by Maria Luis
“Rowan, stop—”
“They killed Frederick and Russ and Victor and Gregg. Nineteen. Gregg was nineteen. Do you know he’d never even left England? Not that he could with our borders being closed. But still. He wanted peace and he wanted hope and he bloody well wanted to get pissed in Amsterdam, but instead he . . . instead he—”
Tears threaten and I stiffen my jaw, hoping to eradicate the sorrow before it swells and consumes me whole. What happened that day at The Octagon wasn’t murder—it was slaughter. Like a pack of animals deemed utterly useless. Strangled. Shot. Diced and sliced. No matter what Damien says about Holyrood protecting the Crown, I know the truth.
Misguided monsters make the most horrific heroes.
“I’ll rest when we’ve got the queen.” And only then.
“You’ve a strained rib.”
“Trust me,” I mutter, my lips twisting, “I can tell.”
Silently, Sara wraps the clean bandage around my stomach to bring together over my spine. Huffing under her breath, she says, louder, “You’re covered in blisters. Don’t listen to me, if you don’t want to, but at least listen to your own body.”
Rest. Recuperation. Rebirth.
I’ll do it all when I’ve fulfilled my oath to the king.
“I haven’t any on my legs,” I tell her, thinking of how I sat in my room four nights ago, after the Holyrood agent left me at my Hurlingham flat, and ran my hands over my body to feel the extent of the damage done by the fire. “My forearms and stomach got the worst of it from when I was caught under the beam.” And my hair, and the upper half of forehead, but there’s no point in acknowledging the obvious.
After adhering the bandage to my back, Sara steps away. “They’ll all leave scars—”
“And show I’ve lived. That I live still, and sometimes that’s all we have going for us. We’re alive, we’re breathing. My heart beats. So many others can’t say the same.” I take an experimental step away from the table and peer out into oblivion, tugging my shirt back into place. When the material doesn’t graze the cuts for the first time in twenty-four hours, since I tried to re-bandage myself, I nearly sob with relief. Smothering any trace of weakness from my voice, I say, “The lads will be back from Sevenoaks soon, and we need to be ready for the worst.”
“They can handle themselves.”
“We said the same thing just weeks ago and we both know how that turned out.”
“Nothing can be worse than The Octagon,” Sara utters quietly, and I know that she’s thinking of her father. Dead from a bullet to the heart. It’d be poetic, if it weren’t completely devastating.
Wishing I could burn that day from my memory, all I offer is the gritty truth: “It can definitely get worse.”
With the Priests at the helm, there’s no telling what other destruction might unfold.
As if the universe hopes to prove Sara right, I hear the telltale sound of car doors slamming shut, followed by a distinct release of breath from the other side of the room. Sara paces toward the corridor, her shoes clipping eagerly against the wood floor, before stopping in place. “Do you want me to wait with you?” Her voice is clear, like she’s turned to look back at me. “Because I will.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Just send them here.”
“Will do.” She manages two steps before I call her name. “Did you need something else?” she asks.
I think of the man locked away in the windowless attic of the house. Benjamin Lotts, he’d confessed, after feeling the wrath of Gregory’s hulking fist. I wonder how long it’ll take the Priests to realize that we’ve commandeered one of their precious agents. “Take care of our own, first, but then check on our guest.”
A small pause precedes her half-hearted, “And if he spits on me again?”
A cynical grin curves my mouth. “Then spit on him back.”
Sara makes a choking sound—muffled laughter to cover her surprise, I hope—and then she’s heading down the hallway and leaving me to stand alone in the drawing room.
I’ve wandered the mansion so many times over the years that it’s impossible to forget every detail. Wooden beams line the ceiling and moonlight seeps in through Gothic-styled windows. A portrait of the property’s original patroness, a wealthy Victorian baroness, sits poised over the marble fireplace in a gilded frame. Bracketed on either side are ivory sconces lit with flickering gas flames. Beneath my feet, a soft Aubusson rug covers the center of the room, where an antique chaise waits, tempting me to sit and rest my aching body.
Resting seems impossible when coming face to face with the unknown.
I swallow, tightly, and reach up to slip a strand of hair behind my ear—only to remember that the nervous gesture can’t be satiated anymore.
Bald. Broken. Blind.
A costume I never anticipated wearing, but the most permanent one of all.
Just because you can’t see, doesn’t mean you don’t already know too much.
The words infiltrate my head, and bloody hell. I can’t think of him—can’t afford to think of him—not ever again. And especially not like this, as I stand here and wait for news that the attack on the Palace went according to plan. Because if did go well, then Damien Priest will hate me with every breath he—
“Rowan?”
At the sound of Hugh’s voice, I launch forward. “Where is she?”
Bodies gather into the drawing room—their heavy feet sounding like a herd of elephants stampeding forward—and I strain my ears, listening for any sign of Margaret amongst them. A whisper of her voice. A lighter stride. But when the blokes all settle down, as if everyone has claimed a spot before me, something that feels an awful lot like dread clogs my throat as I realize that Hugh . . .
Hugh hasn’t answered.
“Coney.” Another step forward. I look from left to right, seeing nothing. “Coney, where is the queen?”
