by Maria Luis
“I don’t understand.”
“We obsess over it,” he says with a roll of the shoulder that isn’t pressed against the wall, “to the point that it consumes us. Where death is permanent, grief is a constant renewal of life that thrives on our pain.”
My heard thuds against my ribcage. “That’s . . .”
“Reality.” Another small shrug. “He’ll come around, Miss Carrigan. Just give him time.”
But time is something we desperately don’t have, especially when Damien and Guy break away from the fold and head my way not even five minutes later. From the matching grim expressions on their faces, I know that they’re ready.
If death is permanent and grief is life, then betrayal is misery—and Silas Hanover may be wishing he already took his last breath by the time the Priests are through with him.
“So,” the eldest Priest brother drawls, “we finally meet again.”
Opposite Guy, Silas Hanover is strapped to a chair in the undercroft. With his back to the stone wall, he sits with his nails biting into the armrests and his knees turned inward. Flickering gas lamps cast shadows across his face. And for every breath I take, his angry dark eyes find their way back to me again.
It might, however, have something to do with the framed picture of Mum that I angle toward him on the sideboard, so that he has no choice but to acknowledge what he’s done.
You didn’t go down as easily as she did.
Fury clamps my fingers into tight fists that I shove behind my back. The Priests are leading the brigade on this interrogation, but I can’t stifle the threat that crawls up my throat. “Did you know,” I murmur, “that this is the only place in Holly Village where the walls are so thick that no sound escapes?” With his gaze centered on me, I push away from the sideboard. “You scream, and no one will hear you. You beg for mercy”—I drop my hands atop his on the armrests—“and no one will see your tears. You are alone, Silas, just as she was. And if it were up to me, you’d die alone too.”
His mouth tugs up on one side and, with his eyes narrowed, he spits on me.
Bastard.
Damien releases a feral growl but I stop his approach with a raised hand. Then, with the back of the same wrist, I wipe away the spittle from my cheek. All-out defiance radiates from Hanover. No show of remorse. Not a single display of regret. Father always did choose his associates well, and Silas Hanover is no different. He’s coldhearted, a murderer, and—
“She was innocent,” I hiss, feeling the wrath of hell propel my hand forward to clutch his neck, as he did to me at Broadmoor. “She was innocent in all of this and you . . . you helped him kill her, and for what? A house?” Against his throat, my hand visibly trembles. I’m aware of Damien and Guy staring but I can’t—oh, God, I can’t suppress the anger, can’t pretend that it doesn’t overrule every sense of reason when, deep down, I want this man to die a thousand little deaths as I have. “Whatever my father promised you, he lied. My only inheritance was this property, and if you think”—I draw a heavy breath—“if you think, for even one second, that I won’t enjoy seeing you suffer here, then you’re wrong. Justice is dying in the same house that you killed her for. You deserve no better.”
My shoulders heave and the undercroft remains ominously silent, and then Hanover dips his chin, thrusts his neck farther into my grip, and drawls, “Are you done?”
All the rage, all the hate, knocks loose from my bones.
I’m weightless, gasping for air and finding none.
“Rowena.”
I turn slightly, my hand still locked around Hanover’s throat, and find Damien.
How—how can a man commit such evil and feel nothing? How can he betray those he loves—Henry Godwin and Holyrood and King John—and abandon them in favor of the unthinkable? A broken oath. A discarded family-in-arms. A death that left my world in ruins. A death, if he’s to be believed, that was sanctioned by my own father.
My lips part on all the words that won’t come, and I seek Damien’s gaze almost desperately. Help me, I beg him silently. Help me understand.
Because I understand none of this.
“Give me your hand,” he rasps.
Blankly, I look down at right arm, which hangs limply at my side. It feels weighted by stone boulders as I force it up and up and up. But when my palm is level with my waist, Damien jerks his chin toward my left, which has yet to leave Hanover.
