by Luis, Maria
Baring my teeth, I lunge forward, only to have a heavy arm band across my stomach and limit my forward mobility. I swing my gaze to the side. “Get your hands off me.”
Damien shakes his dark head, offering a bitter laugh. “So you can kill him? No chance.”
I drag my elbow back, nailing him in the gut. “Better him than—”
“Who? Your precious Isla?” Guy taunts, stepping forward until he’s so close that I could almost headbutt him. Almost. Just another few centimeters. Come closer, dear brother. “The big, bad Saxon Godwin has lost his mind over pussy. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Out of sight, Hamish makes a gurgling sound, as though he’s choked on his drink. “I don’t think provoking the beast is the best course of action.”
“He wants to provoke the beast,” I growl, never taking my eyes off Guy’s bruised face. The imprint of my fist from the other day has yet to fade, and I find a sick sense of satisfaction in that. “Because he thinks everyone should have to listen to his preaching.”
“And here I was remembering our conversation,” he drawls, “when you told me that, as the head of Holyrood, it’s necessary that I give my opinion. So, here it is.” He shoves his face close to mine, wrath dancing in his blue irises. “You cast the blame everywhere but on yourself. That scar you touch when no one is looking? You earned that. Pa knew how much John hated when he brought us along, but you wouldn’t quit. Every bloody day you begged.” His voice pitches higher, like a child’s, when he says, “Take me with you, Pa. I want to go with you. And he told you, every time, that the two of you could get in trouble if he did.”
Stiffening, I jerk my head back. “I’m not the reason he’s dead.”
“No, but you’re the only reason why you’re deformed.”
“Jesus, Guy,” breathes Damien.
But my older brother will not be deterred. His words flays me alive. And the rage I feel, it twists and contorts, metamorphizing into something so much worse—pure, undiluted hatred—when he opens his mouth for another round: “The world doesn’t see you the way that you do. Ugly. Emotionless. You’ve done that to yourself.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? You think you’re mad at me and I can take it. I’ve dealt with shit you will never understand, felt worse pain than you could ever imagine. Broken bones don’t even crest the surface.” He taps his face, over the bleeding wound that I hand-delivered personally. “But you’re no martyr. You locked her up. You looked her in the eye and betrayed her trust. Fact is, you’re the reason why she’ll hate you, and you can’t fucking deal with it.”
Anger tears through me, potent and visceral. It ignites my blood. Steels every one of my muscles until it feels as though I’m a living, breathing anomaly—human derived from granite. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have something to say if I let her walk free.”
Coolly, his gaze flicks over me. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t choose the queen over her.”
Prove it to your son that the Crown must always come first.
Pain registers in my chest.
A crippling, unwieldy sensation that drives my lungs inward.
As if sensing that I’m coming undone, Damien releases me and I stumble away from him, away from Guy, away from what’s left of my family. It’s been the three of us for so long that to tear at the fibers of our relationship feels like slicing the limbs from my body.
I chose Holyrood.
I chose the queen.
I chose us Godwins.
I’m barely aware of grabbing the first object I see—a chair, dating back three centuries—and hurling it across the room. It crashes against the wall, splintering upon impact. I see nothing but red. The red of my father’s eyes when he begged me to look at him. The red of the king’s ring, just before he slid the knife behind my ear and scoured my flesh. The red of my own blood, now, as shadowed recognition hits that I’ve shattered glass.
Crystallized shards cling like teardrops to my butchered skin.
“Jesus, someone get me the kit. I’ll clean him up.” Damien.
“And here we’ve always thought you were the unstable one, Damien.” Paul.
“Everyone, out.” Guy.
My voice booms over the din: “No.”
“If I don’t sew you up, we’ll be standing over your dead carcass by midnight.”
Ignoring the blood dripping from my palms onto the prized Persian rug, I look at Damien. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Absolutely, fucking mental,” grunts Hamish, shaking his head. “It must run in the family. Not a sane one in the whole lot of ye.”
