by Maria Luis
46
Rowena
“We’re not here to cause trouble.”
Those dark eyes never leave my face. “Then tell your lapdog to put down the gun.”
Almost simultaneously, the pistol edges upward to put my head at an awkward angle. With his left arm looped around my body, I’m surrounded on all sides—a position not so unlike the one Damien took with me when he demonstrated how Ian died. But where I felt heat before, I taste only keen desperation now.
Every second that we waste is another where Damien might never wake up.
“Put it down.”
“Rowena—”
“Put it down,” I bark, the shape of the muzzle following my involuntary swallow. “Saxon, just . . . put it down.”
“And your mate,” adds the devil, his lips flat and humorless, “tell her to get rid of the blade.”
Isla.
Hysterical laughter itches to leap free because she . . . Bloody hell, Isla killed the king and she killed Ian, and here she is still, prepared to kill this man to protect me—her enemy, the woman who stands opposite her in all things but in our love for two very different brothers.
Throat dry, I manage, “Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” The now-warm muzzle notches upward, putting my eyes level with his. Cold. Detached. The gaze of a man who has hunted his way to the top, a trail of dead bodies left in his wake, and isn’t opposed to adding another to the already astronomical tally. “Speak clearly, Miss Carrigan, so we all can hear you.”
No.
I am not Young Rowena.
I am not the woman who will ever roll over and accept defeat.
It’s fury that has me gripping his thick wrist, my fingers finding his tucked away on the trigger. Baring my teeth, I hiss, “Keely may have served you his bollocks on a platter but I’ve none to give. I’m here for one thing only and I’ll gladly tear this house apart until I find it—do you understand?”
“You seem so sure that you know what you’ll find within these walls.”
“And you’re testing my patience,” I bite off, thrusting my chin forward so that he has no choice but to jerk back to avoid a collision. “I might not know how Keely found himself indebted to you—whoever the hell you even are—but those flowers out front tell me that you’ve at least kept some of his ways alive and well. So, either shoot me and be done with it or let’s move to the part where I tell you what I need and you hand it over.”
The gun shoves upward. “You push a hard bargain, Miss Carrigan.”
“I don’t put up with fools.”
“And Keely is—”
“The biggest fool of them all,” I say, not bothering to temper my voice, “but something tells me you already knew that.”
Digging my nails into the back of his hand, I sweep my gaze over the devil’s face. Tiny scars scatter across the slope of his forehead and one cheekbone. The bridge of his nose hooks gently to the left as if it’s felt the brush of knuckles more than once in the past. A square jawline melts into a clefted chin while dark bristles lend a certain sullenness to the curve of his mouth.
He’s not classically attractive.
Not in a way that’s elegant or posh or welcome in Quentin Keely’s world, who’s always made it a point to surround himself with pretty, exclusive things. Whatever stronghold this man has over the MP, he clearly earned his power with brute force and cunning savagery. And he keeps his foot on Keely’s throat in much the same way that he holds me at gunpoint now—without remorse, without emotion, without anything but razor-sharp ambition.
“I need an antidote for a poison that I’m sure is one of Keely’s and—”
“How dare you accuse me of—”
The devil cuts a hard glare toward Quentin, and any further protest from the MP descends immediately into silence. Then those inscrutable dark eyes return to me. “Go on.”
I angle my head in a wordless demand that he release me.
He doesn’t let me go.
My nostrils flare. “We both know Keely’s side hustle has nothing to do with his pharmaceutical company. If anyone is going to have an antidote, it’ll be here, somewhere in this house.”
“Symptoms?”
It takes every bit of wherewithal not to remember Damien down in the Bascule Chambers. Focus, Rowan. Focus on the here and now. “Immobility,” I force out, struggling to subdue my quickening pulse. “Within seconds, he . . . the victim was paralyzed. Consciousness lasted no more than a handful of minutes. The veins are completely black surrounding the gunshot wounds.”
