by Maria Luis
After searching my gaze, he pulls back. “I didn’t.”
My head snaps up. “Sorry?”
“Have you ever been loved, Miss Carrigan?”
The unexpected question rocks me back on my heels.
Have I ever been loved?
I’d like to think that Margaret loves me, and that Ian did too, in his own way, but something tells me that’s not what Saxon means at all. He’s talking about the sort of love that’s reserved for a partner, a soul mate, the person who will move heaven and earth to keep you safe, and it guts me that if he has to ask, then the answer must be painstakingly obvious.
“No.” The forced smile on my face wilts then disappears altogether. “No, I’ve never been so lucky.”
The hardness in his eyes softens. “It wasn’t a choice between them or her,” he rumbles, putting his hands on his hips, “it was a choice between Holyrood or the woman who loves me—and that wasn’t a choice at all.”
“But you’re here, aren’t you?” I gesture toward the door. “You’re here while Isla isn’t, so have you really chosen at all?”
“Damien asked me. And I couldn’t tell him—”
A heavy thud hitting the floor to my left has me twisting at the waist, and when I see the . . . the body there, I wish that I hadn’t looked at all.
Mangled.
Bloodied.
Ruined.
The unfamiliar man remains curled in a ball where he fell, his dark hair matted to his dirt-streaked forehead. His clothes are disheveled, his bruised wrists shackled. And his fingernails . . . all but two have been ripped clean from their beds. I don’t know why that, more than anything else, disturbs me most. Feeling weak in the knees, I press the back of my hand to my mouth to keep the bile down.
“Christ,” whispers Saxon.
And then I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Heavy, commanding. Deadly. A tread I recognize almost as well as my own. It’s not how I envisioned this moment unfolding. Not with his brother standing an arm’s width away or with the battered figure of a stranger, half-alive, in the fetal position at my feet.
There’s no chance to run.
The toe of a dirtied black boot appears first.
It pauses on the landing, the sole pressing flat against the rung, as if its owner recognizes the scent of fear—unease—that’s rife in the air, and then the boot flattens. Pushes forward, carrying with it the man himself.
I don’t allow myself to raise my gaze and no one says a word.
He stops before me, and the distinction between my bare feet and those boots is staggering. One freshly showered, the other caked with dried blood. I kneeled before them just this morning. Was bound before them just last night. Dark denim trousers pull my eyes up past long legs and rock-hard thighs. At his sides, his calloused hands flex and unfurl.
There’s no hiding the blood.
No pretending that he wasn’t the cause of the stranger’s suffering.
And so I continue my upward trajectory, hearing my heart in my ears, feeling the sweat in my palms.
I take in the black, armored vest that clings to an impossibly broad chest and the wide shoulders that look as if they’ve been carved from the Highland’s most formidable crags. The right sleeve of his pullover is missing, exposing a thickly muscled arm and a deep gash that spills blood over a canvas of inked skin.
A shattered breath spills over my lips.
More tattoos peek out past his tattered collar, leading up to a tan throat and a hard jawline dusted with dark stubble. A jaw that I’ve touched, cupped, and which is now dirtied with blood. His or the stranger’s? I don’t dare ask. Not yet. Not until I’m done. Those impossibly soft lips are firm, pressed flat under my slow, thorough perusal. Flared nostrils, a crooked, once-broken nose. High cheekbones that ought to belong to a model on a catwalk, somewhere else in the world, but not here, not on this man who’s been kissed by Death.
And then I arrive at my final destination.
The windows to the soul.
Eyes that are nothing like the teal waters of Cornwall but belong to the deepest, hottest blue of a flickering flame. I feel their warmth, even now. The rage that burns beneath his tattooed skin, the darkness that clings to him as it always has to me. Every chaotic, merciless desire lives in that distinct shade, forever tumultuous, forever vengeful, and I feel their narrowing like he’s physically traced a finger down the length of my spine.