Nostrils flaring, I ignore him too. “No one pays Isla a visit but me.”
The lot of them all exchange wary glances, but it’s Guy who speaks up. “You have two choices here: death or imprisonment. She’s a traitor.”
Is she? Or was her assassination of the king only a symptom of the debilitating anger stirred deep within her after her parents were murdered? She turned to fire and I turned to ice, and it’s that ice that’s been my constant companion for twenty-five years. I conned her into that prison cell like the coldhearted bastard I’ve always been. And she . . . She was all too easy to manipulate with her trusting gaze and the eager way with which she’d followed me, as though willing to bend to my every whim.
Am I to call you boss, now? she asked me, days ago.
If only I’d known then what I know now—that I’ve always been trouble, a true Godwin, and that whatever heart I do own has been wired, over decades’ worth of subjugation, to spurn every ounce of warmth that comes my way.
I captured a warrior and dragged her into the darkest pits of hell.
“No one,” I repeat softly, with a hard edge that will not be defied, “but me.”
35
Isla
I’ve been encased in darkness for an eternity.
“Hours,” I whisper to myself, staring up at the ceiling from where I’m sprawled out on the cold slate floor. “It’s only been hours.” I think.
More likely than not it’s been less than a day.
Without artificial light, without even a single window, there’s no sense of up or down. I could be splayed out on my stomach, my nose grazing the dusty floor, and I wouldn’t know the difference.
I know that I stopped screaming Saxon’s name after my voice went hoarse.
I know that Alfie Barker could hear every one of my pitiful cries because he shouted for me to shut the hell up right around the time hopelessness became a suffocating shroud and I sank to the ground.
My shins and kneecaps are bruised from posturing before that door, as though if I begged, however silently, that help might come.
That I might be saved.
It’s only taken hours inside this miserable cell for me to recognize the truth: Saxon Priest tricked me, manipulated me, and then he left me to die.
Bastard.
Rolling onto my side, I push onto all fours and crawl toward the shared wall between my cell and Alfie Barker’s. To keep my healing wound clean, I drag my sleeve down over my palm and offer up a silent plea that I won’t contract an infection. The crown of my head bumps the wall first, and I twist immediately, planting my arse on the floor and my back against the stone.
At this point, I have nothing left to lose.
“Alfie.” A small pause. “Alfie, I know you can hear me.”
“Sod off,” comes his aggravated reply.
Admittedly, I’m desperate enough not to care that he’s being a complete wanker. If I find myself locked in this prison for more days yet, I’ll be ten times worse than he’ll ever be. “How long have you been here?”
“Didn’t I tell you to piss off?”
“It’s a courtesy I’ll allow since you look like absolute hell.”
“How gallant of you to say so.”
Ignoring the residual ache in my stiff legs, I drape my wrists over my bent knees. Peer out into the pure blackness that envel
ops the cell. “Have you been fed? Watered?”
Nary a pause before his sarcastic retort filters in through what I suspect are the ceiling ducts: “If I were a plant, I would be a cactus on its last leg. I piss in one corner, shit in another. Any other pertinent details you want to know before I go back to wishing I were dead?”
“Yes. Why are you really here?”
I tilt my head, listening for any sort of response from my fellow inmate. A tiny sliver of me—the indestructible sliver that always seeks out the good in people—believes that this is somehow a test, that Peter and Josie will be waiting for me with open arms as soon as I’m set free.
The rest of me prays that my siblings are simply alive.
Don’t go there. Don’t you dare think that way.
“Alfie?” I try again.
Then, finally, “I had orders to kill the queen.”
My back goes ramrod straight. “Orders? Orders from whom?”
