Damien.
Grasping fistfuls of dirt, I shove Paul off me and roll onto my hands and knees. One glimpse of the older man reveals the blunt handle of a knife sticking out from his thick, flabby shoulder.
Stunned, my gaze snaps to my brother. “You stabbed him.”
“Old bastard doesn’t know how to die,” Damien mutters, bending at the hip to rip the blade straight from Paul’s back. Ignoring the man’s anguished wail, Damien wipes the bloodied edge of the knife across his sleeve. Then, “Guy wants you out.”
Are you in or out?
Guy had asked me that before. Holyrood or Isla. Him and Damien or Isla.
I choose her. Always, always her.
Climbing to my feet, I purposely show my back to Jude and Benji. Of all people for them to support, fucking Jayme Paul. “Naturally. The Crown must always come first.”
Catching my sarcasm, Damien’s blue eyes appear almost translucent under the cast of the moon. “He heard what you did about that priest, Bootham.”
The muscles along my spine go taunt. “I did what I had to do.”
“You’re a dead man walking,” my younger brother tells me, re-holstering the knife to his forearm, “a total liability.”
I toss a look toward where the Palace is, behind the swath of trees. Like a king, it’s obvious that Guy has sent Damien to do his bidding. “No one leaves Holyrood, not alive.”
“Well, today is your lucky day, brother. You’re allowed to leave—and not in a body bag.”
“The catch?”
“You’re banned from Holyrood. Persona non grata. And if you ever come back . . .” On the ground, Paul emits a soft groan, to which Damien lifts his booted foot and grinds it down on the wound. Hard and harder still, until Paul passes out cold. “You’re dead.”
39
Isla
The tears won’t stop.
“You have until Loudwater to pull it together,” I tell myself when I pass the exit for Iver Heath, some forty minutes outside of London.
Loudwater comes, Loudwater goes, and I remain an utter wreck.
Mile after mile, I’m plagued with the visual of Saxon, a man so composed and indestructible, being driven down to his knees.
Did they hurt him? Will his brothers throw him to the wolves as a traitor?
And the question that won’t be silenced: is he alive?
“Please,” I whisper, strangling the steering wheel, “please, please be alive.”
It takes me another fifteen miles to accept the fact that I’m an emotional disaster who shouldn’t be on the road. Foggy-headed and drunk on a debilitating cocktail of grief and adrenaline, I pull off the motorway at Stokenchurch and drift through the village until I spot a white-stucco pub with a large car park.
Seeking privacy, I back the car beneath a tree with a great canopy of branches.
I want to rage, to harness the fury that’s propelled me forward for years now. But it’s gone, replaced with a bleak emptiness more terrifying than all the hate in the world. At least before, I had a plan. At least before, I didn’t know what it feels like to mourn the living.
Tears well again.
With my sleeves already soaked through, I stretch across the gear shift and fling open the glove box, in search of tissues.
Stacks of banknotes tumble out, falling to the mat below.
“What in the world—”
I pick them up, one by one. Lay them out on the passenger seat, in a line, as though that might help me make sense of it all. It doesn’t. I count five hundred thousand quid. A proper fortune. Enough to skate us by for years, if we watch our spending and avoid extravagant things.
“Damn you, Saxon.”
My heart teeters in my chest, torn between feeling grateful for the unexpected gift and guilty for even considering accepting it. This sort of money could move us to America, just as I’d planned five years ago. It could set us up somewhere new, in a country not wracked with political turmoil and death around every corner. Peter could transfer universities. Josie could take that gap year she so wants, exploring the States or Canada or anywhere, really, that isn’t England. And I could . . . I could start over, couldn’t I? A fancy new job, perhaps—something in my field. Rent a flat that isn’t on the verge of collapse—or stacked with the bodies of dead priests.
And then Saxon will be gone forever.
I drop my forehead onto the backs of my hands on the wheel.
“Stop crying,” I order, but I’ve been a liar for so long that I last only seconds before I’m drying my eyes with my wet sleeve for what must be the hundredth time. Tissues. I need tissues.
Leaning back over, I stick my hand into the glove box and riffle through the junk. Papers, a smattering of receipts, a pair of sunglasses, and then—
A mobile?
My palm closes over the object, and sure enough, it’s a phone. New. Sleek. Did Saxon put this in here for me? I brush my thumb over the glass, watching as the wallpaper illuminates from the pressure of my touch. The picture is basic: a set of roses blooming—a stock image, at best—but it’s the unread message that captures my attention.
With no password to plug in, I swipe the text open:
I’m a Godwin.
I once heard someone ask the question, what’s in a name? According to a book Guy stole from a library in Paris, Godwins are fierce protectors. Ironic that thanks to a fluke chance during the Second Boer War, we became our name in truth.
Fierce. Deadly. Guardians to the Crown and whoever claimed the throne.
But it wasn’t until you that I realized the scope of being a Godwin.
There is not a man I wouldn’t kill, a mountain I wouldn’t scale, a pain I wouldn’t endure, to keep you safe.
I’m loyal to the queen out of habit—out of an expectation, an oath, spanning generations—but you are the only person, man or woman, who owns me. I was cold until you. Numb. Like the skin the king scarred, like my heart which wouldn’t beat.
One touch from you—one kiss—and you’ve left me burning, still.
You are my first, Isla Quinn, and my only.
Breathe for me, sweetheart, and know that somewhere I’m inhaling and taking up the torch for us both.
A noise like a wounded animal shatters the quiet, and it’s only after a moment that I realize that the sound belonged to me. I sit with my legs drawn up on the seat, my entire body curled around the mobile as though it’s my only lifeline. Tears coat my cheeks, and I don’t need to look in the mirror to know that my eyes are red-rimmed.
Acting on instinct, I tap on the phone app and wait for the callback.
It rings, only to answer with a curt, “The number you have dialed is not in service.”
I try again.
And again.
Each time more fraught with dread and frustration, until I throw the mobile onto the passenger seat, atop all those banknotes, and scream at the top of my lungs.
He’s left me with more money than I know what to do with, a car to shuttle me away to safety, and a note that’s effectively torn me in two. In return, he stole my heart—and I’m never, ever getting it back.
I don’t know how long I sit in that car park, watching the tree limbs sway in the breeze. Despite the late hour, customers go in and out of the brightly lit pub: couples holding hands, mothers pushing their babies in prams, fathers hoisting their toddlers up onto their shoulders.