“Let go”—Damien’s velvet baritone slices through the thick, impenetrable fog to reach me, confused and irreparably wounded—“and give me your hand.”
Let go of the pain. Let go of the hurt.
Dr. Matthews was right: grief is an endless cycle of life that I breathe into even now, twenty years after I heard Mum’s final scream.
As if my fingers belong to someone else, I watch them slowly peel away, one by one, from Hanover’s throat. My palm stings with the searing heat of mourning as I stagger backward. A retreat that lasts less than a heartbeat because Damien is already there, his arm slipping around my waist to catch my weight against his solid chest. His calloused palm skims my forearm, careful of my scarring, to tangle my fingers with his own.
He squeezes once.
I slam my eyes shut.
Focus on the mission, Rowan. Focus on what matters.
“His name is Silas Hanover,” I whisper past a dry throat, “and a lifetime ago, I heard him nightly down in my father’s study. He was also there on the night that Mum died.”
“Is that true?” Guy demands, the staccato of his steps near-silent on the stone. “Were you working with Carrigan?”
I open my eyes just in time to see Hanover tip his head back. His posture stays loose and untroubled when he murmurs, “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Damien stiffens behind me. “Denial isn’t the game you want to play with us. It won’t end well.”
“Because of how you’ve grown?” Hanover’s grin is barely more than a leer. “Oh, if only Henry could see the two of you now. Though . . .” With mock concern, he cranes his head to eye the door leading to the servant’s staircase. “Now that I think about it, where’s Saxon? Don’t tell me that you’ve sacked him.”
My fingers are squeezed again, but this time, the gesture isn’t offered in comfort. Tension ripples through Damien’s frame. Against my back, I feel his chest shudder with a labored breath. “Mention his name again,” he warns, “and you won’t speak for the rest of your miserable life.”
Before Hanover can reply, Guy drops to his haunches in front of the former spy. His wrists are tied to the armrests and his ankles secured to the chair’s wooden legs, but none of that stops Guy from pushing Hanover’s right trouser leg up to his knee. His hands are steady as he pulls a blade from the holster at his waist and sets it down next to his boot. Dropping one elbow to his thigh, Guy cocks his head. “We aren’t the lads you remember . . . but I remember much about you, Robert.”
Dark eyes land on the blade.
“The first time I ever saw blood spill was by your hand, and do you know what I remember?” The unhurried smile that touches Guy’s lips sends a shiver skating down my spine. “I remember how you circled the man. He was bound, just like you, stubborn, just like you. And then you dropped to your heels, just as I have, and you turned to me and said, He’ll last longer this way.” Guy traces a finger over Hanover’s exposed calf muscle. “You wanted answers and answers you would get. Tell me, how many cuts did you make before he died?”
Hanover’s throat visibly bobs but he doesn’t utter a word.
“That was your first test, Robert, and unfortunately . . . you’ve failed.” With calculated precision, Guy reaches for the knife while never looking away from Hanover’s paling face. “The answer,” he goes on, dragging the tip of the blade across Hanover’s quivering flesh in one unwavering stroke, “is seventy-one.” The tip of the knife drips red when Guy pulls back. “Should we do a comparison and see where you fall?”
He poses the question so casually, s
o ambivalently, that my stomach freefalls as nausea catches me in its debilitating grip.
The first time that we met, at the Palace, I sensed a barely restrained energy about Damien’s oldest brother that chilled me to the bone. Guy Priest is the hunter who finds his prey without ever lifting his gaze from the first print in the snow. And while I want Hanover to suffer, I still can’t shake the inexplicable need to run.
The fact that Damien barely reacts tells me that Guy’s interrogation tactics are common enough in Holyrood. After a quick squeeze of my hip, Damien even moves to his brother’s side. “We’ll keep it easy for you to start,” he says to Hanover while pressing one hand to the stone wall and angling his body to present me with his back. “Robert Guthram is on your birth certificate, so why the fake name?”