I can practically see him shaking his head when he admits, “I don’t know and, truthfully, I didn’t care. My wife is dead—last year’s riot on Easter—and I just . . . I just—”
Sobs fill my cell, wrecked and tormented, and I turn onto my knees and place one hand against the roughened stone wall. “Alfie.” More sobs, this set louder and tinged with sorrow. “Alfie, you mustn’t cry. Do you hear me? If you want to—”
“If I want to what?” he expels on an unmistakable water-logged exhale. “Survive? I’m lucky that I’m alive! And you know who’ll suffer if I do die? My two little girls. They’ll be the ones to suffer, not me.”
The same fate will meet Peter and Josie, I know that all too well. But I hope . . . Well, I hope that the two of them are stronger together. Where are they now? I’ve asked myself that question no less than twenty times since being trapped in this cell and, like every other instance, I suppress the bad, lurking thoughts and place them in a mental box with an impenetrable lock.
First I need to escape.
Then I can go about saving them.
“Whoever you had orders from,” I say, my brain working overtime as I run through the beginnings of a hazy plan, “would they realize you’ve gone missing?”
“Are you asking if they’ll save me? Or if they’ll save you, considering that you shot the king?”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” I swallow, tightly. “We must help each other, Alfie. However we can.”
I expect Barker to issue another derisive rejection. But even as I strain my ears, listening for the increasingly familiar timbre of his nasally voice, there’s no further activity from his side of the wall. Dammit, Barker. Another moment of silence passes, and then yet another, until concern slams into me. There’s nothing in this cell that could inflict self-harm—I’ve checked what feels like every nook and cranny for a weapon I might use to escape—but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t found another, more sinister, method to get the job done.
Like bashing his head on the wall and ending his misery.
Oh, God.
Still on my knees, I bang a closed fist against the stone. “Alfie, think rationally. Do you hear me? Whatever you’re feeling, it’ll get better. It must get better. We’ve spent our lives fighting for this and you cannot give up now.”
“He hasn’t.”
At the familiar, dark-pitched voice, I swing my gaze toward where the door is vaguely located—only to spot Saxon standing there. As it was when we first entered the hallway, the two-sided glass is crystal clear, quite literally, which means that even if I didn’t want to see his blasted face ever again, I’m not given the luxury.
The overhead lights flicker on as I push to my feet, not bothering to wipe the grime away from my joggers or the betrayal from my heart.
“Have you come to kill me, then?” I ask, not the least bit flippantly.
“Not quite.” Saxon’s expression doesn’t so much as twitch, but he does move his foot against something on the floor. It’s only then that I realize he’s brought me a tray of food. “I prefer other methods of intimidation. Starving my victims tends to lessen the fun of stealing every one of their secrets.”
“How unfortunate for you, then, that I’m all out of those.” Kicking my chin up, I stare him down over the slope of my nose. “The same can’t be said for you, can it, Saxon Priest?” The straight set to my shoulders falters as a staggering thought hits me. “Is that even your real name or have you lied about that too?”
When his only answer is to avert his gaze, I wrap my arms around my middle and hold on tight. It’s either that or cry, and I refuse to shed a single tear for this man. At least, not any more tears than I already have. And certainly not while he can bear witness to their existence.
Even so, I can’t silence the bitter laugh that climbs my throat any more than I can the hostile retort that leaps free: “I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve done nothing but lie from the start. Once again, I’ve unveiled everything there is to know about myself. Willingly. Because I trusted you. Meanwhile, it was all a ploy—”
His fist connecting with the glass has me damn-near jumping out of my skin.
“I turned you away,” he snarls, his scarred mouth pulling angrily, his bruised knuckles flush with the door. “I’m no hero, Isla. I’ve never claimed to be one. But don’t you dare fucking say that I welcomed you with wide open arms.”
As though the barrier doesn’t even exist, I march forward and jab a single finger into the glass. If it weren’t there, I hope I’d puncture his good-for-nothing heart. “No, let me rephrase that for you—you wanted to use me. Not for my body, as I expected, but for information.” My lips turn up in a thin, dangerous smile. “You promised to steal every piece of me—to, what did you say?” I snap my fingers. “Oh, yes. To fill every broken and misshapen part of you. Do you feel better now? Do you feel anything but hollow for proving the world right? That you’re nothing but a savage, coldhearted—”
“I feel lost!” he roars, so forcefully that I actually stagger back. His chest heaves, expanding sharply. The tension in his harsh face remains tragically visceral. “You’ve had five years to walk alone. Try doing so for your entire bloody life.”
