by Luis, Maria
I concur.
Sinking back, I slouch in my chair. Not wanting to know the answer, but knowing that I need it anyway, I ask, “How many numbers are we talking? Five? Ten?”
“Over twenty that I’ve counted.”
“Christ,” I breathe, scrubbing a hand over my jaw. “And Barker doesn’t realize any of this?”
My brother shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
Guy drops his hand to the desk, his palm open and flat. “What I want to know is how they—him, her, whoever—picked Barker in the first place. What makes him special? He roped his brother and the brother’s friend into this mess, but it seems that it all starts and ends with Barker. Which, as we know—”
“Isn’t common,” Damien finishes. “I know, and that’s our problem. I can’t find a damned thing on the man prior to a year ago. It’s like he appeared out of thin air. I haven’t found so much as a birth certificate, let alone mention of a wedding announcement in the papers, and we all know that he was married.”
That explains the cigarettes and unkempt look, then.
Boy genius at his finest. There’s never been a puzzle Damien couldn’t solve, and it must be driving him insane to know that the truth is just out of reach. The Mad Priest in his natural habitat. The irony, really.
It’s Guy who speaks up first: “We’re working with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
I dip my head. “Security Service, maybe.”
“If not that, then someone with a lot of money to grease some palms.” Elbows planted on the desk, Damien props his chin atop his clasped hands. A frown tugs at his mouth. “I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to piece together a paper trail but it all leads to—”
“Nowhere.”
Damien nods at me, his face solemn. “Nowhere. It leads nowhere. We can keep Barker here, maybe bribe him with the possibility of seeing his girls. But with him thinking he’s been following orders from an entire network, when it’s only been one person, I doubt he’ll tell us anything worthwhile. The bastard’s in the dark about this as much as we are.”
It’s not a realization that sits well with me.
Running my finger along the scar, behind my ear, I feel the raised flesh. 502. Loyalty. Trust. Brotherhood.
“The king,” I mutter roughly, dropping my hand to my thigh.
Guy shifts in his chair, aiming it so he can look directly at me. “You’re thinking the assassination and this attempt are related?”
“I think that if we can discover who killed John, it might lead directly to the ghost who’s working Barker like a puppet on a string. Coincidences don’t exist. No one knows that better than us.”
25
Isla
The bed creaks beneath me as I sit up, my feet landing on the supple carpet below.
The logs in the fireplace have ceased crackling, lending the bedroom a stilled darkness that’s only disturbed by the soft moonlight filtering in through the transom window. Silence permeates the home—no footsteps echoing up and down the stairs, no whispers coming from the second floor, where Saxon and Guy disappeared to, hours ago. If it weren’t for Josie’s rhythmic snoring, I could almost convince myself that I’m completely alone.
It’s stifling.
Gripping the edge of the mattress, I try to ease the unsettled pace of my breathing. I draw circles on the carpet with my toes, counting to ten on a hushed whisper, then starting again when I reach double digits.
My pulse kicks up, the images from my night terror bulldozing their way in, so that it’s not the quiet street I’m staring at but a dead Ian Coney, his brown eyes dull, his lips turning distinctly blue, his—
“Stop it,” I hiss, digging the heels of my palms into my eye sockets, “just stop it.”
I’m not sure who I’m speaking to—myself, for succumbing to the constant plunge of paranoia each time I close my eyes to sleep, or the ghosts of King John . . . and now Professor Coney too.
A hand grazes my spine and I nearly hurl myself from the bed.
Except that I do actually hurl myself, I realize, once I blink and the room resettles around me. The cool glass of the window at my back brings goose bumps to my skin, and the curtain has wrapped like a noose around my right ankle and thigh.
I’m stuck, just like I am in my dreams.
Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to think.
“Isla?” Josie whispers, scrambling to all fours on the bed. “Are you all right?”
