by Maria Luis
Fact is, the queen kept this friendship a secret for a reason. If she were her father—ruthless, cunning, albeit a bloody tyrant—I’d say that Queen Margaret concocted a plan to take out her opponent’s daughter without ever lifting a finger to do the dirty work herself.
But while she may soon be wishing that she were dead, Rowena Carrigan is still wholly alive. Shattered, maybe. Broken, absolutely. And definitely breathing fire when she snaps, “I may not be able to see you, Godwin, but I know exactly what kind of man you are.”
“Enlighten me.” Beneath my palm, her hand flexes, her fingernails turning into claws once again. “What kind of man is that?”
She barely takes a breath before she strikes: “A snake.”
The Mad Priest is a snake.
Damien Priest is a snake.
I’m . . . I’m—
Flattening her hand against the table and dragging her close, familiar fury clamping tight around my lungs. “Pretty words for a woman who won’t admit that her father would gladly slit her queen’s throat.”
“A snake,” she reiterates swiftly, spitting out the words like she hopes they’ll draw blood, “who doesn’t like to be left in the dark.”
“It’s my job to know a person’s move before they even think to make it.”
“And did you know that Clarke planned to fuck Margaret before he ever dropped his trousers?”
The word fuck coming from that mouth of hers should be illegal.
The Rowena Carrigan I remember from researching her father, back before he was elected Prime Minister, was a woman prone to obnoxious giggling and endless bouts of stroking a man’s ego. This Rowena, however, seems more likely to tear off a man’s cock with her teeth—then smile, those same teeth bloodied from her spoils.
She’s a goddamn she-wolf.
“It’s currency, you know,” she says, pulling again on her hand.
Like before, I don’t relinquish my grip.
And, like before, I don’t rise to her obvious taunt. Maybe she was right to call me a snake. I bait people to my side, then take them out before they can even consider escape. The weapons I’ve designed, the technology I’ve created, the lives I’ve ended with absolutely no remorse—all done in the name of Holyrood and the queen and the king who came before her, despite the fact that John tore my family apart.
But Guthram and Carrigan . . . I want them dead for me.
It’s for that reason alone that I’m willing to bide my time, to play the game most likely to satisfy my end goal. And that game is entertaining the prime minister’s daughter, no matter the fact that I’d enjoy nothing more than to finish what the fire started and drop her dead body on Edward Carrigan’s front steps.
Sweet, fucking temptation.
I tilt my head to the side, faking curiosity. “What currency?”
“The space between a woman’s legs.”
Lip curling, I drag my gaze down over her ruined body. “Is that so?”
“It is.” That stubborn chin of hers goes up a notch. “And I learned a long time ago how to become very wealthy while opening my legs to no one.”
“Is that a warning?”
“It’s a reminder,” she replies, a razored edge to her voice, “that I know your games because I’ve bested them before. So, whatever you think that you’re planning with this interrogation, I suggest going back to the drawing board. I’m not easily swayed.”
If she expects applause for that little performance, she’s come to the wrong audience.
I don’t clap my hands and I don’t offer praise.
Instead, I move—my fingers to her shoulder, still bare from the post-op with Matthews, and my other hand to the tweezers left abandoned on the rolling station set up next to the exam table.
The rise and fall of her shoulders freeze. “What are you doing?”
“Following the good doctor’s orders,” I return softly, lethally, “and removing the rest of the glass from your back.”
“No—”
The glittering shard disappears between the tweezers’ twin metal teeth, and I pull it free from her bruised flesh.
A sob bursts from her lips.
I lower my head, my mouth finding her ear, and utter a warning that’ll stay with her long after I’ve left this room: “This snake leaves his mark, Miss Carrigan, and trust me when I say—my bite is always fatal.”
5
Damien
“Clarke fucked her.”
It’s the only thing out of my mouth when Guy finally strides into the library at half past six, his face covered in soot, one sleeve burnt to shit and hanging from his elbow.
I expected shock. I expected his infamous temper to splinter the hard-fought control he wears like a second skin. I expected too fucking much, apparently, because Guy stops only long enough to tear the frayed material from his arm and throw it on the floor. Without sparing me a glance, he unholsters the gun from his waistband and sets it down on the closest side table, a seventeenth-century piece with ruby-encrusted edges that looks delicate enough to snap in half.
My eyes narrow on his lean frame. “You’re not surprised.”
“No,” he answers, easing his weight forward as he plants his hands on the table, “I’m not.”
Age-old frustration eases into my blood, a low, simmering fury that’s stayed with me longer than any dream, any woman, any tangible scrap of hope. I unwind from the armchair and come to my feet. “You knew.”
The admission is there, written all over the harsh grooves of his face and embedded in the rigid set to his shoulders. He knew Clarke and the queen were together, and he never uttered a bloody word. Not to me, not to Saxon either. If he had, I’d know.
“How long.”
Fisting a hand on the table, he blows out a heavy breath. “Damien, it’s not—”
“How. Long.”
A muscle flickers in his jaw. “I put Clarke with her for a reason. Is that what you want to hear?”