“Saxon . . .”
“No.” Despite the glass, I feel the anger radiating from him. Pulsing, threatening, gathering tangibility like a whip bound to flay trembling flesh. “You want me to unveil myself? Then I will, and you’ll see”—his voice catches, a vulnerable crack in his icy veneer—“you’ll see that you should have stayed far away from me. I don’t inhale, Isla. I consume, I devour, and then I destroy whatever’s left.”
Nerves eat away at my stomach as I rub my dry lips together. “I won’t allow myself to be frightened by you.”
An acrimonious smile curves his mouth. “Oh, yes. Because you’ve killed the king, you think that you can take on the world.” He drops his voice to a sardonic whisper. “Your night terrors would prove otherwise.”
I rear back, hurt. “I told you that in confidence—not to have it thrown back in my face.”
“Christ, you are so”—he rakes his fingers through his hair, tugging sharply on the thick strands—“so incredibly naïve. This is war, Isla, and we are not on the same team. And even if I had the choice to jump ship and stand by your side, I . . . I—”
“You what? Just say it.” I wave my hands at him, frustration turning my tone merciless. “Whatever you want to say, just say it!”
“I would still choose the Crown over you.”
In that moment, I learn the true meaning of self-loathing.
Oh, how I wish I could remain strong and impassive and rigid. Like stone, like him. But I’m the same girl who cried after losing her parents and I’m still the same woman who lies in bed each night, discovering new circles of hell for knowing that her actions have led to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.
Tears bleed to the surface.
I feel them and do nothing to wipe them away.
Sometimes warriors cry, too.
When I
blink to clear my vision, Saxon has twisted around. His shoulders are broad, and his back tightly muscled, and do I disgust him that much that he can’t even bear to look at me? I ought to tell him to take his stupid food and sod off, but I find myself standing in place, unable to move, because this man—this cold, cruel man—should not have the opportunity to ignore me like I don’t exist.
He stuck me in this cell.
He abused my trust to satisfy his own motivations.
While I can understand that we aren’t on the same side, I would have thought—I do think—we are so much more than our divided beliefs on the royal family.
And then, so softly that I almost miss the words, he says, “I was eight when I learned my lesson.” Something in his tone prompts a shiver down my spine, and instead of stepping away, I move closer. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, for him, with no hopes of recovery, it seems. “The king made sure of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” He turns, only slightly, but it’s enough to reveal the contours of his profile. The dark, heavy brows. The crooked, broken nose. The misshapen, scarred mouth. Vicious. Beautiful. And, until only hours ago, mine. “Your hatred for John started later but mine, it was born in terror.” His lids flutter shut, like he’s frozen in time, seeing whatever it is that devastated him. His powerful frame shudders. “I used to beg my father to let me attend to the king with him. Holyrood was in our blood. Has been since our ancestor saved a prince back in the nineteenth century. From birth, I knew that my life’s mission was to protect the royal family.”
Holyrood . . . the name is unfamiliar, but my gut tells me that it’s the government organization. The secret, spy one that Josie first guessed in teasing before he himself confirmed it.
With me locked inside this cell.
I force the bitterness down before it chokes me to death.
“And my father,” he continues on a rasp, “he was never the sort to tell anyone no. Princess Evangeline was dead, and the king’s sanity balanced on a tightrope made of steel knives. But still I begged and still Pa brought me.” His lids flick open and he twists his head to pin those eerie green-yellow eyes on me. “They argued from the start. Angry words that made me wish I were anywhere else but in that room. I said nothing, barely breathed. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d made all the noise in the world because John, he—Christ.”