Moonlight fractures across her features, highlighting her nose, hollowing out her eyes with deep shadow. I twist my head to the side, clutching the curtain fabric in a fist and yanking it sharply from my leg. It unwinds with an audible snap.
The release does nothing to lessen the cacophony of my erratic heartbeat.
“I need . . .” I wet my dry lips. “I need water, I think.”
She swings her legs over the side of the mattress. “I’ll get you some.”
“No!” I throw out a hand, stopping her in her tracks. “No, I’ll go.”
“Are you sure? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
How ironically appropriate.
“No ghosts,” I lie. Grateful for the shadows, I force a weak smile and motion for my sister to climb back into bed. “It’s late—early—you’ll need more sleep than this.”
Josie casts me what I can only imagine is a dubious look before slipping beneath the sheets again. She twists one way, then rolls abruptly onto her left side, so that she can watch me quietly. “How long are we to stay here?”
If that’s not the question of the century then I don’t know what is.
“Not long.”
Another lie—I’ve lost count of them all, at this point.
Earlier, I explained the basics of what happened this morning. I acted in self-defense and killed a man, and until we’re sure the Met won’t come for me, we need to keep a low profile. I don’t know what it says about the world we live in that instead of appearing horrified by the truth—or telling me I told you so—my siblings only crowded around the sofa and wrapped their arms around me.
Maybe they saw the bleakness in my expression and knew I needed their support.
Or maybe we’re just so far gone as a society that an Us vs Them mentality is something even teenagers accept as part of the norm.
I’m as sickened by the prospect as I am relieved.
Stomach heavy, I move to the bedroom door, only for Josie’s voice to stop me. “Are you scared?” she asks, sounding so small and so young that my heart aches. “After what happened . . . are you scared that they might find you?”
There’s no mystery as to who she means by they—the police.
In a sea of lies that bubble up like the fountain of truth, I give my sister a sliver of verity. “I’m only scared that they’ll take me away from you and Peter.”
My active imagination surfaces the worst-case scenarios, changing them out like a film I can’t bear to watch.
Josie dead.
Peter lost and alone.
Josie starving and cold.
Peter dead.
“But I’m not going anywhere,” I add, a stilted smile touching my lips, “which means it’s time for you to go to sleep.”
She huffs out a laugh but burrows beneath the covers, seemingly content with a world that has me bossing her around.
I barely make it out of the room before claustrophobia rears its ugly head again. I need fresh air, a place to breathe.
Guy mentioned that the property has a rooftop garden and I stumble toward the stairs, gripping the bannister and taking the rungs two at a time. Once on the small, second-floor landing, I swing my gaze left, then right, seeking an entrance to the outdoor space.
Nothing.
Unless . . .
Arms rooted down by my sides, I stare at the door that might lead me to freedom. Saxon told me that I need to stay here, on Lyme Street, but that can’t mean I’m relegated to spending every waking moment within these four walls.
>
I’ll go mad. Absolutely and proper mad.
On silent feet, I approach the door, my hand already itching to rip at the knob and lead me to a night spent under the full moon.
There’s a fifty-fifty shot that I’ll be walking into Guy Priest’s room.
A fifty-fifty shot that it’ll be Saxon on the other side.
I send up a prayer and test fate.
Twist the knob and step inside.
The room is completely black, the curtains drawn shut. The fireplace hasn’t been lit, not the way Peter sparked ours for some heat before we all hit the sack, him in the bedroom next door to mine and Josie’s.
It feels like I’ve walked into a void.
And then I hear his voice—dark, cold, chill-inducing—and I’m not sure if it’s relief I feel or a growing sense of dread for waltzing into the lion’s den and expecting anything less than a skirmish.
“What are you doing, Isla.”
A statement thrown down like an iron gauntlet.
Blinking, I search the room, looking for his familiar, broad-shouldered silhouette. When I come up blank, I take a tentative step forward. “I couldn’t sleep.”
