Chapter 25
Dahlia
Stella
“Not so fast,” Saoirse says, stepping into the room with a gun. “Neither of you are going anywhere.”
“We have to help her!” I scream as Saoirse waves the gun at me and Maeve lies there on the library floor with blood blooming across her belly. She’s still, too still, and I want to scream and cry.
“There’s no helping her,” Saoirse says. “Gut wounds tend to be both messy and fatal. Now move it.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. I let her lead me from the library and down the hall to a series of stone steps.
“Because it is my destiny,” is all she says.
We climb more and more stone stairs until we get to a door that opens to the outside of the castle. She’s led me to the battlements that overlook the cliff face. Rain is pouring down now and the wind is whipping all about.
“What are you doing?” I gasp as the chill cuts right through my sweater and leggings, my feet still bare.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” she says.
“Like Lady Thomley did?” I ask.
“Smart girl, she says. “You know what they say about curiosity and the cat, don’t you?
“I’m not suicidal.”
“Sure you are,” she says. “You’ve been very sad, inconsolable really. You’ve never really fit in here and you were never going to. You realize that now but there’s tragically no going back to your old life, so you took the only option available to you.”
“No, I’m not,” I say firmly, finally standing up for myself. For Rhys and our baby.
“You are,” she snaps back. “Or else I will expose Dahlia for the fraud that she is.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. I can’t let anything happen to Dahlia because of me.
“The late king wasn’t her father, obviously,” she says as she flings the gun around. I don’t remember her talking this much with her hands before. She’s clearly snapped, like the TV show about badly concealed murders, Snapped. “It’s treason to have passed as royal lineage when she’s decidedly not.”
“Who’s her father then?” I ask.
“Uh-uh-uhhh,” she sings as she waves the gun some more. “That’s for me to know and you not to.”
“Why are you even doing this?”
“Because I have to,” she says. “If I don’t, my father will kill me.”
“Your father is dead, you daft cow,” I snap but she just laughs.
“Hardly.”
“I’m serious.”
“Stop lying!” she screams as the door to the battlements crashes open.
I think I’m about to be saved when a tall man with dark hair ducks through the doorway, but then he looks up and I realize that it’s Taylor, not Rhys and I’m…well…fucked. If now at the end of my life, when I’m about to die, I can’t curse, when can I?
“Hey there,” she smiles and I know the end is close. “We’re almost done here. Then we can be on our way.”
“Sure thing, babe,” Taylor says and I feel white hot rage course through my veins.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, but the look he shoots me to shut up has me more confused than ever. “Why did you try to set me up?”
“To get you out of the way, obviously,” he says.
“And your brother?” I ask.
“What about him?”
“He loves you and this is how you repay him?” I ask.
“It’s nothing personal,” he shrugs his shoulders as he looks from me to Saoirse.
“Clearly,” I bite out.
“Ugh, shut up already!” she snaps. “Come help me shove her over.”
I start backing into the corner. I can’t just let these people throw me off the freaking castle. That’s crazy. I need a plan. I have to fight for me and my baby.
“Where are you going?” Saoirse snaps. “Come back here.”
“Do you think we need to kill her right now?” Taylor asks, surprising me. “I think she’s worth more as leverage, so we can get out of here.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “Maeve thought the same thing and look what happened to her.”
Taylor’s body stiffens and he carefully asks, “What happened to Maeve?”
“I killed her, silly.” Saoirse laughs as she waves her gun about. “So don’t think of trying the same thing. Stella has to die.”
“She doesn’t,” he says, moving closer to her in a path that slowly puts himself between her gun and me. “We don’t need her. We need to retreat and regroup.”
“Retreat?” she gasps. “Now? Never. We’re winning.”
“We’re not,” he says. “She wasn’t lying when she said the earl is dead. So is her uncle. We need to retreat and recruit.”
Her eyes narrow on him and still, he moves closer. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” He slowly raises his hands in front of him. “Think about it. Why would I lie to you? This is a mistake. Let me have the gun and ev—”
Taylor never gets the words out because as he reaches for the gun, she pulls the trigger on her stepson turned lover and he crumples to the ground.
“No!” I scream as she steps around him. I don’t know if he’s dead or not but I can’t take my eyes away from her to check.
I jump when the door slams opened again.
“Bloody hell, who is it now?” she snaps and no one answers. “I mean it, who’s there?”
“It’s just me, Mama,” Dahlia says. “Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t you get it?” she screeches. “Everything I’ve done is for you.”
