by Luis, Maria
“Not even close.” I step back, lending much-needed space between us. “But I recognize a lost soul when I see one, and I can promise that you won’t find what you’re looking for here.”
“You don’t even know me.”
I tilt my chin toward where I left her CV on the table. “All I need to know is on that paper. A girl like you, quitting her job at a big news network to work in a well-known anti-loyalist pub? You’re clearly living off anger, nourishing it like it’s your only sustenance.” The Isla Quinns of the world only end up in one place: dead and buried. Too stubborn, too shortsighted, and too hell-bent on rectifying a wrong that can never be undone. Emotion will get you killed. Hate will get you killed. I shake my head. “You’ll be dead before the end of the year because you’re too damned blind to see when someone is doing you a favor.”
“I didn’t ask for a therapy session,” she snaps, the fear in her voice displaced by irritation.
“Brilliant,” I tell her, turning away, “then get the hell out of my pub.”
I don’t meet Jack’s gaze as I stalk past him. Instead, I duck under the bar and grab a tumbler and the bottle of Lagavulin off the oak shelf. The amber whisky hits the glass with a splash, and as I bring it to my lips, I watch Isla Quinn storm out the front door in a flurry of strawberry-blond waves and tailored black clothes.
I lost my soul in a secret room in St. James’s Palace. No, a little voice says in my head, it was destroyed. Destroyed by a king who used a child to keep a grown man in place. I never got it back, not then, not when Pa was discovered dead on Marlborough Road, not when Jayme Paul, my father’s second, shepherded my brothers and my mum and I out of the country and into Paris, where we lived with next to nothing for years.
But sometimes . . . sometimes I still find it in myself to do the right thing, the noble thing.
It would have been all too easy to use Isla’s anger to my advantage.
Even easier to use her as prey to lure in all the bastards on the hunt for Queen Margaret. A pretty girl like Isla? They’d all come running, each and every last one of them.
A visual of glittering blue eyes storms my brain.
Some of us gave up our souls long ago, but others . . . Isla—not everyone is a lost cause. Not everyone is lost, permanently.
“To the heroes,” I mutter, tossing back the rest of the Lagavulin like it’s nothing more than a gin and tonic, and welcoming the fiery burn as I swallow, “and to the villains.”
And to me.
A man lost to duty.
To the Crown.
And to the death of every soul who’s tried to change the direction of fate.
God save the queen.
4
Isla
“Well?” my younger sister demands as soon as the front door to our flat closes behind her. “What’s the verdict?”
Absolutely pitiful.
Five hours after Saxon Priest shut me down, I force the brittleness from my expression just as Josie cuts the corner into our kitchenette and drops her ratty school bag onto the table. With a sniff of the heavily scented air, she leans around me to check out the curry I’m whipping together. All it takes is one look at the bubbling sauce for her to bump me out of the way and take over stirring.
Her blue eyes slide toward me with impatience. “Are you going to spill or what?”
For as long as I live, I’ll never forget a nine-year-old Josie leaping from the treehouse Dad built for her and Peter, back in York. She’d jumped because Peter had pulled the same daredevil stunt, first, only to fracture his ankle, snap his tibia, and be relegated to crutches for months on end. He’d moaned about the pain all night and groaned about his limited mobility all day. That is, until Josie followed suit, flying from the treehouse with all the reckless abandon of a baby bird tumbling from its nest.
Amidst her crying, I’d demanded to know why she’d been so insane as to risk her own neck. Her only answer was that Peter had looked so dejected, always propped up on his crutches and hobbling from room to room. She’d wanted him to know that she understood his need to fly.
Josie at nearly seventeen is no better than her at nine with her hot-pink leg cast and gap-toothed smile. She still sees too much, senses far more than she should, and has the annoyingly persistent habit of pushing until I crack.
“Great news!” I squeeze her arm in a gesture that I hope she’ll interpret as genuine excitement. The frown that immediately mars her face suggests otherwise. Bollocks. Hastily, I add, “They requested a second interview.”