My ears prick at the sound of a chair creaking. Is he standing? Walking toward me?
“Too hot with the fire?” he asks, his voice a low hum that sends a shiver down my spine.
Wait. How did he know that Peter lit the fireplace for me and Josie?
Tempted as I am to learn the answer, I opt for the truth. With him, I feel as though I can. No judgments cast. No raised eyebrows and silent disapproval. Just me. Just the paranoia that won’t quit, no matter how much I try not to feed into the fear.
“A nightmare,” I tell him, just above a whisper. “I saw Coney—how he was when I . . . when I did what I did to him.”
“Describe it to me.”
“What?” More movement, this time from my right. Toes digging into the carpet, I turn in that direction, seeking him out. “I want to forget, not recall every last detail.”
“Trust me, Isla.”
Trusting him seems counterintuitive to everything that my gut is screaming at me to understand. I trust him with my body. I trust him with my safety, even. But my heart?
My shattered soul?
It’s a risk. A big risk. One that’s more likely to blow up in my face than lead to a happily-ever-after with the two of us honeymooning somewhere warm and tropical. Not that marriage to a Priest is on the table for discussion.
Darkness lurks and silence stalks what’s left of my confidence.
I cock my head to the side, listening for his approach. “Let me see you—please.”
A long beat passes, then another.
And then I sense him coming up behind me. His big hands settle on my shoulders, his thumbs tracing a line from the base of my neck into my hairline. His breath coasts over my bare skin, making my stomach flutter with something that sounds a whole lot like yes, please, this with every flip and flop that tangles me even further within his web.
“Trust me,” he reiterates. “Please.”
Rubbing my lips together, I run my sweaty palms over the silky fabric of my pajama bottoms that Josie snagged from my drawers before leaving our flat. “You’re begging.”
“No, I’m giving us what we both want.”
My breath catches in my throat. “All right.”
“Sit down.”
At his raspy command, I squint, wishing the fabric of the curtains wasn’t so thick in this room. No moonlight seeps in, and yet . . . Where I felt stifled downstairs, I feel only a thrill now, like the darkness isn’t a plague but a cure.
“Where?” I ask, reaching up a hand to capture his. “Lead me.”
So, he does.
One foot in front of the other, his palms on my shoulders guiding me through the pitch-black room. The carpet tickles my bare toes and my skin pebbles with gooseflesh from the heat of his hands.
This isn’t about sex or lust or getting off.
It’s something more, something . . . enigmatic.
I breathe, you inhale, and we both go up in flames.
Turning me around, he inches me back another step until my calves collide with the wood frame of a bed and the backs of my knees meet a soft mattress. “Sit.”
I sit, already missing the warmth of his touch.
Straining my ears, I pretend that I can hear more than the reigning silence. I imagine the pop and crackle of a fire glowing in the century-old fireplace. I imagine the scratching of a tree limb against the window, soft and insistent, as though begging to be let in. I imagine him pressing me deep into the mattress, his mouth slanting down over mine as he slips his hand inside my knickers to make me cry out his name.
I imagine it all, vivid and bold, then feel an unexpectedly cool breeze as something lands in my lap.
Fabric. It’s fabric.
One brush of my finger over the finely sewn seams instantly indicates that it’s a shirt.
A shirt that he stripped off.
My eyes go wide as I hear his knees crack, then feel the breadth of his back on the inside of my thighs as he kneels between my legs.
“What are you”—I shake my head, heart pounding faster than it has any right to for a man like Saxon Priest—“what are you doing?”
His deep voice hits me in the chest like a sledgehammer out to smash me into smithereens: “Letting you see me.”
Oh.
I fist the shirt as emotion stings my eyes. It didn’t escape my notice how he kept his clothes on earlier, even after demanding that I remove all of mine. The fabric was his armor, his shield against society. And here he is, on his knees, giving me free reign over his naked torso.
“Y-you don’t have to.”