“But you don’t have to do this,” she pleads. “Please. She’s my friend.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child, in this life, we don’t get the luxury of friends,” Saoirse says. She sounds sad. “But I have to do this.”
Saoirse takes another step toward me when she stops suddenly, frozen where she stands, her gaze no longer locked on me but instead, she looks as if she’s seen a ghost.
“George?” she asks. “It can’t be.”
“I go by Conner now,” the vice admiral responds as he steps forward.
“But you’re dead,” she says.
I wonder what the hell is going on.
“They thought that,” he says. “But I wasn’t. I built a life for myself, and I’ve been looking for you. Looking for our daughter.”
Dahlia gasps, clearly the only one who wasn’t privileged with the true identity. “No,” she gasps.
“You were looking for me?” Saoirse asks.
“But father?” Dahlia snaps. “What about him?”
“The man you thought of as your father was a monster,” Saoirse yells.
“But not to me,” Dahlia whispers. “He loved me.”
“He was definitely good at making people think that.” She sneers. “Maeve thought he was in love with her until he brought home a new wife to live right under her nose. He was like all men, a bastard who thought with his dick.”
“And what about me?” the vice admiral asks. “I thought you loved me.”
“I did,” she whispers. “And then he took you from me.”
“Don’t let your miserable father take any more from you; step away from the Queen,” he says.
“I can’t. She has to die. He won’t leave me alone until she’s dead,” she whispers as she refocuses on me. “She has to die.”
“No!” Dahlia screams as the vice admiral says, “No she doesn’t,” but it none of it matters. It’s like Saoirse’s in a trance as she bears down on me. And with my back against the stone wall of the battlements, I have nowhere to go.
“Please, don’t do this,” I beg.
“You should have listened to me when you had the chance and left,” she snarls. “Now, it’s too late.”
“Stop this,” the vice admiral says. “We can still be together if you don’t do this.”
“We can be together after I finish the job,” she counters. “If I don’t, he’ll kill you again but for real this time.”
“No!” he shouts, trying to get her attention but it’s no use. “I still love you.”
“I still love you too,” she smiles at him before she lunges at me and I close my eyes and scream.
When I realize that I’m not falling down the cliffside, I open my eyes and hear a scream as Saoirse falls to her death. When she lunged for me, the vice admiral moved even faster and shoved her over the ledge.
“Dahlia,” I whisper. Her hands are covering her eyes, blocking out the scene in front of her and when she uncovers them to look at me, she’s crying. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re alive!” she cries as she rushes into my arms and holds me tightly.
“I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she says.
“But—”
“We’ll talk it through later,” she says. “Now, we need to figure out what the fuck is going on.” She turns us to head for the door when she sees the vice admiral and stops. “What are you doing here?”
“I called him,” Taylor rasps from the floor.
“Taylor!” I run over to him, dropping down to my knees to help him.
“It’s just my shoulder,” he says. “But I hit my head on the way down like a bloody arsehole.”
“Oh, well I’m glad you’re okay,” I say. “Please don’t kill me.”
The door bangs open again and Rhys and Leo race through with a shit ton of guards.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Leo barks at Dahlia and she narrows her eyes on him.
“Do not talk to my daughter in that tone, young man,” the vice admiral snarls.
“Too soon, dude-who-hates-me,” she says.
“I don’t hate you,” he says, rolling his eyes, “I hated watching you waste your life on parties and drugs.”
“Well, my dad was dead, my brothers were dicks, and my mom hated everything about me,” she shrugs. “There wasn’t much else to keep me occupied.”
“I’m sorry, Dahlia,” Rhys says. “I was trying to protect you.”
“So was I,” Taylor says as he sits up.
“Yeah”—she nods her head, thinking—“Okay.”
Rhys pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. “Thank God, you’re okay,” he says. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” I reply warily. “But I’m trying to convince Taylor not to kill me.”
“Bloody hell,” Taylor snaps, and Rhys laughs. “I’m not going to fucking kill you.”
“You’re not?” I ask.
“No, hen,” Rhys says gently. “He’s been my inside man the whole time.”
“Oh,” I reply. “Well then what else is there to do?”
“Fill the house full of babies and the orangery with rescue parrots,” he says with a tender smile just for me.
“You know,” I gasp.
“Of course,” he says. “So what do you say, fancy working on happily ever after with me now that we’ve saved the world?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “I could do happily ever after.”
And so, we do….