Guthram gasps. Grips my shoulder. Tugs, hard, but not hard enough to move me even a millimeter. “Priest,” he hisses, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Making you earn your thousands.”
“Earn my . . .” The commissioner mirrors my step away from the computer, remaining in front of me. His dark eyes flash, but not from fury. Panic. It oozes from his frame, warps his features, and cloaks his voice. “The priest’s funeral must be any day now, and you’ve j-just deleted his autopsy report!”
“Demand another be done.”
“Demand another?” Guthram gapes at me, so shocked that I manage to skate around him, heading for the vaults to my right. “There will be questions. Questions I won’t have a bloody chance in hell of answering. The coroner will be suspicious. I could lose my post. And that’s saying nothing about the fact that you’re tampering with a case.”
“If you want the money, you’ll make it work.”
“Who do you think I am? Fucking God?”
“Let me rephrase,” I tell him, “if you want to keep breathing without the use of an oxygen tank, you’ll make it work.”
When I stop three rows away from the door, Guthram’s feet grind to a halt. “Priest,” he says, keeping his distance. “Priest, whatever you’re planning to do, I wouldn’t.”
But I do.
The handle to Bootham’s vault is cool to the touch as I draw it open. There’s the quiet clink of metal scraping open, and the immediate astringent scent that wafts up toward my nose as the priest is revealed. First, the top of his shorn, balding head. Then, his eerie, sunken eyes that have yet to be touched up by a mortician for his funeral. They peer back at me, lifeless but somehow still condemnatory.
You did this to me, they seem to say. You killed me.
And I did.
Every time that I stepped into his place of worship, I collected little pieces of his life, shard by shard. I lied to him. Stole from him. And now . . . And now, this.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I whisper, for him—the dead man.
Bending down, I lift the hem of my trousers and remove Isla’s knife from the leather holster cinched around my calf. The knife that I confiscated from her, just before we left my house in Camden, without her noticing. I hear Guthram’s panicked footsteps approaching, but I ignore him. Bring the serrated edge of the knife to the calloused pads of my fingertips.
I cut myself, enduring the pinch of pain as my punishment.
And then I pick up Bootham’s cold, limp hand, and smear my blood beneath his nails.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Guthram breathes from beyond my right shoulder, “You’ve lost your bloody mind. You. Have. Lost. Your. Bloody. Mind.”
Except that it isn’t my mind that I’ve lost, it’s my soul, and I’ve lost it to a blond warrior who killed the king then demanded that I kill her next.
I look down at Bootham, fresh blood coating the ivory whites of his fingertips.
If I’m to die, you’ll do it.
It seems that I can’t.
37
Isla
Death lingers like an unwanted guest.
It sits in the empty pit of my stomach and on the cracked bed of my lips. It strains every one of my muscles as I debate the inevitable: accepting defeat. Quenching my thirst would give me strength. Eating would go a long way toward revitalizing my fatigued limbs.
But at what cost?
To then die at the hands of my lover, who hid everything that he is from me?
A spy. A loyalist. A man not adverse to putting his mission above all else, including me.
I told Saxon that I would rather starve, and I would, but this . . . I have never felt so drained as I do now. Emotionally, physically. Mentally, too. My mind is nothing but a foggy disarray of scattered thoughts.
In The Octagon, I prayed for him to save me.
Now, I hope for the opposite: I wish he would put me out of this godawful misery.
A bullet to the head.
A sharp twist of a blade to the heart.
Anything to end the sobering reality of being locked inside this cell for years to come.
Tapping into what’s left of my reserve, I roll myself over onto my front. Curl my knees beneath me and tuck my hands under my forehead, a makeshift pillow. Don’t think of Peter. Don’t think of Josie. When I do, I cry. When I don’t, I manage to float on the edge of darkness, resigned to my fate.
Isla Quinn, the king killer.
Click.
At the sound, my ears strain for the source.
Click.
A groan slips from my mouth when a sliver of florescent light hits the floor, directly beneath my nose.
Click.
Light-footed steps echo off the unforgiving slate, coming closer, closer still. I should defend myself, just as I did at The Octagon. Fight to be the last woman standing, no matter what. Get up, get up, get up. But when I try, my shoulders protest and my stomach cramps with hunger, and bloody hell, won’t it end? The pain and the heartache—especially the heartache.
Warm fingers graze the ridged line of my spine before settling on my nape. To kill me? To strangle me as I did Ian Coney? The irony would be one for the books, and yet . . .
“Stop,” I whisper, my throat so dry that the command breaks on the single syllable. Weak. Fragile. Running my tongue over the roof of my mouth, I try again. “Stop. Please.”
Those fingers smooth into my hair, following the curvature of my skull. “I can’t,” a deep voice rumbles, staking me right in the heart with its ragged vulnerability, “I can’t.”
A big hand repositions me onto my back, and this time, when I blink, there’s enough light seeping into the cell from the hallway that Saxon’s hard features are unmistakable—as is the shiny, metal pistol aimed directly at my head.
Oh, God.
A startled cry threatens to surface, and immediately I slam my eyes shut. Burrow my arms down by my sides like I’ve already been stuck in a narrow coffin and lowered into the earth.
How many more seconds until he pulls the trigger?
How long will consciousness last before the darkness consumes me forever?
The king lived only minutes before he bled out. I’d aimed for his torso, the largest surface area on a human body. Vengeance may have guided my mission but practicality dictated where I aimed. And, in that moment, as I stood by the window and observed the crowd gathered below to witness his speech, I gave no passing thought to the king’s last moments.
How terrified he must have been.
Shot from what must have seemed like thin air. Assassinated before his only surviving child, after having already lost his first.
I have no doubt that this is better than what I deserve.
Karma served swiftly.
Unable to tear my lids open and stare down the barrel of the pistol, or the man wielding it, I move one hand, finding a part of his body. His calf, I think. Strong, muscled, even through the thin fabric of his trousers. I cling to him, seeking warmth to take away the ice in my blood.
“Just do it,” I tell him, my voice quivering. “Kill me and be done with it.”
Metal touches my forehead, a chilled kiss of imminent death.
This time, there’s no restraining the pitiful cry that wrenches itself from my soul. I choke on the sound, every ounce of strength vacating my body as reality sets in. In a matter of seconds, this will all be gone forever. Josie. Peter. Him, Saxon, the man who awoke something inside me and lit me on fire. I’ve never believed in the afterlife. I’ve never believed in much of anything, really, and now the alternative emptiness seems excruciatingly bleak.