by Maria Luis
“What the hell am I supposed to do until then?”
I look back at her, at those unseeing violet eyes that are locked on a spot two paces away. And then, grabbing hold of the vengeance in my heart, I utter only one word:
“Pray.”
10
Rowena
I don’t pray.
But when the door cracks open early the next morning, and that maddeningly arrogant stride enters the room Dr. Matthews left me in, late last night, I wish that I took his advice to drop to my knees and get on with it.
Another round with Godwin will end in murder—whose is still up for debate.
Ignoring his heavy footfalls, I stand vigilantly by the glass-paned window, my fingers resting on the sill. One deep breath in, for fortitude, and then I expel the wretched truth: “When I was a girl, my father left me to die.”
Godwin pauses.
There’s no change in his breathing and not a single word falls from his lips, but he stops in his tracks—I know it deep in my soul.
Just like I know that I’ve captured his attention.
“We had a summer house in Golspie, this tiny village in the Highlands where nothing ever happens. But somehow . . . somehow Golspie felt more like home than London ever did. Or does, even now.” I graze my forefinger over the textured wood of the windowsill. “Margaret and I met when we were eight. My father introduced us. Brought me right over to Dunrobin Castle, just a mile up the road, and told me that Mags needed a friend.” I pause, curling my fingers into a loose fist before pressing them flat once more. Over my shoulder, I ask, “Did you know that when she was first sent to Scotland, they tried to pass her off as the Duke of Sutherland’s niece?”
Silence fills the room, and then his voice comes, deep and raspy: “I didn’t.”
A small, bitter laugh pushes its way past my lips. “She blurted out the truth less than twenty-four hours later. Queen or not, Margaret is a good person. Honest to a fault. Unwaveringly loyal. And, even then, when she was just a princess hidden away in the Highlands, she knew that I needed her friendship more than she ever needed mine.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re the hero, aren’t you?”
This time, there’s no mistaking the aggravated sound that rumbles deep in his chest.
Victory thrums in my veins.
All night I planned for this moment. Strategized until I could barely keep my unseeing eyes open and I crashed, face down, on the soft bed I found tucked against one wall. As much as I want to battle Godwin with rancor and wit, those tactics won’t work. The man fights strength with brutality and hate with malice. But yesterday, when I’d been unable to keep my walls upright, he’d softened. For a heartbeat. Maybe even less than that.
It was enough.
Enough for me to see that to attack, I have to break.
“Because,” I continue, turning away from the window, “you clearly think that I’m here to stab Margaret in the back. If proving you wrong means opening Pandora’s box, then I’ll do it.” Against my better judgment, I step forward. One foot. One risk. A shudder of relief rolls down my spine when my leg doesn’t buckle. “I was thirteen when our cottage caught fire. Faulty electrical wiring, we were told—but faulty wires don’t erase the memory of a bedroom door being bolted shut or my mum’s screams from down the hall or the fear that gripped me when I ran to the window and saw my father on the front lawn.”
I wish I could look Godwin dead in the eye and read his expression.
But I see nothing at all.
I watch, and I listen.
These days, watching has taken on an entirely new meaning.
“He saved his own arse,” I say without inflection, careful to quash all emotion from my voice. Because while I’m willing to peel back my layers to win my way out of the Palace, I won’t reveal it all. Not to a man more likely to laugh in my face than cradle me close and share my pain. “If it weren’t for Margaret climbing the tree outside my room, and smashing the window with a rock, I wouldn’t be alive today.”
Godwin draws in a deep breath, and even though I shouldn’t, I can’t help but visualize that inhalation expanding his broad chest. I felt him yesterday, when he dangled me from his grasp. Big, rough hands. Muscular legs that didn’t so much as budge when I kicked him. A body strong enough to lift a grown woman right off the ground without breaking a sweat. I might not be tall, but curves . . . Well, those I have in spades. A fact that didn’t seem to trouble Godwin one bit while he was playing caveman.
