The Sanctuary of St. Merryn
The travel from motel hideout to secure safehouse consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. Outside in the dark, Beckett Blackthorn shouted, “Come out, my prince. Hand me the boy and I might let your whore breathe.” Reid’s pistol clicked, and Damian pressed a key into Evangeline’s hand. “St. Merryn’s crypt. Take Toby and run. I will find you.”
The key was cold against Evangeline’s palm, a sharp-edged promise she didn’t have time to question. Her heart was a frantic drum, but her legs were already moving. She grabbed Toby’s wrist—a firm, unyielding grip that brooked no argument.
“This way,” Damian breathed, his voice barely a rustle of sound.
Reid had already dropped to one knee, his pistol trained on the timber of the door. The wood groaned under a heavy shoulder, sending a tremor through the floorboards. Damian pushed Evangeline toward the rear of the pantry, his hand flat against her spine, a silent, urgent command. He swept aside a rack of dusty bottles. Behind it, a section of wainscoting was false. His fingers found the catch—a faint click, lost in the next thundering slam against the front door.
The panel swung inward on silent hinges, revealing a narrow, mouth-like opening of rough brick and pitch darkness. The smell of damp earth and old coal wafted out, a cold breath against Evangeline’s flushed cheeks.
“Reid,” Damian hissed. The security chief fired one shot. The report was deafening in the confines of the cottage, a violent clap of thunder that sent Toby flinching and pressing his face into Evangeline’s skirts. A man outside yelped, a sound of pain, and the assault paused.
Reid was up and moving in the same beat, his boots silent on the stone floor. He ducked into the passage, his pistol held high in one hand. “Go, go, go.”
Damian grabbed Evangeline’s arm. “You first. Stay behind Reid. Do not stop for anything.”
She didn’t argue. She dragged Toby into the suffocating blackness after Reid. The passage was barely wide enough for a single person, the floor rough-cut stone that sent her worn boots skidding on loose gravel. Behind them, she heard the groan of the wainscoting panel being closed and the scrape of the false shelf as Damian reset the catch. He was sealing them in.
They moved in utter darkness, guided only by the sound of Reid’s labored breathing ahead and the feel of the damp, cold walls closing in. A labyrinth of forgotten service tunnels connected the village’s old buildings, a web of stone and shadow that predated the new roads. Evangeline had decoded a map of these passages in a dusty ledger once, and she recognized the layout now—a latticework of routes leading to the chapel at the edge of the parish.
A sound bloomed behind them. A boot scraping on stone. A muffled curse.
They’d been followed through the main house. One of Beckett’s men must have circled around, anticipating a rear exit. Reid came to a stop, raising a hand. His profile was a hard silhouette in the pitch black.
“There’s a fork ahead,” he whispered. “One branch leads to the chapel crypt. The other to the old brew-house, closer but exposed.”
“Take the crypt,” Damian’s voice was a low, controlled command from behind them.
Reid nodded and took the left branch, his steps quickening. The narrow throat of the tunnel forced them into a single-file line. Evangeline’s free hand scraped the rough stone, her nails catching, as she kept Toby’s hand locked in a death grip in the other.
They found the second flight of stairs—slippery, moss-slicked steps that spiraled down into a wider chamber that smelled of candle wax and cold incense. St. Merryn’s crypt. Light bled from somewhere above, a sliver of pale grey from a grille in the ceiling. Tombs lined the walls, their carved stone effigies worn smooth by centuries. A heavy oak door stood at the far end, iron-banded and ancient.
But behind them, in the tunnel mouth, a shape crystallized out of the gloom. Two shapes. A shaft of faint light from the grille caught the barrel of a pistol, and then the dirty face of a man Evangeline didn’t recognize.
Reid spun, leveling his own weapon. “Down,” he barked.
Evangeline hooked Toby behind a marble plinth, shielding him with her body. The gunshot that followed was a brutal, flat crack, deafening in the stone-walled space. It was Reid’s shot. The man at the tunnel’s mouth lurched backward, a crimson bloom spreading across his shoulder, collapsing into the darkness. A second man cursed, retreating back into the passage.
“Reload,” Reid muttered, his voice tight. He slapped a new cartridge into his pistol, his movements sure and fast, but she saw him wince as he worked the mechanism with his left arm. A dark, wet patch was spreading on his sleeve.
Damian was already at the oak door. He lifted the heavy iron latch and pulled. It swung open with a groan, revealing a short, stone-flagged vestibule, and then another door, lighter, with newer hinges. He pushed through.