My chest expands with a sharp breath. A beat later, his inflates just the same.
We’re tethered, bound.
For better or worse.
“You see me,” he rasps.
His face is smeared with blood, his body tense like he’s prepared to chase me should I run, but I never avert my gaze from his. The blue enflames me, the chaos there consumes me, and I only whisper one thing: “I see you, Damien. I see all of you.”
29
Damien
Violet eyes stalk my every move.
She watches as I haul a furious Benji out of Holly Village’s makeshift prison.
She watches as I replace him with the sole survivor from tonight’s attack on The Bell & Hand, never missing a beat when I make a point to re-shackle the man’s wrists at his spine, so that he has no choice but to sit uncomfortably until I return.
And she watches while I stand on the front drive to see Saxon off, the curtain in her bedroom window casting her in shadow—but I know she’s there, waiting.
Her watchful gaze is a blessing just as much as it’s a curse.
Because now she sees you for who you really are.
The monster.
The villain.
The man with war in his blood and hate in his heart.
I don’t know when Rowena became my judge, jury, and executioner, or when our roles became reversed, but each dried speck of blood on my skin feels like a strike against me. A reason, as if I haven’t already given her plenty, to keep her distance. To keep her warmth.
Discreetly, I scrape my palms over my trousers for the fourth time since feeling her gaze on the back of my head.
It does me no good.
I’m still stained, still tainted.
“You’re a bastard,” Benji throws at me, over his shoulder, as he jerks open the back door of Saxon’s car. Twisting around, he juts his chin forward. “You left me in there with fucking Alfie Barker!”
“Did you get anything useful out of him?”
The dangerous flicker in the man’s gaze dims. “Tell me you’re taking the piss. Tell me, Priest, that you didn’t leave me locked in that room all so I could spend a little one on one time with Barker.”
Two birds, one stone.
In Holyrood, it’s explicitly forbidden to go after another agent. Locking Benji in that room was the only penance I could dole out after what he did to Saxon. But I’ll be lying if I say that his taking advantage of the situation didn’t also cross my mind. If he’s half the spy that he thinks he is, he’ll have jumped on the opportunity.
“Well,” I say, “did you?”
With a heavy sigh, Benji shoves his fingers through his hair. “Just more of the same shite. According to him, it’s a whole network that he was involved with and he was just the grunt taking orders from the top.”
“Except we know it was just one person,” Saxon cuts in. It’s the first time he’s spoken since he saw me in the loft, and I recognize the glimmer in his gaze. My always silent brother has something he wants to say, and I’m not surprised that he’s waited until we’re out of earshot from everyone in Holly Village. “Isla said something to me on the night that Buckingham Palace caught fire,” he goes on stiffly, “said that a man like Barker has something to lose and we should cut a deal with him. Use him instead of punishing him.”
Benji’s mouth drops open. “He wanted to kill the queen! We can’t just . . . do you hear yourself, man? Treason is a crime.”
“He’s just one man.”
Both men turn to look at me, Benji’s expression revolted and my
brother’s contemplative. “Right now, he’s nothing but collateral damage,” I add, meeting Saxon’s gaze with a brief nod, “when we could be putting him to work. He does what we want, and we give him back to his daughters. It’s a win-win.”
“It’s illegal.”
I look at Benji. “Illegal according to who? No one oversees us.”
“Your brother, for one.”
“Guy wants answers. I don’t think he cares how he gets them.”
Benji’s gaze shifts from me to Saxon and back again. “I want it known that I think it’s a bad idea.” And with that, he climbs into the backseat, sprawls out on the bench, and throws an arm over his face like he can block out the sight of us. I shove the door closed behind him.
Fucking prick.
Instead of following Benji’s lead, Saxon visibly wavers.
Eyeing the muscle ticking in his jaw, I say, “Get it off your chest.”
