by Maria Luis
“We run.”
“Damien, we won’t even make it past—”
“We run—now!”
The helicopter swoops inward, leaning in toward Broadmoor’s roofline, and, briefly, allowing the trees to obscure us from view. Rowena’s bare feet kick up dirt and I stay on top of her as best as I can with Guthram bouncing over my right shoulder. For once, the dead, nerveless flesh is a blessing; I feel nothing as we zigzag through the brush and follow the shelter of the trees.
Rowena’s breath comes hard and choppy, her hand returning again and again to her strained rib.
“You’re strong.”
Violet eyes swing back to me, her dark brows furrowed from pain, and I hold her gaze for as long as I can before dipping them back to the uneven trail. “You’re stronger than you know,” I growl, “stronger than anyone ever realizes. Keep going, love. Just a little more for me. Just a little—”
The helicopter’s path cuts directly above us, swallowing my words and sending leaves scattering from the branches. The downcast of wind plasters my hair to my forehead, and it carries enough force that I stumble under Guthram’s weight.
Soft hands catch me, tangling with my fingers.
“Don’t you dare give up,” Rowena utters fiercely, her gaze snapping up to the tree line. “Run with me, Damien. Goddammit, run.”
Air pumps into my lungs as I lurch to the right and re-position Guthram’s weight. The whirring of the chopper’s wings pulses overhead, and I don’t need to look up to know that the pilot has spotted us. It hovers in place, tracking our every movement. I look to Rowena and the sight of that handprint on her throat throws me into renewed motion.
I feel heat.
I feel rage.
I feel terror, down in my marrow, for what’ll happen if they catch the prime minister’s daughter in the company of the likes of me. The Mad Priest. The country’s most wanted fugitive. Broadmoor Hospital will be a bloody joyride compared to what they’ll put her through, and I force myself to pick up the pace, despite the fact that my muscles are now cramping, stalling, begging for relief.
“The watch,” I bark, “the second button down on the menu. Unlock the car.”
Ten seconds later, it comes into view, nestled within the woods just off Broadmoor’s property. Rowena darts forward. The boot unlatches and I feel the most ridiculous urge to kiss her for reading my mind. Sweat beads on her temple as she holds it open and I thrust Guthram in, feeling not a single trace of regret when he grasps at my arms and begs me not to lock him inside.
Mercy isn’t for traitors.
Nor is loyalty.
I meet Rowena’s gaze as she slams the boot down on the former Holyrood spy. The trees shimmer with the onslaught of human-generated wind and the blood from my hands stains her forehead and cheeks. A woman with war in her blood and courage in her heart.
I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful.
36
Damien
“Is he dead?”
I shift my weight, letting Rowena get a better view of Robert Guthram. His legs are twisted at an awkward angle and, after the hour-long drive back to Holly Village, the blood from his wound has completely discolored his shirt. Fortunately for us, the bastard is still breathing. Grasping fistfuls of his shirt, I haul him out of the car. “He’s alive,” I grunt, wrapping an arm around his middle, “and we need Grafton to keep him that way.”
With her fingers gently clasping the boot, Rowena swings a nervous glance over her shoulder at Swain’s Lane. “You don’t think that they—”
“Look at me.” Her hold on the car turns white-knuckled as she obeys, her gaze climbing my chest, then my throat, before arriving at my face. Tension lines her full mouth. “We lost them by Bagshot, remember? I made sure to stay off the motorway once we did.”
“It’s no secret that I own Holly Village.” A visible shudder racks her shoulders, and it takes every scrap of self-restraint not to drop Guthram to the pavement and pull her into my arms. “They’d already be here by now, wouldn’t they, if they were planning to follow?”
“Wherever they are, it’s not here.” My voice is low, husky. Believe in me, Rowena. “And I promise that if anyone pulls up this drive, I’ll take care of them myself.”
My brothers and I have spent ten years straddling England’s barbed-wire political fence. We’re despised in the same breath that we’re adored and I’ve long since forgotten the worry that comes with stepping into new enemy territory.
The same can’t be said for Rowena.