“Obviously, my father and I have a . . . complicated history. And I’ll be the first to say that loving someone like him isn’t”—possible—“easy. But even with all that, I don’t think he’s behind the attack on Buckingham Palace.”
“He’s putting it to Parliament that the queen is mentally unfit to rule.”
I jerk back. “What?”
Those footsteps start again, slow and methodical, drifting closer and closer until I feel him at my side. “And he plans to do it soon, I’m sure,” Godwin says as our arms brush. A single touch and I feel singed, down to my core. “Clarke told the queen, who told us.”
Swallowing roughly, I shake my head. “Are you sure? There’s no way he would—”
“Your father is not a good man . . . but you already know that.”
For once, there’s no disdain in his tone. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel his words like a blow to the stomach. I’ve never been naïve to my father’s motives—no, it was so much worse than that.
I was always so blasted hopeful.
Hopeful that if I did what he wanted I’d earn his love. And, if not his love, then at least his approval. Neither ever came. Not during those emotionally tense years following the fire and Mum’s death; not in all the time that I spent as his “partner-in-crime” while he worked London’s political circuit; not even two months ago, at the Jewel Tower, when he’d spotted me, hidden within the shadows, and turned away like I meant nothing to him.
Nearly ten years without any contact and it was like I didn’t even exist.
I might not want to believe that Father would so underhandedly unseat Margaret from what’s rightfully hers, but . . . I can see it. If it means returning power to him as Prime Minister, and power to the rest of the politicians who take their seat in Westminster every day, Edward Carrigan will be ruthless.
The same can’t be said for him trying to kill her in the fire.
“Explosions aren’t his style,” I say.
“Then tell me what is.”
Tipping my head back at the gruff command, I concentrate on the hard pitch of Godwin’s voice and turn in his direction. “Blackmail. Political sabotage.” I touch my tongue to my bottom lip. Muster up the strength to give him this last sliver of truth. “Spies to weed out his enemies.”
Before I can move, Godwin’s wrapped a hand around my upper arm, away from the bandages. Fiercely he twists me around, growling, “Who?” His breath is hot across my temple and his proximity so close that goose bumps flare across my blistered skin. “Who the hell does he have working for him?”
“Did, past tense.” I wonder if the smile I offer looks as ruined, as shattered, as it feels stretching across my face. “And you’re looking at her.”
The hand on my arm tightens imperceptibly. “I told you what would happen if you lie to me.”
I shake him off with a sharp bite of my nails down the back of his hand, and his hiss of pain . . . It washes over me like music to my ears. I hold onto the sound, the only reminder I’m likely to get that I can still inflict damage. Knives and guns have never been my choice on the battlefield. My body is a weapon; my mind the only tool I’ve ever needed for destruction.
“Men are easy to break, Godwin.”
He doesn’t utter a single word, but I’m close . . . Close enough to drag one finger down his hard-as-steel frame. “Should I tell you all the ways I can cut a man down at the knees?” I ask softly, tilting my head.
&nbs
p; In the ensuing silence, I imagine what my eyes don’t reveal—his gaze greedy on mine and his Adam’s apple bobbing with nervous anticipation. I paint an unmistakable flush on soft cheekbones and crowded teeth appearing behind a thin-lipped smirk while he debates his next move.
I picture him, for better or worse, like all the targets that I’ve ever hunted for the sake of politics and the future of England and Father’s unrelenting ambition. It’s easier than acknowledging the truth—and the truth is that Godwin could ruin me. Permanently.
But only if I let him.
“I think I will,” I say, answering my own question. I drift sightless eyes over the massive body poised just centimeters away, awareness zipping down my spine. “It always starts the same, you know. A shared glance from across the room. A small smile that hints at more to come. A game that I’ve already won before I’ve even given my name.”