Under the moonlight, Saxon’s gaze slips past me, up to the window with its parted curtains, and I know that he’s spotted Rowena when his shoulders stiffen. “You said that you’d be right behind me after you took care of the dead, and then you showed up looking like . . .” Lowering his stare to the pavement, he scrubs a palm over his mouth. “Christ, Damien. I don’t even know who you are right now.”
The blood itches my skin.
“It’s nothing that we haven’t done before.” The words leave me calm, easy. My brother might be a mind reader but even he can’t see that I’m close to the edge of no return, that my veins are black with sludge and sin and secrets. We’ve done worse for Holyrood, for the Crown, but never for our own personal gain. Tonight was about vengeance. Tonight was contained rage finally spilling free and an irrational need to make someone else suffer as I have. It was spotting an opportunity and taking it, to hell with the consequences.
And the consequences were dire: I’ve never felt hollower than I did climbing the steps to Holly Village’s loft only to find Saxon and Rowena already there. Her expression . . . the revulsion that I first spied—
I slip shaky fingers into my trouser pockets, though it’s too late to hide what I’ve done. The Mad Priest took action, and all bore witness to his misdeeds. My misdeeds. “I needed to know who was tailing me. Whether it was Carrigan or—”
“It could be anyone and you—” He goes to grab me by the kit but yanks back at the last second after another glance at Rowena’s window. Breathing heavily, he drops his hand onto the car’s bonnet. “You are not the man who bloodies someone for the hell of it. You are not the man who loses his temper. You’re good, better than me, better than Guy. Boy genius with a heart of gold, remember?”
The old nickname feels like an actual knife to the heart.
While growing up, my brothers kept me swaddled in a protective bubble that they never dared to pop. When Guy finally put me to work, he kept me cloistered away from danger. Up on the rooftops where I scouted anti-loyalists or sandwiched between Robert Guthram and Jayme Paul for safekeeping.
But what Guy and Saxon never realized was that the bubble existed only to them.
Boy genius I may have been but I’ve never had a heart of gold. More times than not, I never had a heart at all.
“You have the wrong man, brother,” I utter softly, “because I’m not him.”
“I don’t,” is Saxon’s gruff response, “and you are. There are things in this world I won’t claim to understand but you—bloody fucking hell, you aren’t one of them. You base every decision on reason and you don’t act on emotion. You’re stability, the only person in Holyrood without a goddamn screw loose. That’s who you are.”
It’s possibly the most Saxon has said to me in years.
It’s also nothing but his perception.
Reason keeps me grounded when I’m wound so tight that it’s only a matter of time before I implode and take out everything around me in the aftermath. It wasn’t until Guy sat me down before a computer that I tasted tranquility. The numbers provided intrigue, the coding provided structure—the combination of both was a balm to the chaos, a glimpse of bliss like I’d never known. I took to it the only way a lad bent on saving himself can. Obsessively. My very first addiction.
Sometimes I wonder if Guy wasn’t saving us all by locking me inside the Palace.
“Damien,” Saxon growls, “are you listening to me? I said that . . .”
His raspy voice fades to a hum as my bloodied fingers grasp Mum’s necklace from my bloodied vest. I pull it free, the silver links clinking together when I hold it tight. Silently, I reach for Saxon’s hand. There’s no turning back from this confession, and some long-buried part of my soul screams to stop, that it’s not too late to end this here and now.
This is not how you want him to remember you.
No.
But, fucking hell, it’ll feel good to be seen.
I see you, Damien. I see all of you.
Rowena saw me all right.
Never mind that it was because of her that I put down my wire coil when the man begged me to spare his life. Shame had invaded me then. She would know, wouldn’t she? She’d recognize the pungent, unmistakable scent of blood off my skin. And I’d feared her disappointment. Dreaded the heat in her touch disappearing when I reached for her next. It wasn’t a risk that I was willing to take, I decided.
I found mercy too late.
Because when her violet eyes finally held mine, she saw every part of me.
Bloodied. Depraved. Shattered.