“If they are, then it’s in his bloodstream.”
“Don’t you think I already know that?”
Not even a glimmer of pity in his expression. “You’re better off letting him die.”
Behind him, Saxon releases a guttural growl and I feel his pain like a slash of Isla’s knife against my own skin. The shadows creep inward, casting a dreary haze over my vision until I’m fighting for air and ripping my hand away from the gun to grip the armrest with all that I am. My arse is firmly planted in this seat but I might as well be swaying in the breeze when I breathe, “He deserves to live.”
“I didn’t say anything about deserving.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“CL-152 treats the body like a honeycomb—every muscle, every tendon, all disintegrate to make way for the flood of toxin. Recovery isn’t guaranteed. You wake him up and he’ll be wishing that he were dead.”
The clip of Isla’s stride is nearly muffled by the rug but her voice rings loud and true: “And you sell this?”
“For a price, I’ll sell anything.”
Saxon enters my line of sight as he positions himself to my left. “Who the hell are you selling this to?”
“To anyone with a pulse, Priest.” The man’s mouth doesn’t even twitch. “I’m not in the habit of playing favorites.”
Saxon’s green eyes narrow. “You know who I am.”
“Unlike the fool over there,” he rumbles, returning the muzzle to the back of my skull as he straightens to his full height, “I recognize all of you. Saxon Priest, the man who killed the king. Isla Quinn, the woman who murdered a priest. Aren’t you lucky that I don’t give a fuck about politics?”
“You have us at a disadvantage,” Saxon bites off, “because we don’t know you.”
It doesn’t matter.
Bloody fucking hell, it doesn’t matter who he is when Damien is suffering. How long will he last before the poison—this so-called CL-152—claims him entirely? How long will it be before nothing we do wakes him?
Panic slams my heart against my ribcage. “Name your price for the antidote.”
“You assume we have one.”
“No one is insane enough to create something so destructive without a way to reverse the damage—not even Keely. So, let me ask you again: how much?”
The backpack at my feet tips over when he gives it a soft kick, as if he’s testing its contents. “How much do you think his life is worth when he’s bound to wake up, realize that his body no longer does what it once could, and despises you forever?”
Damien wanted to live, to know happiness, and I . . . There’s no other way. Dr. Matthews has kept Damien living by a thread for all these months and that was when the poison was somewhat contained. Now, it’s devoured his body, possibly even his mind. There’s no chance of searching for an alternative when the clock is ticking down and time is not on our side.
I’ll bear his hate, if I must.
I’ll carry the weight of it for the rest of my life, knowing that I did everything that I could to let him feel the sun—even if it means that, in the end, the two of us together will only ever be a memory.
Trapping my bottom lip beneath my teeth, I nod my chin toward my knees. “There’s a hundred-K in the bag.”
“You’re having me stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong, Miss Carrigan.” That sinister voice lowers and lowers some more, drawing closer as he bends to snatch t
he backpack from the floor. “We all pay a price. The question is—what’s yours?”
Tension steels my muscles. “How much more do you want? Twenty thousand? Fifty?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“The hundred will do,” he replies smoothly, “as well as a favor for a life spared.”
A favor.
My gut twists with unease, and I fight the overwhelming urge to seek out Keely, who’s gone completely mute. He’s a man buried in my past, a face that I hoped to never see again. A reminder, however much I loathe it, that once upon a time, I spent my days giving out bits and pieces of myself in order to earn my father favors from various members of Parliament.
I walked away from that life.
Yet here I am, ten years later, on the precipice of re-opening the door to keep the man I love alive.
The courage in my bones threatens to wilt while tears threaten to bloom. “You’re the devil,” I breathe, choking on the words.
“And you’re desperate. Meanwhile, every second that you sit here, he dies a little more. Fate’s a fickle bitch, isn’t she?”
“Rowena, there are other ways. You don’t have to—”
I cut off Isla with a raised hand.
