I cross my legs at the ankles. Keep my mouth shut because I know the silence will drive her mad. And it does, bringing a deeper flush of color to her cheeks just as she clamps a tight fist over her extended leg. “They take orders from me.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why,” I repeat, dipping my chin, “would they listen to the prime minister’s daughter? You’ve no military experience. No relevant history at all to prove that out of everyone in this country, you’re the one to lead them.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“And here I thought you had nothing to hide.”
She shoves onto her feet with a nimbleness that I wouldn’t expect from someone so injured. But move she does, stalking past me with a surprising elegance that twists me around in my seat, elbow propped on the back, so that I can follow her with my gaze.
I wait until she’s halfway to the bed. Then, “I know who you are, Rowena. I don’t understand the reasoning behind it, or why you’ve banded together the way that you have, but I know enough to put together the basics.”
That stops her in her tracks.
She whirls around, her face bearing a mask of righteous fury. “You know nothing.”
I set the book down by my feet, then stand. “Listen here—”
“No, you listen. You murder and you scheme, but don’t think that I don’t see through every one of your lies.”
“When the hell have I lied to you?”
“Guardians of the Crown,” she scoffs, “protectors of the queen. Isn’t that a lie?” She steps in my direction, as if she’s pinpointed my place within the room by only the sound of my voice. “Your own brother murdered the king. And you . . .”
Heart thudding, I rasp, “What, Rowena? What about me?”
“You’re the reason for all of this.”
I stare at her, unable to wrench my gaze away. “The reason for what?”
She laughs, this jagged, a
ching sound that buries itself inside my chest, reminding me of so very long ago when I stood under a starless sky and broke consecrated ground.
You’ve been very, very bad, Damien.
As if she can hear every guilty thought, Rowena approaches, one foot in front of the other, until she’s a hair’s breadth away. Her head tips back, the air practically buzzing with a visceral tension that tastes of hate and vengeance. And then, with little more than a finger to my chest, she cuts me at the knees: “You betrayed the king, Damien, and so he came to me.”
20
Rowena
The sound of madness is deafening.
Words uttered by King John on the day that he invited me to St. James’s Palace. I’d interpreted them as a warning then, a barely leashed threat that sank into my bones and rattled me to my core when I picked up the red porcelain teacup placed before me by one of the staffers.
Red carpet beneath my pumps.
Red cushioned chair under my arse.
So much red that it felt like a metaphor for the king’s life displayed for all who entered his domain; the power that he wielded, the blood spilt in his name. And there, on the king’s finger, a ruby glinted like the brightest star in the midnight sky.
He had the power of the whole world in his grasp while I was alone, uncertain as to why I’d been asked to come, in a room cut off from the rest of the palace. For the first time in years, I felt sweat dampen my palms. Nausea swirled, so very hot in my stomach, like the tea that I couldn’t swallow down. All while the king spun a tale of a rabid anti-loyalist keen on murdering Margaret. I’d heard only my pulse.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Madness.
“You went to him,” I hear myself say to Damien, my voice so very faint, as if I’ve been stuck in a barrel and put out to sea, “and you told him that Margaret would be next. You said she’d be done in just like Evangeline.”
A calloused hand slips around my wrist then presses my palm flat to his chest. Tendons ripple, pectoral muscles constrict, and beneath it all, a heart hammers wildly, a frantic tattoo that feels ridiculously human for a man who regularly conducts himself like a god.
“Why you, Rowena? Why did he choose you?”
Isn’t it obvious? “Because I’m alone. Because I’ve always been alone, except for Margaret, and he knew that I’d care that she was in danger.”
“In danger from me?” Damien barks out a harsh laugh, the sound like shards of ice that pierce the skin, and I flinch. “Fucking hell. Rowena, he used you.”
No.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
I let my fingers coil in the fabric of Damien’s shirt. All the better to hold myself steady as I rise onto my toes and thrust my face close to his. “You’re wrong. He didn’t use me. I was always the logical choice. No one knows Margaret the way I do. We have twenty years’ worth of history, friendship. Sisterhood.”
The roughened pad of Damien’s thumb slips under my captive hand, burying itself in the center of my palm. “You were used.”
It’s all a matter of perspective, though, isn’t it?
Father used me; the men of Westminster used me. I spent years avoiding anyone and everything that might do the same, wrapping myself in a cocoon of isolation so thick, so impenetrable, that I might as well have existed on my own little island for all the interaction I had with the outside world. But I’d gone willingly to King John, willingly took tea with him—and I’d said yes.
Yes to protecting my best friend.
Yes to hunting down the rabid anti-loyalist.
Yes to it all.
In the end, the king had no more used me than I’d used him.
Frustration heats my cheeks, and I fist Damien’s shirt a little tighter when I spit out the words itching to scrape free: “You make me sound naïve.”
Naïve like a young girl playing dress up in a man’s world.
A girl like I was, a million years ago, who twirled from one man’s arm to the next, none of them ever suspecting that I was anything more than a beautiful face. It was never meant to be that way with King John. The decisions were mine to make. The control mine to wield, when and however I saw fit.
In this house, I wear the crown.