They emerged into a small, windowless room, its walls lined with shelves of candles and vials of oils. A heavy black curtain hung at the far end, separating this space from the main chapel. The air was thick and dusty.
Reid closed the heavy oak door, sliding a thick iron bolt across it. He leaned against the wall, breathing hard, his hand pressed to his bicep. Blood welled between his fingers, vivid and stark against the black of his coat.
“It’s a graze,” he said, before Damian could speak. “Went clean through the meat.”
Evangeline’s hands were shaking. She willed them to stop. “We need to bind it.”
Toby had gone very quiet. He stood beside her, his small hand still gripping hers so tightly she could feel his pulse in her own palm. His wide, grey eyes—Damian’s eyes—were fixed on the blood on Reid’s arm.
Damian was already moving. He pulled a rough linen altar cloth from a cupboard, tearing it into long strips with a violent efficiency that spoke of practice. He gestured for Reid to sit on a low crate.
Reid complied, grimacing as he pulled his coat sleeve away from the wound. It was ugly, a deep gash with torn skin, but the bone was intact.
“You’ve had worse,” Damian said, his voice flat.
“And you’ve given worse,” Reid shot back. A flicker of a hard smile crossed his face.
Damian began to wrap the linen tightly around the wound. The bleeding had slowed to a steady ooze. He worked in silence, his movements precise, the knot he tied clean and firm.
Evangeline watched his hands. Capable hands. Royal hands, that had once held a scepter, now binding a soldier’s war-wound with a communion cloth. Her throat tightened.
“The tunnel to the house is bought,” Damian said, his eyes not leaving his work. “Beckett knew the route. He knew which cottage we were in. That means he’s either had us under watch, or he’s been told. There’s a leak in the network.”
He finished the bandage and wiped his bloody hands on a separate piece of cloth. He finally met her gaze. The green of his eyes was hard as winter frost.
“We are three days from the Crown Council,” he stated. “Flynn Blackthorn will be there to present his forged charter and his false witness. He will be legitimized as the realm’s protector of the southern marches, and I will become a would-be usurper with no standing and no evidence. The king will sign the order for my arrest, and Toby will be handed over to him as a ward of the court. We will be erased.”
Every word was a hammer blow against her ribcage. She knew it. She had decoded the flow of funds, the network of lies that built the Blackthorn’s power. She had known the stakes ever since she’d first deciphered the ledgers and recognized Damian’s signature on an old dispatch, a ghost she’d spent her life trying to escape.
“But you have a plan,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Damian nodded. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a heavy signet ring. “The royal seal. I gave you a locket on the night we were married. You still have it. In its base is a compartment. You didn’t need to know then.”
Evangeline’s hand went to her bodice, where the cool line of the locket lay against her skin underneath her shift. A heavy, old-wrought piece of gold, unadorned on the outside but engraved with a hidden chamber. She had worn it so long it was a part of her. The weight of it suddenly seemed massive.
“If I can bring that seal to the Council,” Damian pressed, “and prove the signature on the treasury ledger that damns Flynn is a forgery by comparing it to the original monarch’s seal—the one my father used to grant the Blackthorn charter—I can break their entire case. The charter is void without a valid royal seal.”
“And the ledger,” Reid said, his voice hoarse. “You’ll need the original.”
“Flynn keeps it in a false drawer in his study,” Damian continued, his gaze fixed on Evangeline. “A drawer triggered by a brass candle-holder on his desk. You decoded his correspondence; you know his hiding habits. I’ll need you to draw the exact location. Every detail you memorized. But you will not go back to Blackthorn House.”
“I can.”
“No.” The word was absolute, final. He looked at her, and she saw the bare, raw fear beneath the iron. “I survived six years knowing you were alive because I didn’t have to watch you walk into that den of wolves. I will not start now. I will go. Reid will be recovered—.”
“I’m fit for a fight,” Reid said.
“You’ll be the diversion,” Damian said. “With a bullet in your arm, you’ll be limping. But if you can ride out at dawn, draw their guards toward the eastern postern gate, give me an opening through the western servant’s entrance—that is how you help.”
“You’ll be walking into a throne room full of armed men,” Evangeline whispered.
“I’ll be walking in with the truth. That’s a weapon they don’t have an answer for,” Damian said, but his mouth was a thin line. He wasn’t arrogant. He was planning his own suicide.