“You assigned him to her over a year ago.” Disbelief creeps in on the heels of frustration. When my brother resolutely keeps his silence, I . . . “Fucking hell.”
Swinging his head in my direction, Guy pins me with a glare meant to intimidate. Twenty years ago, that pointed stare might have been enough to shut me up. Hell, it probably would’ve been enough to have me retreating to the computer he stole from a Parisian university. Numbers were my safety zone, code my haven. And with almost seven years separating us, Guy became more of a father figure to me than Henry Godwin ever was.
Guy gave an order, and I did it to perfection.
He barked at me to get in line, and I crept back with my tail limp and dragging behind me.
But I won’t bend to his will, not on this.
Like every other member of the royal family to come before her, Queen Margaret is off-limits. Forbidden. Instead of thinking with his prick, Clarke should have considered the ramifications for all of us if things went south and the queen kicked him to the curb. One angry snap of her fingers and it would all be over—the oath, what four generations of Godwins have sold their souls to see live for yet another day. No fuck is worth risking the survival of Holyrood. No fuck is worth risking the people of Holyrood.
The simmering heat in my blood flares and, having closed the distance to my brother, I drop my hands to the table and shove my face close to his. “You knew he was fucking her,” I growl, my voice so low that it emerges as a thunderous rumble, “and you never stopped him?”
“I planned for it.”
“Planned for what?”
“The queen’s predictability.” His blue eyes fix unerringly on my face. “She didn’t let me down.”
“Explain.”
“Blond. Boyish good looks.” The corner of my brother’s mouth hitches humorlessly. “Every man the queen has ever dated matches Clarke’s description. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to assume that she’d be attracted to him.”
“You put Holyrood at risk.” Disgust curdles in my stomach. �
�Jesus Christ, you put all of us at risk, and for what? Because you wanted to interfere with someone else’s life? Clarke’s life? The queen’s?”
“This is nothing like your—”
“We both know you’re not some matchmaker, which means that you sent Clarke because you wanted him to fuck her.”
“I told him to put a leash on her—however he saw fit.”
A leash.
Like the one he clipped to my proverbial collar the minute he demanded that I stay trapped within these walls.
Seven months.
Seven bloody months.
“She’s a liability,” Guy continues, pushing away from the table. I don’t miss the way he takes his pistol with him, re-holstering it in a single move as he heads for the sideboard—and the alcohol. “She was a liability as John’s heir and she’s even more of one now. We need her compliant.”
“No, you want her meek while you play puppeteer.”
Expression stony, my brother uncaps a bottle of Glenfiddich. “If we want her alive, then we need her to do what she’s told. Compliant. Meek. Whatever the hell you want to call it, it’s all the same.”
“She doesn’t want to die,” I snarl, “which means she’ll do whatever she’s told. No lying. No subterfuge. You shouldn’t have jumped straight to the mind games.”
“Those mind games gave us information we wouldn’t have had otherwise.” He pauses. “Clarke was our emissary.”
“And now your emissary is fucking dead.”
Instead of answering, Guy pours three fingers’ worth of whisky into two tumblers. One he downs immediately; the other he shoves to the side in a silent offer for me to drink with him.
I don’t move.
My thumbs dig into the antique wood, and the sharpened edges of the rubies pinch my calloused palms. I welcome the sting with an indrawn breath, and I more than welcome the burn of flesh ceding as my grip reflexively tightens.
Better to feel pain than to give in to the rage.
There’s no code I can rewrite to turn this night around. No amount of surgery I can do with my untrained hands to resurrect Clarke from his palatial grave.
He died in that fire, and for what?
On orders not from the Crown, but from my oldest brother. Because, as in all aspects of his life, Guy Godwin isn’t content until everyone in his path kneels in deference to his great, unparalleled wisdom.
Rightly assuming that I won’t be taking that shot of whisky, Guy wraps a hand around the second tumbler and tosses back the Glenfiddich in one pass. He hasn’t even swallowed before he’s reaching for the bottle to pour himself another pairing.
“Is the guilt already eating you alive? Or are you celebrating another life that you’ve managed to ruin while playing King of Holyrood?”
He pauses with the tumbler halfway to his mouth. “I did what was necessary.”
“Life is fragile, and you shat all over it.”
One second he’s holding the glass and, in the next, it’s shattering against the closest wall. He whirls around, his face a mask of the same fury that’s swirling in my gut. “There are casualties in war, brother. Pa was a casualty. Mum was a casualty. Clarke—”
“Mum was weak,” I grit. “If she was a casualty, then she has only herself to blame.”
Guy’s fingers grab the front of my shirt and maybe, if we weren’t the same height, he’d have better luck dragging me forward. As it is, he drives his face centimeters from mine and hisses, “You have no bloody idea what you’re talking about.”
But I do.
I remember everything—the whispers that she hurled my way whenever my brothers fled our tiny, pitiful flat. The anger she reserved for me alone when I begged for more food or turned our cheaply made furniture into toys—fortresses that I hid behind; tabled shelters from which I watched her wither away, each day with battered hope inside my chest that she would just die. The pain she wielded with her words in my ear and her palm across my face and her constant talk of “no mercy.”
The world would show me none, and it was best I learned early.