Her shoulders curl forward, and I catch her darting looks back at Swain’s Lane twice more before we make our way into Holly Village. Inside the mansion, Guthram’s shoes drag noisily over the glossy wood floor. And, for the first time since I found him in the hallway at Broadmoor, I allow myself the chance to really look at the man who once stood side by side with Pa. His dark eyes are half-shut, all signs of consciousness out the door; dried blood paints his palms and forearms, from where he clearly tried to staunch the flow after Rowena stabbed him. Remove the impact of age and stress, though, and it’s the same face that I remember from childhood.
Another mirrored perception.
The Robert Guthram I knew never would have done what this man did to Rowena today. Unlike his son, Robert lived by a strict code of moral conduct—women and children were always off-limits, no matter who they were. Ten years at Broadmoor clearly changed that, changed him. Just as the nervous twitch to Rowena’s shoulders tells me that she won’t soon be forgetting the taste of death.
Kill him.
My molars grind and I rip my stare away from his face before I give in to temptation.
“Where’s Grafton’s exam room?” I ask Rowena.
She tilts her chin down the hallway. “Two doors past the drawing room, on the left. I’ll grab her for us—I doubt she’s in there.”
“Rowena, I—” When she blinks up at me, I fall irrefutably silent. Words of apology beat to life inside my chest, all demanding exit though none of them take flight. Forgive me, please. For dragging her into this mess and putting her in danger. I stand there, holding up the man who tried to kill her and all I know is that if she demanded that I end Guthram, I would.
Her stare lowers then flickers to where Guthram is hauled up against my side. With narrowed eyes, she studies him like she would a cockroach that ended up on her plate. Distaste flattens her lips before she steps back and folds her hands at the base of her spine. “I’ll get Sara.”
Fuck.
Just before she disappears around the corner, I catch a glimpse of her linked fingers and it takes all the concentrated effort in the world not to chase after her. Do what has to be done, Godwin. It’s for the sake of the mission that I drag Guthram’s limp body down the hallway. Voices echo from the drawing room—Gregory and Samuel, I think—and with the toe of my boot, I shove open Grafton’s door. Hit the light switch with my elbow before shouldering my way inside.
One glance reveals that that the room is nowhere close to the state-of-the-art OR that Matthews worked out of at the Palace, but beggars can’t be choosers. The Palace is gone, at least for now, and I doubt Saxon’s place in Oxford is outfitted with the medical supplies we need to keep Guthram alive.
Fighting the urge to drop him, I set him down carefully on the exam table and arrange his body so that he’s fit for a coffin—legs straight, arms by his sides. Only the shallow rhythm of his chest proves that he’s still among the living.
I hear Dr. Sara Grafton’s voice in the hall before I see her: “I won’t do it, Rowan. There’s nothing you can do or say that’ll convince me”—the door flings open and Grafton stumbles in with Rowena at her back—“otherwise.”
Rowena keeps her hand on the doctor’s shoulder as she lets the door close behind her. “Sara,” she says, her tone sharp, “I pay you to administer to the wounded, don’t I?”
Blue eyes slide toward Guthram on the exam table. “You don’t pay me enough to care for anti-loyalists. And, fr
om what you said, this one tried to kill you.” She whirls around to face Rowena. “Why in the world would I keep him alive? Answer me that.”
“Because if you don’t there’s nothing that’ll stop me from ending you next.”
Slowly, Dr. Sara Grafton peers over her shoulder and coolly meets my gaze. “Congratulations, Priest, you’ve just signed his death warrant.”
When she makes an attempt to leave, Rowena is already there to head her off. She’s still in that torn jumper from Broadmoor. Blood and dirt cake the fabric, her feet and face, too, but it doesn’t stop her from extending an arm to block passage to the door. “You’ll keep him breathing,” she utters quietly, firmly, “and you’ll do it because there are lives at stake.”
“Whose?” Grafton demands.
“Damien’s, for one, but also—”
“Seven-hundred-and-ninety-three souls.”
