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.”
My throat works with a rough swallow. “You’re alive.”
“What?”
“It’s what I tell myself,” I say, tangling my fingers before me, “when the anxiety spikes. I’m alive.”
The chiseled line of his jaw stiffens. “I don’t have anxiety.”