Her lesson.
Her prophecy.
My own fucking reality.
I circle Guy’s wrist with my fingers. Yank him away before I give in to the undiluted anger unfurling in my veins—that constant, humming mantra of no mercy that never, ever quiets—and purposely add two, then three, steps between us.
I don’t agree with Guy assigning Clarke to the queen with any motive beyond the obvious: keeping her safe. It’s counterproductive to play underhanded moves when you’re a team working toward a common goal.
And since Holyrood’s inception, our mission has remained unchanged.
Protect the Crown.
Die for the Crown.
Do not fuck the Crown.
Not for the first time do I wish Saxon were here instead of holed up in Oxford. He may be sleeping with the king killer, but there was no mistaking the fear in his voice when he rang earlier tonight. Fear for the worst—that the family he’s spent a lifetime protecting was gone for good. For now, I’ll let him stay in that house he thinks is a secret. For now, I’ll let him think that he can walk away from Holyrood.
No one walks away, least of all a Godwin.
He’s shoved that lesson down my throat so many times that I’ve choked on the words.
As if we’ve come to some unspoken truce, Guy scrubs a hand over his soot-covered jaw. “Where is she?”
She.
Otherwise known as the queen.
“She came out of surgery a few hours ago.”
“And?” Guy’s blue eyes, a shade identical to my own, shift from me to the Glenfiddich soaking the pale blue rug. “Is she breathing?”
“According to Matthews, she’s a miracle.”
He rakes his fingers through his dark hair, visibly tugging on the strands, before nodding once. “I’ll shower then head over to talk to her.”
I wait until he’s stepping out of the library. Then, “I’ll go with you.”
Guy’s stride grinds to a stop, and he looks back at me over his shoulder. “I think I can handle her on my own.”
“And I think I’ll go with you anyway.”
“What?” A rough, cynical bark breaks from his mouth. “I keep one secret and suddenly you can’t trust me?”
“Maybe I just think that those of us who are leashed should stick together.”
“You aren’t bloody leashed,” he bites off.
“Feel free to let Jude know that.”
As if his shoes are weighted with anvils, Guy turns all the way around. Slowly. With dread etched into his features. “What did you do?”
“Your confidence in me is really something else.”
“Damien, what did you do?”
“We had a discussion,” I offer, keeping the vibration of my tone noncommittal, “and we came to an agreement.” The memory of digging my boot into Jude’s back brings a small, satisfied smile to my lips. “The queen isn’t the only one who’s predictable, brother.”
Holding Guy’s gaze, I tuck my fingers into the front pockets of my trousers when we’re shoulder-to-shoulder. “One of these days,” I murmur, “your need to always have the upper hand will bite you in the ass.”
A vein in his forehead strums to life. “I’m keeping you safe.”
“No, brother, you’re killing me.”
“Damien—”
“I’ll wait for you outside the queen’s room.”
When I make a move to pass him, Guy locks a tight, unrelenting hand around my arm. “If you leave this estate, they’ll kill you. Guthram. Fucking Carrigan.” His gaze hardens to steel. “You can keep your name off the internet, and you can lie to Saxon all you want about what went down that night, but the facts don’t change—you’re a dead man walking.”
Probably.
But even if I am, I’m taking them both down with me.
And unlike both Guthram and Carrigan, I have a newfound ace up my sleeve. A woman stranded in enemy
territory, who’ll no doubt be desperate to save her own neck once she realizes that the queen intended for her to die.
Rowena Carrigan is my Trojan horse.
6
Rowena
“I need to see the queen.”
Behind me, Dr. Matthews huffs out an aggravated breath. “You’ve mentioned,” he mutters, smoothing the last of the ointment over my burns before stepping away, “and like I’ve already said, I don’t hold that sort of sway.”
Liar.
From what I’ve gathered, Nathaniel Matthews is the only doctor here at the “Palace,” which means he holds more power than he’s willing to admit.
With the astringent scent of the antimicrobial cream permeating the room, and my nose, I press my case: “You keep the lot of them alive. What more sway could you possibly need?”
“Around here? Being Godwin would be a good start.”
At his name, my heart hardens to stone.
Godwin may have left hours ago, but I can still feel his hot breath on the back of my neck and his unsympathetic fingers grazing my spine. Each tug of glass from my flesh sharpened my hatred while each demeaning insult hurled my way . . . Well, those made me ache. To return the favor tenfold; to treat him with the same callous ambivalence that he so easily bestowed upon me.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.
Clearly, Godwin has failed to master even the most rudimentary basics of humanity.
“He’s vile.”
A sink turns on nearby, the water flowing at a trickle. “He’s . . . troubled.”
“Troubled implies he’s redeemable, and I think it’s safe to say that Godwin is long past being saved.” My lips press flat. “Only a monster takes advantage of the indefensible.”
Dr. Matthews clears his throat. “He wasn’t—”
“And you’re defending him.”
“Hold on now, I’m not defending him.”
I keep my hands firmly planted on my thighs and my face turned forward—heedless of the fact that Matthews’ voice, and the rush of water from the faucet, comes from beyond my right shoulder. “Aren’t you?”