Both women turn to stare at me, and I plant one hand on the doctor’s desk to steady my frame against the memory of Caren Fitz begging me to set him free. “That’s the number of anti-loyalists who have gone missing since the Westminster Riots.”
“Should I care?” Grafton looks from me to Rowena. Stiffly, her arms clamp down across her chest. “I’m not the one who—”
“Would you care if they appeared at your old hospital?” I ask, watching her closely. “If they were injured and on the verge of death, would you send them away, Dr. Grafton, just because they aren’t loyal to your queen?”
The arms across her chest squeeze tight and she falls back a step like I’ve struck her. “Why do you care?” she hisses. “You’re Holyrood, aren’t you? You’ve taken an oath to the Crown. If people go missing—anti-loyalists, at that—what does it matter to you?”
“Humanity is a choice.” Digging my fingers into the desk, I feel my jaw clench when I grit, “I’ve spent ten years playing both sides and you know what I’ve learned? People are people, Doctor. They hurt, they bleed, they laugh, they love, and at the end of the day, they pray that when they wake, the goddamn destruction will end. Loyalist, anti-loyalist—you want to know if it matters to me? Then yes. When innocent people die, it all fucking matters.”
As if her legs have gone weak, Rowena’s back hits the door with a quiet thud. Her gaze never wavers from my face. Visceral. Poignant. She stands clear across the room but she might as well have put her hand on my heart. I feel myself grip the desk so hard that its sharp corner pricks the calloused skin of my palm.
“We need him alive,” I say gruffly, tipping my head toward where Guthram lies, “because we need information. When I was . . .” Swallowing tightly, I force the words out past a dry throat: “From the moment I stepped inside Broadmoor Hospital, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t just that it’s a psych ward. There are others like it across the country but this one—”
“I felt it too,” Rowena says. “And I knew it the minute the guard talked to . . . to Guthram like they were friends. They spoke to each other in a way that a guard and patient rarely do.”
Grafton opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off: “They’re holding anti-loyalists in those rooms.”
“You . . .” Rowena’s hand finds the doorknob like she needs the support. “You recognized them?”
“Some,” I admit, “not all.”
“How do you know it was them?” Grafton asks. “It could have been anyone.”
“They came to The Bell & Hand.” I’ve attended their funerals, I almost add. They have spouses, siblings, children, who all believe them dead. If I thought . . . Jesus, if Saxon or Guy disappeared without a trace, I’d destroy the world to find them again. “We need to know how they ended up at Broadmoor, and, to do that, I need that man alive. So, you’re going to keep him breathing, Grafton, even if you have to do it with my gun to your head.”
Rowena reaches out and, with a single flip of the latch, she locks the door. “Save him, Sara.”
“It’s not much of a choice,” Grafton mutters, eyeing the lock.
“It’s an ultimatum,” murmurs Rowena, “you’re all out of choices.”
Words that I told her when she was blind and shackled, and I don’t know whether to throw my head back and laugh or pull her close and crush my mouth down over hers. In the end, I don’t get the chance to do either because my mobile vibrates in my pocket. I answer without looking, and the familiar voice of my oldest brother greets me with seething fury:
“What the fucking hell have you done?”
37
Rowena
Holyrood has descended on Holly Village.
Three hours after Guy rang Damien, they trail in one after another with Guy Priest at the helm. No signs of Margaret or Saxon. Instead, all are veritable strangers to me, except for Benjamin Lotts and Dr. Matthews, who pauses awkwardly beside me to say, “I hear your vision returned.”
I recognize him from the sound of his voice—genteel and smooth around the vowels. His hair is stark white, his skin brown. Eyes as black as coal peer down at me, and while they aren’t warm, exactly, I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Nathaniel Matthews is more than the coldhearted bastard who threw me in a cell with Alfie Barker.
Ignoring the obvious answer to the doctor’s question, I clasp my hands behind my back. Angle my frame slightly toward him to keep the floaters on the wall and off his face. “Did they bring you along in case chaos erupted?”
He matches my pose then leans one shoulder against the wall beside him. His gaze sweeps over the mismatched group of people in my drawing room. All stand in separate corners, as if the battle is only just about to begin. “I don’t have high hopes,” he admits.
