Violently, I shake my head. “Get in the car. Come with me, dammit!”
His hand curves over the door frame. “The devil always collects his due, sweetheart, and I bargained everything I had on you.”
Before I can edge out another word, he slams the door shut and the car—the car that should not be moving without my foot on the accelerator—shifts into gear, all on its own, and slowly takes off down the dark, tree-lined road.
Darting a glance to the rearview mirror, I spot Saxon standing there, with what looks like a remote control in his hand. He waits no more than a beat before dropping it to the ground and smashing his heavy boot down upon it. The car immediately jerks in response, as if the control has been revoked, and unexpectedly swerves to the right, toward a tree.
“Shite!”
Instinct has me latching onto the steering wheel and yanking hard to avoid collision. I manage, just barely, but my heart . . . my stupid, bloody heart is locked on what I’ve left behind.
The last I see of Saxon Priest are figures stepping out from the dense thicket to surround him. One catches him behind the kneecaps, nailing him down to the ground. Another grasps him by what looks like his shirt, hauling him forward across the dirt path. The thick wood gathering behind me insulates the scene after that, and a sob breaks from my throat.
What have I done?
38
Saxon
Dulled pain registers in my hamstrings seconds before I hit the ground.
Familiar bodies circle me, men whose faces I’ve known for years, but are now silhouetted by splintered moonlight. They swarm like locusts, all frenetic energy and pulsing anger. I stare through them all, as if they don’t even exist, and watch Isla’s taillights fade into the pitch-black night.
She’s gone, safe, and I’m—
“You helped her escape!” Roughened hands bunch the fabric of my shirt, jerking me forward. Thin nose. Hollow, weathered cheeks. Jayme Paul’s pungent breath wafts over my face, whisky soaked. “What the hell were you thinking?”
The same as I’d thought when I found her, unconscious and curled on her side, in front of Buckingham Palace. Nothing. Nothing beyond an inexplicable need to see her safe—even if safe entails sending her far, far away from me.
The devil.
The monster.
The man who doesn’t even deserve to kiss the ground she walks on.
When Paul, my father’s old replacement, shakes me like I’m nothing but a rag doll, I clamp a warning hand around his wrist. “Let me go, old man.”
“She killed the fucking king, you dimwit. The king!”
“She did, but she doesn’t deserve to die.”
“Doesn’t deserve to die?” Startled astonishment flatlines Paul’s rabid expression. With his fingers still clasping my shirt, he gapes at me, then at Jude and Benjamin, another of our agents, before visibly pulling himself together. “Did you hear that, lads? Apparently, Isla Quinn doesn’t deserve what’s coming to her, even though she murdered the one person we’re sworn to protect.”
“Utterly daft,” Jude clips out.
Benji shakes his head. “You risked everything—our location, our mission, each of us—and for what? Half-rate pussy? Come off it, Priest, you’re better than—”
The rest of his sentence hinges on silence when I lunge for him, practically taking Paul along with me, and undercut my throw to nail him in the chin. His head snaps backward; his body sways in place. Like any Holyrood agent, he’s formidable, lethal, and instead of retreating, he grabs my arm and digs his thumb into the shallow flesh wound left behind by Isla’s knife.
I see red.
“The big, bad Saxon Priest,” he sneers, “taken down by a woman with a set of balls bigger than your own. Has your knob shriveled up too?”
“I don’t advise playing that game with me, Benjamin.”
His dark eyes glitter in the moonlight. “A game? This isn’t a game. You helped her escape. You, a Godwin, a Priest, the foundation of this godforsaken agency. You betrayed the Crown, not me.”
I smell the scent of whisky before I feel the telltale shape of a pistol on the nape of my neck. “Which is a crime punishable by death, according to Holyrood,” Paul says, drawing the pistol north until it sits at the back of my head. A silent threat. One wrong move of his finger and my brains will paint the night red. Boom. “How many agents have you killed for this exact transgression, Priest? Can you even count them all?”
Only two.
A number lower than expected, considering how many of us have sworn to serve the royal family, all across the country. I don’t regret much in life but them—Quill and Sanders—I do, still. Years later.
Tonight, the miscreant group of Holyrood spies, who have turned on the Crown, gains another reluctant member.
Me.
I don’t know what love is. Not the sort of love, at any rate, that appears on television with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or slow dances spent under the starry skies. What I feel is darker. Animalistic. The tightening sensation in my gut and the burn in my heart as though she’s personally set fire to the organ. I understand stark possession. Frenzied desire, too. I understand that, with Isla, I’m driven by an unidentifiable motive that asks for nothing in return—not a favor given, nor a favor owed. All I know is that as I stand here now, with my life hanging in the balance, there’s only relief swimming in my chest because she’s free.
Free to live.
Free to breathe.
Free to find love with a different man, a better man, who’s capable of sweeping her off her feet and buying the chocolates and the flowers and anything else she might ever want.
And that is enough.
It has to be.
Inviting death to the circle, I bow my head and drop one knee to the ground, then the other. Blood from my wound coats my sleeve. My pistol, the same one I’ve kept on me since returning from Paris, remains in my holster like dismissed sentry.
“Let’s not pretend,” I husk out, “that you haven’t been waiting for this moment for years.”
There’s an audible swallow from Paul and the distant, familiar whine of the drawbridge from the main house lowering. No doubt whoever it is will be joining the hunting party—where I’m the only course ready to be served.
“You’re mad, Priest. Utterly mad.” The pistol jams into my skull, making my ears ring. “You broke the law. You committed a crime. Don’t put any of that on me.”
“I’m accepting my due, aren’t I?”
“Your father would be disappointed in everything that you are,” he grinds out, ignoring Jude and Benji, his attention trained solely on me. “He died for the Crown and here you are, spitting in his memory for a woman who is everything that we—”
A scream splits through the night.
Masculine. Infused with pain.
Loud, so loud and so close, that it echoes in my ears, slow realization subsequently dawning that I’m sprawled out on the ground with Paul’s weight atop me. My chin slams into the dirt, coating my lips, the roof of my mouth.
Christ.
“Kill him,” declares a familiar, gruff voice, “and I’ll shove this knife straight into your heart and gut you where you stand.”