“Free will.” A small pause. “Tell me what you see when you close your eyes.”
On his command, my lids fall shut.
And, just like that, I’m whisked away on the grotesque wings of my worst nightmare.
“Shocked blue eyes,” I breathe out, shuddering at the memory as it plays out before me in my mind’s eye. “I felt his surprise, right there in my gut. I felt like it was my own. It was . . . something that I couldn’t have anticipated, not ever.”
“What else?”
I tangle Saxon’s shirt around my fingers, winding it in and out between each digit, simply for distraction. Still, I keep my eyes squeezed closed, as ordered. “The fear—the way his hands jolted up like . . . like he could make it stop. The bleeding. His body going into shock. But there was nothing he could have—” I break off, breathing heavily as the memories assault me. It hurts. It hurts so much to remember, and shouldn’t I be satisfied? I did what I set out to do. I killed the king. But all I can see is his expression and now there’s no stopping the shudder that wracks my frame. “I’m sorry. I don’t think—I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to keep remembering.”
“Touch me.”
My hands stop fidgeting. “Saxon.”
“See me while I see you.”
It’s then I hear it, among the imaginary crackling fireplace and the branches clawing at the window—the raw vulnerability underlying the self-assured command.
A protest leaps to my tongue but my fingers have a mind of their own.
I discard his shirt, letting it fall to the mattress beside me, before shifting forward on the bed so I can reach him.
My thumb grazes the corded muscle linking his shoulder with his neck. With the slightest pressure, I skim north, only to find his head already bowed.
“Keep going,” he husks out, “breathe for me.”
It’s not until my palm flattens across his back that I realize he isn’t breathing at all.
He kneels, breath drawn in, and waits for me to pass judgment.
There’s no light, nothing to guide the direction of my hands, and yet I follow the hills of his shoulder blades and the valley of his spine. I touch him as though I’ve spent years memorizing every rigid line of
his body. And, with each pass, I feel my heart fracture just a little more.
Scars are scattered across his back.
Some overlap, crisscrossing in feathered batches that churn my stomach and remind me that not all nightmares have the luxury of being locked behind a door of slumber.
“Tell me what you see, Isla.”
He’s not asking about the firm, hardened flesh beneath my fingertips. Collateral, that’s how he put it in the car—and yet this moment feels like nothing less than trust being earned both ways.
I can’t hide the quiver in my voice when I speak. “In my dreams I feel remorse like a living, breathing entity. It clings to me”—like thorny veins crawling over my thighs and keeping me restrained—“and holds me captive. When I struggle to escape, I see his blood dripping from somewhere up above. It lands on my hands, my feet, the rest of me . . .”
The base of my palm collides with a scar that stretches from his left hip to just under his armpit. A second later, he takes that much-needed breath, letting it fill his lungs so that my hand rises with the inflation.
“Where did this come from?” I whisper. Where did all of these come from?
He exhales. “I don’t remember.”
Something tells me that he isn’t lying—with the number done to his flesh, I can’t imagine he’s able to keep track of each wound and every injury.
I want to wrap my arms around him.
Promise him that he’s not alone.
He beats me to the proverbial punch, asking, “How do you wake yourself up?”
Sometimes I scream myself awake.
Sometimes I pray for a reprieve and pretend that none of it is real.
Most times Josie shakes me until I’m stumbling my way out of another nightmare, lying about what I see in my dreams, and then sitting at our tiny kitchen table until the sun kisses the morning sky and I remember what it’s like to breathe all over again.
My hands drift north, over the slopes of his muscular shoulders to the soft strands of his midnight hair. “I let it swallow me whole. Until there’s nothing left for the guilt to grab onto, until I’m left alone for another day.”
When I trace the shell of his ear, dipping to the hollow behind his lobe, he stiffens. I expect him to jerk my hand away, as he did when I tried to touch his mouth earlier today, but he holds himself still, a map of secrets that he’s given me to decipher.