Turning my head, heedless of the pistol that follows, I stare at up at the man with the heartless gaze. “You won’t ever have my body,” I utter, my throat tight, “but you’ll have any other favor asked.”
“Then it looks like you’ll have your antidote after all.”
I wait until he’s stepped away, his broad shoulders cutting around Saxon’s tall frame, before demanding, “Who did I sell my soul to?”
The devil pauses, revealing only his profile when he peers back. His dark eyes are narrowed, his sullen mouth flat and untroubled by the chaos he’s unleashed. Then he smiles, just the smallest hitch of his lips, and I feel like I’ve been doused in ice.
“Baron Hastings. But you, Miss Carrigan . . . you can call me the Reaper.”
47
Rowena
The antidote is little more than a nondescript blue liquid, but I carry its clear, plastic bottle to Holly Village like it has the ability to cure the world.
“We’ll need Matthews to keep Damien sedated,” says Saxon from my left, his hand already stretching out past my shoulder to shove the front door open for me and Isla. “If what Hastings said is true, we can’t risk him waking up before we’ve assessed every—”
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Guy.
He stands in the entry hall with his legs spread and arms crossed, frustration chasing a ravaged path across his hawkish features. With only his body, he blocks all access to the corridor leading to Sara’s medical room.
“Move.”
At my roughly uttered command, his blue eyes fix pointedly on me. “Wrong answer. The lot of you disappeared hours ago, so let me ask again—where have you been?”
“Doing what needs to be done to keep Damien alive.” Clamping my fingers tight around the plastic bottle, I press the antidote to my chest. Beneath my knuckles, my heart hammers a quick tattoo as I shift to the right. “Now, get out of my way or—”
Lean fingers wrap around my bicep, stalling my flight.
Guy jerks me close, his voice low and rough when he husks, “You heard what Matthews told us.”
I tip my head back, meeting his stare. “I did.”
“Jesus, Rowena—you’re setting yourself for bloody heartbreak.” Jaw clenching tight, he shakes his head. “You have to let him go. We have to let him—”
“Back up, brother.”
Brows furrowing, Guy’s head swings toward Saxon. The tension in his jaw prompts a visible tic of muscle, and I swear that I can hear his molars grinding to ash. “You went with her,” he edges out, releasing me to face his brother, “and for what? To spite me?”
Saxon brushes past me, so that the breadth of his shoulders becomes a fortress between me and the eldest Priest. “I went with her,” he growls, “because I have goddamn faith.”
“You have no idea—”
“No, I don’t, because you didn’t bother to tell me that my own brother has had one foot buried in the grave for months!”
It’s the first time that I’ve heard Saxon’s voice raise above cool, calm, and collected. Even when he threatened me away from Isla, his eyes had burned with a fury that never crossed his lips. All that leashed aggression seems ripe to finally explode.
I step back, colliding with Isla, who tilts her chin toward the hallway. “Go find Matthews. I’ll hold down the fort.”
She doesn’t need to tell me twice.
With a quick nod of thanks, I sidestep the brothers and escape down the corridor. The antique door to the drawing room is thrown open but the gathering space is ominously empty. Somber silence permeates the house—no heavy feet padding on the first floor or rambunctious voices filtering through the walls. We lost Samuel last night and, regardless of the destruction that he wrought, we lost Hugh too.
Two men who were very much key figures in our organization—both gone forever.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I push Sara’s door open and come to a dead stop when I spot a familiar blonde seated beside Damien’s hospital bed.
The queen.
My best friend.
The woman who turned her back on me at the Palace, as though I haven’t proved my loyalty to her time and time again over the last twenty years. I nearly died for her, I burned for her, in the most literal sense of the word, and she left me to fucking rot.
Slowly, as though realizing that she’s no longer alone, Margaret twists at the waist to look back at me. Before she even has the chance to speak, harsh words are already tripping off my tongue: “It figures that you’d invite yourself where you aren’t wanted.”