Someone clears their throat.
A shoe scuffs along the floor.
And then, from the back-right corner, nearest to the windows overlooking the front drive, “We ’asn’t got her, Rowan.”
“You haven’t . . .” I blink, just once. The dread twists and turns, surging forth like a fountain of rage that I feel all the way down to my toes. Turning from Gregory, I sweep a furious “glance” over the room. “Hugh, where the bloody hell are you?”
No one comments on the obvious.
I should be happy—grateful, even—that there aren’t any snide remarks that I’m somehow less than who I was a week ago, when Buckingham Palace caught fire and I was caught inside its walls. But all I feel is fury that Hugh hides like a coward, knowing that I can’t see him worth a damn.
Bastard.
“Three seconds.” The words escape past the rage, whisper-soft and just as deadly. “You have three seconds to step forward or—”
Samuel coughs awkwardly, and then someone stumbles, their feet audibly tripping over the rug like they’ve been unceremoniously shoved forward.
“Rowan.”
Hugh.
My chest tightens with unreleased air. “Where is she?”
“We’ve good news,” he says, “and some bad—”
“You’re going to tell me where Queen Margaret is, right now, or I’ll—”
“They’ve got her, okay? They’ve still got her.”
If this were the theater, it’d be an appropriate time for an actor to drop a pin, just to send the audience into a fit of hysterics. But this isn’t a play, and this isn’t some fairytale with a happily ever after. We’re at war, and if the Priests still have Margaret then . . .
Fuck me, I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Stumbling backward, I spin away from all the heavy stares that feel like knives jabbing into my spine. They watch, and they wait, as if expecting me to fly off the handle and lose my temper. Or, worse, cry.
But Rowan Carrigan doesn’t lose her temper and she certainly doesn’t cry.
Not this version of myself,
at least, the woman who King John chose, the woman that the entire organization looks to for guidance in leading the cause. No, the woman I am today bottles up every trace of emotion until even the slightest dent in my armor reveals only another impenetrable wall. My nakedness—both the emotional and physical—is shown to no one.
Even so, my lips feel numb when I scrape together every last trace of composure and utter a single word: “How.”
“We . . . We checked every room,” Hugh says, a quiver evident in his voice. “All those we could find on our own and every one that was on that blueprint you had us find. She wasn’t there, Rowan, not even a trace of her.”
“Like she was a ghost,” Gregory adds.
Worst case scenarios pummel me from all angles, everything from death to torture. Was that the real reason why Damien wouldn’t let me see her? Because she hadn’t come out of surgery at all, as Dr. Matthews claimed, but because she’s dead?
Nausea curdles in my stomach.
My shoulders press backward; chin lifts another degree. Anything to pretend that my heart isn’t racing with fear. “We’ll go back,” I tell them, already mentally sifting through possible plans. “We’ll have to go back. But we’ll need to be stealthy. They’ll be expecting us.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
My head jerks in Gregory’s direction. “What are you saying?”
“We took care of them, didn’t we, mates?”
A litany of “yeses” infuses the room, a few shouted, others more subdued.
“Gregory,” I whisper, clutching the base of my throat, “what did you do?”
“I pushed ’im.”
The pure, unadulterated satisfaction in that one sentence is enough to weaken my knees. “Who? Who did you push?”
“The Mad Priest.”
Blood roars in my ears. “No. No, Gregory, I said to—”
“Bring ’im to you,” comes the surly reply, “but Rowan, ’e was up on the roof and shootin’ us, and I followed ’im up, yeah? And I was thinkin’ of Coney—not you, Coney, the other one—and I couldn’t just let ’im go.”
“You . . . you pushed Damien Priest”—I lick my lips—“off a roof.”
It’s not a question, and, at this point, further confirmation is pretty much unnecessary. But Gregory seems only too pleased to add, “Right over the edge, Rowan. ’e never stood a chance.”
I should be jumping for joy. Or, at the very least, pouring us all a drink to celebrate one Priest down and only two more brothers left to go. But instead . . .
Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.
The heel of my palm flies to my mouth, like that’ll be enough to keep the vomit down. People aren’t shoved off roofs, not in real life. Suspense novels, sure. Action films, absolutely. But in real life . . .
Fuck. Me.
Damien Priest—dead.
I’d planned to interrogate him. I’d planned to force his big body into a chair, his wrists tied behind his back, and take every one of his secrets, the way he’d done to me. I wanted him humbled, I wanted him vulnerable. Nowhere in my plans—in the assignments that I gave out before Gregory and the others left Holly Village for the Palace—was there an order to kill him.
Monsters hide in us all, Damien told me.
Right now, in this moment, I feel like the vilest monster alive.
“Rowan.” At Hugh’s smooth baritone, I turn toward him stiffly. “I know you wanted Priest for questioning,” he goes on, unfazed, “and obviously that didn’t work out like we planned—”
“’e ‘ad to die,” Gregory interjects, completely unrepentant.
“What I’m trying to say is,” Hugh mutters, raising his voice to be heard over Gregory, “we brought you someone else.”