Liar.
I am. Have been for years now.
I tell myself that I have no choice if I want to keep Josie and Peter safe, but sometimes I wonder who I’m fooling. Myself? The memory of my dead parents, who I’ve already failed countless times in the last five years?
The familiar sting of regret sits like a brick in my stomach.
One day soon, Peter will move out of our small Stepney Green flat, and my sister will follow not long after, and I can’t even think about it all without my pulse erratically skipping a beat. But it doesn’t matter how deep fear burrows under my skin when I think about us not being under the same roof every night. And it doesn’t matter that the last time we were separated, Mum and Dad died. To go through that again . . .
Stop. You have to stop.
“Isla?”
At Josie’s concerned prompting, I swallow, thickly, and turn toward the cabinets before she can get a read on me. “We’ll see how it goes, yeah? I’d say that I’m more than equipped to handle a few plates.” To prove my point, I grab three from the shelf and make an exaggerated show of setting them neatly on the table after elbowing Josie’s bag to the floor. Lifting a brow, I brush my hands together in a job-well-done gesture and look to my sister. “What d’you say? Should I ask for a raise already?”
My poor attempt at humor barely earns me a smile before Josie rolls her eyes and returns to the curry. Her red hair, a shade that looks like gold bathed in sunlight, sweeps forward to hide her face. “You shouldn’t even be working at a pub,” she mutters, her shoulders hunched as she stirs vigorously, “you had a job. Your dream job. And then you quit.”
Except that I didn’t quit. My position was “terminated.”
While protesters disappeared without a trace and the king grew more irrational, I sought to rip back the velvet curtains and show my fellow Brits that the concept of a constitutional monarchy was dead in the water, if it had existed at all in the last twenty-five years since Princess Evangeline’s death. I took the job with the news network to destabilize the status quo. Get dirty. Get real. Make a difference.
And the network? So much evidence dumped in their laps and all they’d wanted was for me to piss off.
“The pay was stagnant,” I tell Josie, lying, once again, for the sake of keeping our family united. A team of three, for now, for always. I don’t want them to worry. Better they think that I looked at our finances—meager though they are—and determined that leaving the station wouldn’t further ruin us.
Josie’s stirring pauses. “Because working at The Bell & Hand will make you more?”
“It’ll be fine, I promise.”
She turns the hob off, her slim shoulders straightening as she slides the steaming pot onto the back burner. “Well, it’d be even more than fine if I took a gap year like Amanda and Bea.”
I smother a groan. “Jos, we’ve talked about this. You’re going to uni, just like I did, just like Peter is doing now.”
“Who says I even want to go?”
“Life isn’t always about doing what you want.” If it were, then I’d be in America, working some posh publicist job and reminding celebrities to wipe their arses before they walked the red carpet. But here I am—in London, in this hovel of a flat, having the same bloody argument with my sister that we’ve hashed out a million times over. “Go to uni. Get a good job.”
“Like you? Do you suppose your degree from Bristol will get you that raise at the pub?”
<
br /> Grinding my teeth to the point of pain, I mutter, “When I went to uni, this blasted country hadn’t gone straight to hell yet.” Ripping open one of the cabinets, I grab three glasses off the shelf. “The little things that made life worth living are gone. They don’t exist. Which means, if you want any sort of life at all then you can forget about the gap year. We’re lucky the universities are still open.”
Because she’s sixteen and thinking short-term, my sister spins around, frustration etched into her delicate features. “You say no to everything! I can’t even—” She breaks off, drawing in a sharp inhalation. “Maybe if you stopped pushing us for the things that you think we want, then we wouldn’t feel the need to go behind your back. It’s not like we don’t know what happened.”
It’s not like we don’t know what happened.
My stomach freefalls and it’s a miracle I don’t drop the glasses on the floor. Sticking them on the table, I immediately grip the edge for stability. My legs feel weak. My head feels like it’s been shoved inside a water tank and I’m dreadfully low on oxygen.