Ignoring the inexplicable heaviness in my chest, I apply pressure to the inside of Saxon’s wrist. His hand flexes open, and I drop the chain into his waiting palm.
“The clasp,” I tell him, voice low.
Saxon’s fingers work over the necklace in the dim moonlight, his body angling toward the head lamps so he can get a good look at the inscription. Benji sits up in the backseat to bang a fist on the window. I shift in front of him, so that he can’t see my brother.
This is for no one but Saxon.
Slowly, my brother’s head comes up. His face is drawn, his stare shuttered. Then his Adam’s apple bobs down the length of his throat, and it’s all the confirmation I need. He might not want to believe it, but he knows.
The chain loops over his forefinger as he straightens. “We buried this with her.”
I nod. “We did.”
“No.” When he shakes his fist, the necklace jerks like the legs of the hanged. “We buried this with her, Damien. Twenty-four years ago, we buried this with her.”
Feeling strangely unburdened, I hold his stare. “She hasn’t had it for twelve.”
My teeth rattle as I’m shoved against the car.
Saxon grips my vest in both fists. “Why?” His green eyes are wild, troubled. “Why the hell would you . . . Christ, I can’t even say it. I can’t even say it.”
“No mercy, brother.”
“No mercy? She was our mother.”
“Not to me,” I husk, “never to me.”
His hands loosen their grip on me but don’t pull away. “There was something wrong with her. Guy knew it, I knew it. Pa probably knew it, too, before he died. But she never . . . Bloody fucking hell, she didn’t deserve to be—”
“Unburied,” I finish, because if he can’t bring himself to say it then I will. “And I felt nothing—no remorse, no grief. That’s the man I am, Saxon, the man I’ve always been.” Nodding my chin toward the car, I mutter, “You made a choice, Holyrood or Isla, and you chose happiness.”
“Damien—”
“You deserve that,” I growl, giving him a push. “What happened tonight is for me to handle, not you. Go back to Oxford and stay there.”
“Ask me for help. Fucking ask me—”
Quietly, I utter the words that I know will break him: “You aren’t Holyrood. Not anymore.”
His chin snaps back like I’ve plowed a fist into his face. “I’m your brother.”
Always.
But I won’t have Saxon trading his life
for mine. He walked away. He chose love. I want that for him. Fucking hell, I want that for him so bad that it feels like I’m being torn in two. I should never have sent Guy and the queen to him after the attack on the Palace. I should never have had him meet me at The Bell & Hand. Selfish. So goddamned selfish when he finally has a reason to put down the gun and live for a future that doesn’t carry with it the scent of death and misery.
I’ve spent a lifetime on a solitary track—it’s no different now.
“Keep the necklace,” I tell him, angling my shoulder past him so that he has no choice but to let me walk free. “No doubt she’s been turning over in her grave ever since I took it.”
30
Damien
My heart thunders in my chest as I stand before Rowena’s door with my fist raised to knock.
I ought to fill her in on what happened tonight. Explain about the men who followed me all afternoon and the fight at The Bell & Hand. At least she can take small comfort in knowing that her father wasn’t behind today’s clusterfuck.
No, according to the confession that I wrought from my little interrogation, that particular honor belongs to the Met’s police commissioner. Not that I’m surprised. Courtesy of Marcus Guthram and The Metropolitan Police, I’m the UK’s number one fugitive. And, thanks to Guthram, Saxon was recently put behind bars for a murder that he didn’t commit.
You’ll thank me for this, brother.
Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day he’ll look back at this moment and he’ll be grateful. Because there’s only one way to make a dog like Guthram heel, and it’s to put him down.
More death.
More needless bloodshed.
Don’t do it, Godwin. Don’t go to her like this.
Bloodied. Depraved. Shattered.
The veins in my forearm pop as I clench my fist, tight, and wrench away from Rowena’s door. Spinning on my heel, I force distance between us when every chord within me is singing only one note: I need you, I need you, I need you.