Did Damien struggle the way Ian had during those last few minutes of life? Hell, did Gregory at least have the decency to kill him before pushing him from the roof? Or did his body hit the—
“Rowan. Rowan, are you listening to me?”
“You can’t take credit for Benjamin Lotts.” Somehow, I manage to sound completely at ease with the conversation, like we’re discussing the weather or football and not the death of our enemy. Oh, the lies we keep. Running my tongue over the back of my teeth, I force my hand from my neck to hang listlessly at my side. “Gregory nabbed him when he was getting me out of the flat this morning.”
“The Holyrood agent? No. No, I’m talking about—Samuel, be a good man and”—a heavy thud hits the floor—"there. See? We’ve brought you someone you can interrogate, if you want. Find out where the queen might be now.”
Except that I see nothing, a fact that makes itself abundantly clear when Hugh mutters something under his breath, prompting a groan from the “someone” on the floor. “Give her your name,” he commands tightly.
The statement is punctuated with the smack of a hand on flesh.
And then a masculine voice bites off, “Where the bloody hell am I?” and I swear to God, I whimper right then and there.
Of all the people in the world, they’ve brought me the one I could have gone without seeing for the rest of my life.
Alfie fucking Barker.
17
Rowena
It takes three hours to rehash every moment from arrival at the Palace to departure, including pausing everything to grieve the death of one of our own: Micah Jenkins, a thirty-two-year-old from Exeter who lost his mum to a riot two years ago.
After making my way downstairs, alone, I light a candle for Micah in the mansion’s private chapel, not because he struck me as particularly religious, or because I am, but simply because it feels . . . right.
The pew is hard under my arse, the wax from the candle tacky on my fingers. Guilt pecks at my heart, like a vulture scavenging for scraps from the already ravaged, and I bend my head, elbows landing hard on my knees, and whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
For dragging him into this war, when he was only ever an onlooker. For sending him to the Palace tonight, even though he eagerly volunteered. For believing—for even one, measly second—that we might come out of tonight unscathed.
I was foolish to underestimate the Priests.
And yet, in the somber silence of the chapel, I find myself sliding off the bench and moving back toward the altar, a path I’ve tread hundreds of times over the years. My elbow knocks against something as I fumble for a new candle, then set about finding the matches. Fingers spread wide, my palm skids across the marble. Stay patient. Stay calm. Victory sings in my veins as I close my hand over the cardboard carton. The head hisses to life when I strike it against the matchbox.
Heat from the tiny flame warms my fingers.
It takes me three tries to align the lit match with the wick of the votive candle and, even though I really, really shouldn’t, I find myself imagining blue eyes the color of the teal sea in Cornwall. Soft lips under my fingertips juxtaposed by the arrogance of rugged features. A voice like velvet and a touch like steel.
Had he realized that I didn’t ask to see his face for anyone’s benefit but my own?
He had me at his disposal for days, my hope a beating thing that he could either save or crush within his fist; my life his for the taking, if and when he wanted to take it. And all I wanted was to understand how a man can make me hate the very ground he walks on while still sparking heat between my legs. Heat that I’ve never felt for anyone—not a man, not a woman, not a single person, ever.
I wanted Damien Priest to break for me.
The hot wax drips onto my thumb, and the heat enflames, and finally I lean forward, patting around for the wrought-iron candle rack. There you are. Looping a finger around its heavy base, I pull it toward me and place Damien’s candle next to the one that I lit for Micah. Since there aren’t appropriate words for a man like Damien, I bow my head and offer a parting farewell that I know he’d appreciate:
“May the keys to Hell always be within your reach.”
Then, with agonizing slowness, I make my way through the
chapel toward the old servant’s staircase. My palms drift over the curved stairwell, my feet climbing, one step after another, until I come to the landing. Turning right, I head down the corridor, counting the doors as I pass with a tap of my fingers, so that I won’t accidentally miss my own.
One.
Two.
Three.
When I reach the fourth, I turn the knob and step inside my bedroom. It’s habit that has me reaching out to flick on the light, and a desperate need to strip out of my own skin that has me peeling off my shirt and tossing it to the ground.
No guilt.
No remorse.
I said yes to this life, said yes to the king. Given the opportunity, I’d say yes all over again—which doesn’t explain why I stop in front of the wardrobe, situated in the corner of the room, and stare blankly at the glass mirror. Fifteen years ago, I gave my virginity to a man twice my age. A man who posed a threat to the up-and-coming Edward Carrigan, who’d already set his cap on becoming Prime Minister.
Just kiss him, Father told me, his desk a massive crater that separated us on every fundamental level. See what he might tell you.
Alexander Harlton told me to undress.
And then he spilled his secrets into the slope of my neck while he came.
I sold a small piece of my soul that night. Sold even more of it over the next five years, whenever Father pointed his chin in the direction of his next political conquest, until I was nothing more than a mosaic of shattered fragments, held together by glue and grit and not much else.
Ten years ago, I vowed to never feel that way again.
Tonight, I do.
Self-destruction tastes bitter on my tongue, and I feel its skeletal arms wind around my waist like a long-lost lover, one I’d hoped to never see again. Only this time, I didn’t sell my body to get the job done but what’s left of my conscience.