How could they know? How could they know? About the king. About what I did. About the fury that lit my veins when I pulled the trigger.
Fury and resentment and a keen self-awareness that I was altering my life course forever.
I don’t regret it. Maybe that makes me cold-blooded. Maybe that means I’ve abandoned all morality—morality that I’ve always clung to during the hardest times of my life. Maybe that makes me as vile as King John.
Someone murdered Princess Evangeline and someone else murdered my parents and I murdered the king in return.
Three wrongs don’t make a right, but that didn’t stop the satisfaction from flooding my body when I saw his shocked expression, seconds before he stumbled backward into his daughter, Princess—Queen—Margaret.
Liar. Murderer. Hypocrite.
Three words that I whisper to myself every night when I turn off the lights and slip into bed. It’s not who I was born to be, but it’s what I’ve become. But none of that explains how Peter and Josie discovered that I’m the one who killed King John. The police don’t even know—though I’m not entirely sure if that’s because I did a damn good job of covering my tracks or on account of the fact that, like parliament, the Metropolitan Police’s infrastructure is also crumbling.
Uneasy, I press a balled fist to my stomach. “Josie, I—”
“The network fired you,” my sister tosses out, cutting me off. When my brows shoot north in surprise, she snaps up her chin defiantly. “Peter found the termination letter in your desk. We both know, and we’re—we’re tired of you acting like we’re children! We’re not and we’re certainly not your children. I’m old enough to decide if I want a gap year and Peter is old enough to decide if and when he joins the protesters, no matter that you tell him he’s not allowed.”
Instead of experiencing a rush of relief that my secret is safe, I feel nothing but a blade of fear. It twists and plunges, churning my insides, leaving me chilled. My gaze flies to the clock on the wall and I note the time with a punch of dread.
Dammit, Peter.
I push away from the kitchen table. “Where is he?”
Josie crosses her arms over her chest, stubborn to the very end. “In class.”
Peter attends Queen Mary University, which is less than a ten-minute walk from our flat. It’s Thursday, and even when his class runs late, he never misses a meal. The world could actually be ending, and my brother would take his last breath with a plate of stuffed Yorkshire pudding in one hand and a cheese pasty in the other. In every other part of his life, Peter is the very definition of predictable but with the ongoing protests . . . Bloody hell, I’m going to wring his neck.
I meet my sister’s stare. “Answer the question, Jos.”
“Or what?” she retorts, eyeing me over the slope of her nose. She’s taller by a scant few centimeters, has been since she turned fourteen, and never fails to remind me of it. “You won’t let me do what I want? Newsflash, I might as well be under house arrest as it is.” A sly smile curves her lips as she thrusts her hands forward, wrists kissing like she’s prepping to be handcuffed. “Make it official, yeah? Might as well lock me up because I won’t be spilling anything about Peter—”
Beeeeeeep! Beeep! Beep!
My head snaps toward the window that overlooks Alderney Road at the same time Josie reels backward, her fingers drifting toward her midsection like the wind has been knocked right out of her.
It might as well have.
I remember a time when London’s streets weren’t outfitted with alarms at nearly every intersection. I took everyday city noises for granted, then. Better to fall asleep to the mundane sound of drunks stumbling down the street than the utter stillness of people waiting for the next tragedy to strike. But this is how we live now—this is what we’ve become—and fear and retribution and defiance are ingrained in every breath we take.
The not-so-peaceful protests. The all-and-out riots.
The violence.
The death.
Because that’s what the siren signifies. Another protest. Another person with their life source snuffed out much too soon.
Without another word, I head for the front door. Shrugging into my coat, I check the inside pocket for the outline of the knife that I’ve carried with me for years now.
Behind me, I hear Josie’s cautious footsteps. “You can’t go,” she whispers, all trace of angry teenager already abandoned. “It wasn’t supposed to get bad. Peter, he told me that it would all be fine.”
“The sirens went off.”