“Does anyone?” I mutter.
It’s going to be a proper blood bath.
There was no telling Guy otherwise, though, after confirmation of Robert Guthram being taken from Broadmoor landed on every media outlet in the country. And it was a done deal as soon as Damien told Guy that he’d spotted anti-loyalists within Broadmoor. For better or worse, two enemies are converging today. Though Guy made it clear, right before he hung up, that if anyone so much as pulled out a weapon, he’d shoot us all.
From my corner of the room, I watch Damien’s oldest brother as he grips Gregory’s hand and introduces himself.
Guy Priest is nothing like Damien.
Both men have hair the shade of midnight, and their hips, shoulders, and chins line up, as if the universe decided to draw the two brothers on a grid to get them even with each other. They easily stand taller than everyone else in the room. But the similarities end there. Where Damien is brawny, his muscles thickly defined beneath the fabric of his clothes, the eldest Priest is lean, nearly hawkish, with features just as intensely angular. And where Damien’s blue eyes flicker with barely repressed heat, his brother’s gaze remains calculating, cold. It softens only when he turns to Damien, and I don’t miss the way he shuffles his body in front of his youngest brother with every new introduction.
“How far we’ve fallen,” gripes a voice to my left, and I don’t need to look to know that it’s Hugh. “First the Mad Priest and now the rest of them. I wonder, do your terms apply to all the Priest brothers or just—”
My heel sinks into his foot.
“Jesus fuck, Rowan!”
A few of the Holyrood blokes turn in our direction and I smile and wave like I’m the bloody queen of England instead of her best mate. Hyper-aware of the fact that Dr. Matthews is doing a shoddy job of pretending not to listen, I turn my head toward Hugh. “Speak like that to me again, and you won’t enjoy what I do next.”
He shifts his weight onto his opposite foot. “Ian is probably rolling over in his grave right now.”
The devil in me replies, “A tough feat considering that you had him cremated.”
Letting out a dark growl, Hugh gestures to the room. “You’ve let his killers into our lives, Rowan.” He doesn’t bother to modulate his voice, not even with Dr. Matthews eavesdropping from my righthand side. “And I can’t be the only one who thinks
it’s wrong. The king recruited us—”
“The king recruited me.” At the base of my spine, my fingers interlace tightly. “And then I recruited you and Ian. I don’t fault you for feeling the way you do, Hugh—no one would, not even the Priests. But this is . . .” I bring my gaze to his face. “Can’t you see that this is bigger than all of us?”
His stiff jaw suggests that he can’t.
Frustration eats at me and I clamp my mouth shut before I say something that I’m sure to regret later. I won’t pretend that losing Ian as a friend somehow equates to the loss of him as a brother, but Hugh is dangerously close to finding himself out on his arse. Aside from that first night, everyone else has managed to dance politely around Damien. Everyone, that is, but Hugh.
He’s a loose cannon when we’re already on the eve of war.
Either his rashness will see him dead or it’ll take down someone else in his stead, and I can’t . . . I can’t allow that sort of devastation to happen. As much as I want to walk in Hugh’s shoes with him, this is one trek that he’ll have to make alone.
“Take the night off.” Easing one hand away from the other, I place it on his arm. “Put down the hate and rest your heart, Hugh. Please.”
“I don’t need—”
“It’s an order,” I tell him gently, raising my chin, “not a suggestion.”
His dark eyes squeeze shut, and then he’s spinning away without another word. Only once he’s gone do I release the pent-up breath in my lungs. Falling back against the wall, I allow my hands to sink down to my sides.
“You handled that well.”
I cut a wry glance toward Dr. Matthews. “You really have no shame.”
“Would you believe it if I said that I was hard of hearing?”
“If you were, then you wouldn’t have thrown me into a cell just to get rid of me.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Touché, Miss Carrigan.” Bringing his gaze to the room again, he stews on his silence for all of three seconds. “Loss is a funny thing, isn’t it?” He asks it in such a way that I know it’s a rhetorical question. “We treat our grief like it’s a curse.”