Her shoulders snap back with queenly conviction. “I’ve never needed an invitation.”
“That was before you let me sit in a cell like a goddamned criminal.”
“Rowan—”
“You shouldn’t be in here.” Not with Damien, who’s been hunted because he refused to kill the king, and not with me, after she willingly believed the worst, even after everything that we’ve been through together. Slipping the antidote into my pocket, I clamp my fingers over the door and hold it open in a wordless gesture for her to see herself out.
Though her blue eyes drift to the empty hallway, her arse never leaves the stool. Then, softly, she utters, “Cowards hide in the dark.”
My mouth falls open.
“You did not just call me a-a—” Any chance of uttering the word coward disappears as indignation grips my lungs in a vice. Twenty years of having her back when King John sought to hide her away from the world, of sisterhood when life took a massive shite on us both and hope ceded way for grim acceptance. That she could . . . that she thinks that I’m some—
I slam the door shut.
Roughly fisting the collar of my jumper, I tug the wool down to expose my blistered collarbone. Look at me, I want to scream. Look at what my loyalty to you has done to me!
Instead, a caustic laugh escapes me as I cross the room. “You think that I’m a traitor?” I demand. “A coward? I was ready to die in that bloody stairwell, Mags. Do you know how easy it would have been to bring you down with me? But I didn’t—I couldn’t let you die—and do you even know why?” Breathing hard, I put a hand on her shoulder and roll her stool away from Damien, my broken body acting as a barrier between my oldest friend and the man who’s stolen my heart. “Because you’re my best—”
“I’m the coward!”
“I—” Surprise snaps my chin back. “What?”
As if the weight of the world sits heavy on her shoulders, she rises to her feet with a push of her palms against her thighs. Briefly, her fingers graze her abdomen, and I don’t miss the grimace that flickers across her face. Then she dips those same fingers into the front pocket of her jumper to pull out a chain, the silver metal glinting under the
florescent lighting a second before she clamps the necklace in a tight fist.
“I learned a very long time ago,” she tells me softly, “that while half of Britain would see me swaddled in bubble-wrap, the other wants me dead for no other reason than that I come from a family born to take the throne.” Still clutching the necklace, her gaze skips past me to Damien. “The Godwins are the worst of them all. They’d isolate me forever, if they could. They’d rip me from society and burrow me back in the Highlands if they thought doing so would keep me alive.”
“They took an oath.”
“Rowan, I forgot that they’re human.”
As if she’s socked me right in the gut, my palm goes to my stomach. The muscles clench beneath my touch but I feel nothing of the pain that I did on the night of the fire. Now, there’s only a pervading sense of awareness that I’m looking at a woman whom I thought I knew after years of standing by her side . . . only to realize that I may not know her at all.
“All my life,” she goes on, moving to the foot of the bed, “it was made very clear that Holyrood would forever bend the knee. They obey, they submit. And, somehow over the years, they became faceless subjects whose only duty is to follow our every rule.” Blue eyes flick toward me, and in them, I see only strands of guilt. No, not guilt, but something intrinsically more damaging. It’s shame, I realize with a jolt, as she curls her shoulders forward and returns her attention to Damien. “They’ve died in my father’s name, in mine. Clarke, he—”
Hoarsely, I interject, “He was doing his job.”
“He had a family. They all have families. And yet, because of a fluke in genetics and parentage, my life somehow means more than theirs.”
“You’re the queen.”
“And when the monarchy comes crumbling down?” she asks, her tone hardening. “Who am I then?”
“It’s not going to—”
“Tell me why he’s like this.”
Damien.
Her stare never leaves his ashen face, not even to take note of the myriad IVs connecting his body to the equipment lined up along the far side of the bed. The monitor beeps behind me and, unable to wait any longer, I lean over to press the button to the right of his head, to alert Sara that we’ve returned. It glows momentarily before fading again to a dull forest green.