Fingers wrap around my wrist, tugging sharply. “Isla, you can’t go. You can’t!”
Ignoring the chill of disquiet skating down my spine, I shake my sister off and shove my keys into my pocket. The ridged edge cuts into my palm, and for a moment, I relish the bite of pain. I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. A mantra that always feels like I’m baiting fate to prove me wrong.
Over my shoulder, I meet worried blue eyes. “Is he out there?” I ask, unable to silence the tremor in my voice.
There’s no question as to who he is. Peter. Our brother. The third leg of our tight-knit trio.
Josie sweeps her stare down to our feet, like she can’t bear to maintain eye contact. “Yes.”
Fuck.
My hand grips the doorknob. “Where, Josie?”
“B-Buckingham Palace.” Her fingers dart up to her red hair, threading through the strands. “Some of the kids from his student union were going and . . .” She chokes on a sob, and though my heart aches to comfort her, the way I’ve done since Mum and Dad died, I stand my ground. “I’m sorry, Isla. I’m so, so sorry.” Stepping forward, she holds out a hand, reaching for me. Her fingers curl inward, grasping nothing but air when I don’t move, before she drops her hand back down to her side. Dejection flattens the corners of her mouth. “Please don’t be mad. He said you would never find out and I-I’m sorry.”
“Lock the deadbolt and don’t answer to anyone else if they come knocking.” Opening the door, I slip out into the hallway, only to pause on the threshold. I glance back, my gaze zeroing in on Josie’s forlorn expression. She’s young, so much younger than I was when we lost Mum and Dad, and yet she carries none of the innocence that I did at her age.
That elusive fire that coursed through my veins when I killed King John two months ago returns with a vengeance.
“Jos,” I grit out, my hand locked around the door frame. When she looks at me, lashes wet with silent tears, I dig my nails into the wood as though that alone will keep me upright. “I’d do the same for you,” I tell her, raw honesty clogging my throat, “I’d do the same for you.”
5
Isla
Ambient light from the circling helicopter slashes across the crowd, creating an eerie glow over the protesters gathered outside the iron gates of Buckingham Palace.
A crooked nose. A thin-lipped mouth. A heavy pair of brows that snap tog
ether when someone shouts, “Death to the queen!”
Those within hearing vicinity echo the words like a battle cry: “Death to the queen! Death to the queen! Death to the queen!”
I suck in a sharp breath as bodies crowd inward from all sides, cutting off any chance for escape. Hands graze my hips, my arse. Feet stomp on mine as I slip through the angry throng. Pain registers in my toes before I find myself bobbing beneath an arm bent like a chicken wing as its owner thrusts a poster board in the air again and again, each time more vigorously than the last.
It’s utter mayhem.
“Peter!” I shout, knowing it’s futile but unable to stop myself from trying. Again. On the thirty-minute tube ride in, I rang him no less than fifteen times. Even now, I reach into my coat pocket for my mobile, sending a hasty three-word text: WHERE ARE YOU.
No sooner have I hit SEND that someone rams into me from the side and my phone flies from my grasp.
“Fuck,” I mutter, making a hasty swipe for it as it falls out of sight amidst all the feet storming past, “fuck, fuck!”
Another body jostles roughly into mine, this time from behind, and I don’t feel an ounce of remorse when I jab my elbow backward and hear a telltale masculine grunt. A hand clamps down around my wrist, jerking hard.
I don’t waste precious moments exchanging pleasantries.
Instead, I duck low, catching the man off guard, and snatch my hand back before he can reel me in. The heat of his palm ghosts over the crown of my head, but I hustle away quickly, dragging my right foot over the gravel in a pitiful attempt to come across my lost mobile.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Frustration boils deep in my belly.
If—no, when—I find Peter, I’m going to kill him.
How could he be so stupid? So incredibly naïve as to think that these protests won’t take a turn for the worse when the sun sets and darkness blankets the city? They do, each and every time. And, sometimes, they catch fire, gaining traction and vitality outside of The Mall until it spreads like the plague.