Pressing a hand to his chest, I feel the coiled muscles jump to life beneath my palm. No matter the fact that he stands as still as stone, unmistakable heat and power radiate from beneath the confines of his thin cotton shirt. He’s a predator. Death encased within flesh and bone. Each pulse of muscle a visceral reminder that unlike the wiry-framed politicians of my past, Godwin is the devil molded into the body of a god.
A god who remains perfectly inscrutable while my fingers chart the undiscovered territory of his broad chest.
Feeling unsteady, I force a light, airy chuckle past my lips. He’s just like all the others. I repeat the words in my head like a mantra, over and over again. A man, not a god—and certainly not the devil. Godwin is no different than the men whose secrets I stole right before I slipped from their beds.
Liar.
In all those years, and in all the years since, I’ve never felt the lick of nerves chasing my heels like I do now.
Each graze of my palm reveals a storied tale of strength and dominance. Every sweep of my fingers tells me all I need to know: if Godwin ever did possess softness, it was destroyed long ago.
This is not a man who will melt for me.
But I’m in too deep to turn tail and run, and so I continue doggedly, “It’s a brush of fingers when no one is looking and a whisper in his ear when he wavers to do the right thing. But the wrong thing . . . the devil on his shoulder, the angel dead on the floor, defeated, that’s where the true wreckage happens.”
Determined to shatter his resolve, I curl my fingers around his muscled forearm and tug him down, down, down. He complies—just like a man—and I press my lips to his skin. Unlike the marbled gods housed at the British Museum, though, Godwin’s jaw is dusted with stubble. Masculine. Untamed. My grip on him tightens, a knee jerk reaction that I can’t hide, even as I drag my mouth over his cheek to find the shell of his ear.
I linger.
I bide my time.
And then I graze my teeth over his lobe, and breathe, “Every hero has a weakness . . . even you.”
I should have known better than to taunt the beast.
In the span of a second, my wrists are clamped behind my back and my feet stumble backward and then I’m turned around so abruptly that my cheek kisses chilled glass in the same moment that Godwin’s massive body traps me against the window.
A harsh breath shudders over my lips.
His hold on my wrists goes ironclad tight. “Your tricks might work on every bloody member of Parliament,” he growls in my ear, “but they won’t on me.”
I don’t stop to think twice.
I shove my arse backward, right into his groin, and feel him. Long and thick and straining against his trousers. My heart pounds recklessly in my chest, its twin echo shattering all train of thought. Ears ringing, I flash him a triumphant look.
“Your cock would argue otherwise.”
The sound that escapes him is nothing short of a snarl. It’s vicious and angry, and bloody hell, my breath catches when I feel his free hand clamp down on my hip.
He doesn’t shove me away.
No, he drags me into the hard cradle of his body, so that there’s no mistaking the solid length of him against the base of my spine. The position flattens my cheek against the windowpane, and oh God. Behind my ribcage, my heart takes on an entirely new rhythm that screams flee! Run! Save yourself!
I don’t have the chance.
Not when his velvet voice wraps like a noose around my neck, squeezing all the air from my lungs: “Don’t play games that you’re not willing to lose.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m not a man you can wind around your little finger, and I’m not your father, using his daughter to do his dirty work.” He presses even closer, his chest plastered against my back. “When I come for you, you’ll never know. I break the weak and I wreck the strong, and when I fuck a woman, it’s not because her father told her to spread her legs for me.”
Embarrassment and self-loathing flood my body, heating my face and wrenching my heart in two. It’s too close to the truth. Too dirty and raw and—
“Let me go,” I whisper, struggling in his arms, despite the fact that his hand remains a shackle around my wrists. “Let me go.”
“There are no heroes here. Remember that.”
I stomp on his booted foot, but the bastard doesn’t even grunt out in pain. “I said, let me go, Godwin.”
“Damien.”
A startled noise emerges from deep within my throat. “What?”
