Roman hissed through his teeth, irritated by the lack of answers. By the fact that he wasn’t strong enough to break away from this man and return to the Promontory for Iris.
As he pushed through the brambles, feeling the thorns grasp his hair and his suit jacket, he asked, “Was the plan to kill everyone in the courtyard?”
“I told you to ask your father,” Bruce grunted from behind, pushing Roman to go faster, as if a spell would break at midnight, turning them into stone. “But because your wife was there, I’ll say this … no. Only him.”
Him as in Dacre.
Roman couldn’t hide how he shuddered. How his hands were freezing but his chest was burning. He felt caught up in a strange medley of relief and shock, indignation and hope, and he pulled a string of brambles from his hair when he emerged on the other side.
He paused, his breath ragged. Bruce must have sensed he needed a moment because the man finally didn’t urge him onward.
“A bomb alone won’t kill him,” Roman eventually said, remembering the message he still held in his coat pocket.
Bruce frowned. “What do you mean? It was directly beneath the stage.”
Roman winced as he envisioned all that wood splintering in the blast, flying through the crowd. Impaling innocent people. He swallowed hard and said, “It takes more than that to kill a god.”
“I pray you’re wrong. Because if you’re right…” Bruce didn’t finish the thought.
Not even Roman knew how to complete that sentence.
They hurried through the back half of the property, where even now it felt like a different world. One far removed from Oath and the war. But before the estate came into view, Bruce stopped in the shadow of a hawthorn.
“This is as far as I can go without the soldiers seeing me,” he said. “Go directly to your father.”
“Are you part of the Graveyard?”
Bruce didn’t reply to the blunt question. Roman took it as affirmation.
“Will you go back for her?” he asked next, unable to hide the way his voice shook. “Will you go back for my wife?”
“Don’t worry about Miss Winnow. She’s a smart girl.”
“Does that mean you’ll do as I ask? I—” Roman cut himself off, narrowing his eyes. “I never told you her last name was Winnow. How did you know that?”
Again, Bruce was silent, but he held Roman’s stare with a clenched jaw.
Pieces began to fall into place. Roman stepped closer, using his height to loom over Bruce.
“You’ve seen her before. When?”
“There’s no time for this.”
“When?”
“Before she left for the front, a few weeks ago. Your father asked me to deliver a message to her. Now don’t lose your head. It’s not the time for—”
“What was the message?” Roman’s voice was cold and smooth.
“It was money.”
“Money?”
“Enough for her to live comfortably if she annulled your marriage. Which by the looks of it she didn’t, so get out of my face and do what I told you to do, before all hell breaks loose.”
Roman’s hand curled into a fist.
But he had gained the answers he wanted.
He turned and strode away.
* * *
His blood was still boiling when he approached the back doors of the mansion.
He noticed two things through his haze of anger: there was a massive stack of crates beneath the pavilion, brightly labeled with CAUTION, and Dacre’s soldiers were patrolling the backyard as if they were no longer afraid of being spotted by the neighbors. Roman walked directly through their line and realized he held more power than he had once believed. They yelled at him to halt, to lift his hands, and yet they did nothing when he refused to comply. He acted like they didn’t exist as he stepped through the back doors of his house.
His shoes clicked on the polished floors. He headed to his father’s study, drowning in his thoughts.
He hadn’t been able to reach Iris. He hadn’t been able to protect her when she needed him most—from his father or from Dacre. Roman had no idea if she was alive, if she was wounded, if she was dead.
She’s not, he told himself, even as he ground his teeth. I would know if she was dead.
The door to his father’s study was cracked. Roman kicked it wide open, startling Mr. Kitt, who had been pacing with a cigar in hand.
“Shut the door,” his father said in an urgent tone. His blue eyes widened when he saw how disheveled Roman was. The vomit, the trickle of blood. The scrape of brambles. “What happened?”