“I knew what was expected of me,” I bite out, nearly giving in to the temptation to pound my fists on his chest and demand that he see me; how I am, how I’ve always been, had anyone ever cared to look deep enough. “And I knew what he wanted from me. I knew, Damien. You can hate me for what I’ve done, especially after tonight, but the fact is that the king—”
“Lied.”
I suck in an angry breath. “Are you really going to pretend that you didn’t go to St. James’s? Or is that just another pretty lie that the king spun for me too?”
“Oh, I went,” he sneers, his breath hitting my cheekbone as he lowers his head. “I went knowing that I was only wasting my time.”
“Then why even bother?”
“Because I was willing to sell my soul to the devil to get the information I needed.”
“And the king was the devil, I’m guessing.”
At my undisguised sarcasm, Damien scoffs under his breath. “For King and Country, right? A pledge forced on us all since John took the throne. But allegiance isn’t blind, and there’s always a tipping point. Tell a person to sit, and they will. Tell them to sit while balancing a book on their head, and they might get on with it just because you asked. But tell them to do all that while placing their bare feet on a bed of nails . . . Yeah, the look on your face tells me you understand. Obedience is earned, Rowena, it isn’t freely given. After the Westminster Riots, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, remembered that Princess Evangeline’s killer was never found.”
That stops me cold. “You thought there’d be a copy-cat killer?”
“I knew there’d be one sooner or later.”
“That’s why you went to St. James’s,” I say slowly, hearing the grim edge to his tone.
I don’t need to see his nod to know that he’s dipped his chin in confirmation. “John wouldn’t let the Met handle the princess’s autopsy report. He had everything handled in-house—not even Holyrood could touch it. I was only six, then, but I grew up hearing the rumors from the older blokes. Said that the princess had been receiving secret letters leading up to the assassination. I figured that if it was true, the king would know. And if he knew, and he still had the letters, then I needed to see them. Try to piece together whatever I could so the same thing wouldn’t happen to Margaret.”
Or so he says.
He thinks me naïve to have trusted the king, but it’d be exponentially more naïve of me not to question everything that falls from his lips.
“And why should I believe you?” Stubbornly, I lift my chin. “You say that a copy-cat killer is waiting on the horizon. You say that the king lied to me. Since I just spent three days undergoing your special brand of interrogation, excuse me if I don’t take your word for it. In case you’ve forgotten—you didn’t earn my obedience, you bloody well stripped it from me!”
“Because you’d have done it any differently?” His calloused hand reflexively tightens around mine, his voice lowering to a deadly pitch. “You may have sent your men to collect the queen tonight, but it was me you hunted. And had they brought me to you, I have no fucking doubt that I’d have been shoved at your feet and forced to grovel.”
I hate that he’s right.
Hate even more that he knows it.
“Then give me proof.” I try to tug my hand away from his, but he doesn’t let me go. “Give me something tangible.”
His nose brushes mine and holy hell, he’s close, so blasted close, that I feel the vibration of his every word when he growls, “I owe you nothing, Rowena.” His breathing shifts, roughening. “The fact is, you’re too scared to even consider that you’ve been wrong this entire time. It’s always easy to hunt the monster when the monster isn’t you.”
Somet
hing splinters inside my chest—a vulnerability I thought long dead—and I slam my eyes shut out of pure habit. “Don’t go there,” I rasp. “Damien, don’t—”
“Do you know, John felt the same way. One mention of Evangeline’s name and you’d think I took a knife to his throat. He was scared, just like you. Only, England’s king was too busy with his head up his ass, thinking about his ghost of a daughter, to acknowledge that his heir might end up the same way.”
It feels like I’ve been put in a corner and taken to task with a ruler across my knuckles.
Worse, there’s also the irrefutable fact that Margaret has almost met the same fate as Princess Evangeline. Only eight days ago, she crawled herself into a stairwell to die, her fingers coated red with blood, her blue eyes dead with exhaustion.
I kept her alive that night.
I did it because, whether she trusts me or not, Margaret is the only family I have. Would she truly have wanted to go to the Palace if she distrusted the Priests and Holyrood? She’d begged me. Begged me like her life depended on it, and I’d done it, knowing full well that I could have brought her here to Holly Village in North London instead.
My lungs expand with a heavy breath.
If I dig deep and peel back the layers of my armor, I’m terrified that I’ll find the arrow that’s nicked my flesh from Damien’s bow. If he’s telling the truth . . . “The king said you ran,” I say, desperately. “He said that the guards couldn’t catch you.”
Damien snorts derisively. “I left the same way that I walked in—with a small bow to his royal majesty and a two-fingered salute the second that I was out of his sight. And there were no guards.”
Just as there weren’t any when he invited me for tea. “Did the king say anything to you before you left?” I ask.
“Only that love is, and will always be, carnage.”
I grimace. “That’s . . .”
“Morbid?” A low, gritty chuckle. “Call me a bastard for saying so, but the king is better off dead. His one redeeming quality was his love for his children. Anyone could see that he’d move heaven and earth to keep them safe. But losing Evangeline . . . Jesus, it stole something from him. His sanity, his sense of compassion. His humanity. All of it, gone. To him, I was the pest who threatened his only living daughter with the reminder of what had happened to his dead heir. And you, Rowena, you were . . .”