It’s only after Hanover’s maintained his silence, and I hear his low hiss as the blade meets skin for a second time, that it hits me what Damien’s done: with his body as a shield, he’s blocked Guy completely from view so that I’m not forced to witness the violence firsthand.
I inhale sharply.
Damien’s shoulders immediately contract and a moment later he catches my eye over his shoulder. Shadows tease across the hollows of his throat while the gas lamps bathe his handsome face in swaths of golden warmth. The villain and the hero forever tangled in a man who bleeds both death and salvation.
He doesn’t tell me to go, doesn’t demand that I stay.
The choice sits in the palm of my hand, mine to do with as I wish.
With my heart in my throat, I give him a small dip of my chin. He mirrors it, wordlessly, then returns to Hanover. “You told Rowena that you’ve been waiting ten years for Carrigan to get you out—what deal did you make with him?”
Hanover’s gritty chuckle greets my ears. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
His new M.O., apparently.
He walked the halls of Broadmoor Hospital like he owned the place. He threatened to throw me into solitary confinement for no other reason than that I wore a red poppy and showed support for King John. And he knew—even as he planned to walk free from it all—that there are people locked away within Broadmoor whose sole crime was to stand opposite the king. Every single move he makes is a lesson in contradiction.
“Was it you?” I demand, folding my arms across my chest to contain the fury demanding release. “You have friends all across London, you said. Somehow those anti-loyalists went missing and somehow, they all found their way to Broadmoor. Was it your doing? My father’s? The king’s?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Against the stone, Damien’s hand balls into a fist. “You apparently know a whole lot of nothing, Guthram.” Before Guy can move, Damien stays him with a hand to his shoulder. Then the hand that’s leveraged against the wall drops to the back of Hanover’s chair.
“The problem is,” Damien utters, his voice pitched low, “I already know where Carrigan stands with the Crown and it’s not with Holyrood. Which means that you’ve either been playing both sides for decades or, sometime in the last ten, you abandoned everything you knew, everything you ever believed in, to stand side by side with Edward Carrigan. Which is it?”
Predictably, no answer comes.
Among the floaters dotting my peripheral, I spy Hanover’s feet jerk against the floor as Guy makes his next cut.
Escalating frustration throws me before the man who helped kill my mother. “I asked you this at Broadmoor and I’ll ask you again—why do any of this?” I slash an arm at Guy, who still kneels on the ground, his fingers coated red with blood. “You know how far they’ll take this, and you still won’t cooperate.” When he remains stubbornly mute, I growl, “Is it money that you want? Because I’ll pay you, Hanover. Name your price and I’ll pay you, so long as you give us answers.”
Those dark eyes promise retribution as he rubs his lips together, flexes his fingers against the armrests, and grinds out, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Little Rowan.”
I should have allowed Sara to let him die.
“I think you know everything and more,” the eldest Priest murmurs. “So, I’m going to ask you just one more time—what was the deal you struck with Carrigan?”
Only, Hanover confesses nothing.
He confesses nothing as his blood hits the stone, and he confesses nothing when his cries fill the undercroft, and he continues to confess nothing until thirty-two strokes of the knife leaves him unconscious and slumped over in the chair.
38
Damien
“We kill him.”
Sparing my brother a dark look, I close the bedroom door behind me. “We aren’t going to kill the man who’ll get us what we want.”
“And what the hell do we want, Damien?” Guy’s hard stare tracks me inside the room as he uses the hem of his shirt to wipe Guthram’s blood from the back of his hands. “Do we want our entire lives to end up on the telly? Is that what you want? Because after the stunt you and Rowena pulled today, we’re one step closer to making that happen.”
I grit my teeth. “Clearly, it didn’t go as planned.”
Agitation chases swiftly across his features and he opens his mouth like he wants to lay into me. At the last second, he turns on his heel and prowls deeper into the room instead. “Whatever’s happening at Broadmoor, we handle it on our own. One call to the lads in Southampton and it’ll be over within hours. Those people . . . they’ll go home to their families.”