“My name is Damien Godwin,” he says in a tone as merciless as the waves that strike the white-chalked walls of the White Cliffs of Dover, “but you’ll know me as Damien Priest.”
I freeze.
Go absolutely still.
He chuckles, the sound so low and wrathful that terror sparks in my blood. And then he strokes my hip with his thumb, like he has all the time in the world to make me wish that I were already dead, even as he dips his head forward and whispers in my ear: “No one escapes the Mad Priest, Rowena . . . least of all you.”
11
Damien
Freedom tastes like desolation.
With my back plastered against the shadowed walls of the Parliamentary Offices, and my eyes locked on Westminster’s Victoria Tower, across Abingdon Street, there’s no hiding the fact that seven months has forever altered London’s landscape.
I may have lost my humanity, but this city has been stripped of something far worse.
The streets are empty, the people gone. Sirens wail somewhere off in the distance, the sound so bone-chilling against the utter stillness that it feels like I’ve stepped into a post-apocalyptic world.
This is not my home.
This is not my London.
But somehow, someway, it’s come to this.
Dropping one knee to the wet grass, I peer around the corner wall of the Offices. Illuminated by only streaks of moonlight escaping a thick sweep of clouds, the Jewel Tower stands like an ancient fortress, its stone walls artfully crumbled but still holding strong after seven centuries.
Two guards congregate near the front door, identical SA80s slung across chests dressed in combat body armor.
“Bloody taxes, my ass,” I mutter under my breath.
The only reason Carrigan would assign security to the Jewel Tower, of all places, would be if he has something inside worth protecting. Which means that Rowena lied to me . . . again.
Gritting my teeth against the memory of imploring violet eyes, I press deeper into the shadows and prop my forearm on my bent knee. The movement activates my wristwatch, its blank face glowing red. I tap the tiny map in the righthand corner and wait for it to calibrate my coordinates.
Idiot.
I shouldn’t have given her my name.
Shouldn’t have allowed her to poke and prod and stroke my temper to life, until I was spitting fire and harder than I’ve ever been and prepared to do just about anything to wipe the smirk from her face.
Facts keep me steady; data is my only book of prayer. And yet, with her finger grazing my chest and her breathing so blas
ted steady that she could have been touching a piece of wood, instead of a living, breathing male, I lost control.
For the first time in my life, I lost control.
Fucking hell.
Another sharp glance at the Tower reveals that the two guards haven’t moved.
A humorless smile tilts my mouth. Seven months of house arrest may have wrought more damage on my psyche than I even know, but in this, no amount of space and time can ruin what I do best.
Spying The Cloisters on the interactive map, which sit on the backend of the Jewel Tower, I press down on the screen until a drop-down menu appears. Gunfire. Tear gas. Grenade. It’s an auditory buffet of my own design, ruthless and creative and prone to instigating all-out destruction.
Every hero has a weakness . . . even you.
“Fuck,” I grunt, wishing I could eviscerate the memory of her husky voice right before I realized she was working me over like a professional.
If I’d been anyone else, I would have taken her right then and there. Blind, ruined, and all. Joggers tugged down and forgotten around her ankles; knickers shoved to the side with a crook of my finger; bent over, face down, my cock a hard reminder that love and hate are mirrored versions of the same indefinable emotion.
She’d love each thrust just as surely as she despised the man fucking her.
Rowena has it wrong: I’m not the hero here, and I have only one weakness that could bring me to my knees. And it’s not a woman with rebellion in her eyes or a penchant for—
I select gunfire.
A second passes, and then human-made pandemonium arrives.
The air explodes with the sound of rounds unloading. Volatile. Insistent. One after another, sounding so damn realistic that if I didn’t know any better—if I weren’t the bastard who designed the watch—I’d be hard-pressed to believe that it isn’t real.
As it is, I observe from the shadows as the two guards shove at each other. Helmets conceal their expressions, but I don’t need to see their faces to know the havoc I’ve unleashed.