“And us?”
He pauses at the window, shoving aside the curtains to peer down onto Swain’s Lane. “What about us?”
“More will go in,” I say, “and soon enough, we’ll be heading back for another rescue mission. Is that how you want this to play out?”
“We don’t know that’ll happen.”
“No, we don’t, because Guthram won’t bloody talk!” Rage crawls beneath my skin and, in a moment of weakness, I twist at the waist and slam my hand against the door. The wood rattles under my palm as my shoulders drive north to my ears. “He sat there,” I bite out, “like we were nothing to him. He sat there like Holyrood didn’t exist to him. And what he did to Rowena—” Cutting myself off with a harsh curse, I drop my gaze to the carpet before I reveal too much.
Like a snake choking the life from its victim, silence invades the room. It pulses and it thickens, until, finally, my brother breaks it with an indrawn breath that audibly rattles his chest. “Why did you go Broadmoor? The truth.”
I slam my eyes shut. “Guy . . . don’t.”
“You may want to save those people—I don’t doubt that—but it’s not why you went.”
With my temple against the door, I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to tame my racing pulse. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
“Tell me, dammit.”
“I want to be free!” The confession explodes from my soul, shattering the silence and splintering my brother’s thin veneer of control when I turn on him. He physically steps back, his ass hitting the window, but still I let the words bleed out: “I want to walk down the street without having to look over my bloody shoulder every two seconds. I want to know that if someone is seen with me”—if Rowena is seen with me—“it’s not a death sentence.” Heat powers through my limbs, tightly wound and exponentially fragile. “I’m tired. I’m so tired, don’t you fucking see it?”
Guy’s gaze shutters.
His hand finds the windowsill.
And then, quietly, he destroys me: “You won’t ever be free, brother.”
I hear the words, see his familiar face, but he may as well have taken that knife of his to my own legs. They weaken beneath me and I throw out a hand to catch my balance.
I don’t make it.
The room spins as my spine collides with the door and I sink down to the floor. I inhale only darkness and exhale only light, and no matter how I try to snatch it back—to fill my chest and collect every rare memory of stepping into the warmth of su
nshine—it disappears as if it never was.
“This life . . . your life . . .” Breathing hard, Guy slams his fist down on the sill. “Fuck, Damien. You won’t be free—don’t you understand that? I’m trying . . . Jesus, I’m trying to keep you alive!”
Chained.
Collared.
I feel the noose tightening now, cutting off my air supply, until my only options are to accept defeat or unleash destruction.
My fingers dig painfully into my thighs. “I can’t do this.”
“Damien—”
“Did you see her?”
Guy’s stare sharpens. “See who?”
“Rowena. Did you see her, really see her?”
Clearly trying to buy himself time before answering, he passes a hand over his mouth. “What does she have to do with any of this?” he finally demands. “Besides the obvious, which is that her father wants you dead.”
You make me feel like I’m dancing with madness.
Words that heated me in a way that nothing else ever has—not rage, not vengeance, not the ever-present hum of no mercy that begs me to relent and succumb to sweet, fucking temptation. Rowena Carrigan isn’t meant for me but damned if I won’t hold on to her for as long as I can anyway.
“She breathes,” I tell him roughly, “even when the world tries to destroy her—even when I tried to destroy her. She went into Broadmoor Hospital for me, brother. She risked death for me. And even just now, when I’m sure she wanted her own vengeance for what Guthram did to her mum, she passed the torch because I need the bounty off my head. The strength she has . . .” Slowly, I shake my head, even as my fingers bite into the stiff muscles beneath my trousers. “I need the chance to live and I won’t let you take that away from me.”
He doesn’t meet my gaze when he returns to scraping the back of his bloodied hand with his shirt. “Do you love her?”