His gaze fell to Toby. The boy was leaning against a stone pillar, his face pale, his small body shivering in the cold of the crypt. The bravado of the afternoon had crumbled. He was just a small boy who had been dragged through a dark tunnel and watched a man bleed.
Damian crossed the floor between them, his movements heavy with a deliberation that was out of place in this quiet, sacred space. He crouched down in front of Toby.
“Toby.” His voice was rough. He reached out, and for a moment, his hand hovered, an awkward, uncertain gesture. Then, Toby’s own small, grubby hand slipped forward and found Damian’s, and held on.
The touch was a shock—a jolt of connection that seemed to stop the air in Evangeline’s lungs. Damian didn’t pull away. He just stared at the small fingers engulfed in his own, his face a mask of brittle control.
“I am going to make this safe,” he said. The words were not a promise to the boy, but a vow forced into the world. “I am going to give you a place to grow that is not a shadow. You will not be hidden. You will not be hunted. That is my word.”
“Papa,” Toby whispered. The word was barely a breath.
The sound broke something in Damian. He pulled the boy into his arms, a fierce, rough embrace, burying his face in Toby’s hair. For a moment, the Prince was gone, and he was just a man holding his son.
Evangeline felt tears prick her eyes. She looked away, the weight of the locket at her throat pulsing with a painful heat. She had to believe. She had to.
A clatter from the outer door—the main chapel door creaking open on its ancient hinges. Voices, low and urgent.
“He’s in there. I saw him go under the cottage. The brat and the woman are with him.”
The bastard Irish brogue of a servant. Not one of Beckett’s men—one of their own.
The peace shattered.
Damian was on his feet in an instant, pulling Toby behind him. Reid rose, swaying, his pistol drawn.
The oak door at the crypt’s entrance didn’t move. It was still bolted from the inside. But from behind the altar, a sound—a harsh grinding of stone on stone. Evangeline spun around. A section of the stone floor beyond the altar was sliding back, revealing a rough, unlit pit. A secret access to the crypt, known only to the chapel’s caretakers.
A face emerged from the blackness. A man in faded livery, a familiar servant from the post house. His eyes were wide, his face working with fear and greed.
“For Blackthorn gold,” the servant whispered, and then he was shoved aside.
Beckett Blackthorn rose from the hole like the devil from hell. His face was all sharp angles and cruelty. He wore a black coat, his hair slick with rain. Filth smeared his collar. He was not the immaculate lord. He was a man who had crawled through the dirt to catch his prey, and he was grinning.
Two armed men swarmed up behind him, pistols level.
Reid made to raise his weapon. A shot rang out—Beckett’s own pistol, fired without aim. It struck the stone wall beside Reid, showering him in chips. Reid grunted, his injured arm sagging, the pistol falling from his numb fingers.
“Don’t be stupid,” Beckett said, his voice smooth and vicious. He stalked forward, his boots echoing on the flagstones.
Damian stood before Evangeline and Toby, an unarmed man in a place of worship. “You’re a dead man, Beckett. You just don’t know it yet.”
“Do I?” Beckett smiled. “I’m standing in the light, my prince, while you cower in a hole in the ground. I think I have the better knowledge of our respective fates.”
His gaze slid to Toby. The boy was pressed against Evangeline’s hip, his small fists clenched, his face white as the altar cloth. He was shaking, but he didn’t cry.
Beckett’s smile widened. “There he is. The little prince. The proof of a false marriage. The threat that must be… corrected.”
He lunged forward. Damian moved to block him, but one of Beckett’s men swung the butt of his pistol, a brutal, sharp crack against Damian’s temple. He went down hard, sprawling across the stone floor. He tried to rise, but the other guard put a heavy boot on his back.
Toby screamed. It was a thin, high, terrified sound. A sound that tore through Evangeline’s heart.
Beckett grabbed the boy’s arm, yanking him away from her.
“No!” Evangeline shrieked, throwing herself forward. She clawed at Beckett’s coat, pulling at his sleeve. She was not a fighter. She was a girl who had grown up in the dark, in service, in fear. But she was a mother now, and her hands were claws.
Beckett shoved her back with a single, brutal push. She stumbled into the stone pillar, her head striking the marble with a sickening thud. Pain exploded behind her eyes, stars blazing, and she slid down to the cold floor, dazed.
“Evangeline!” Damian’s shout was muffled, guttural.
Beckett held Toby by the scruff of his neck as a dog would a rat. The boy was kicking, writhing, biting at Beckett’s hand. Beckett simply shook him, once, hard, and Toby went limp, gasping.
“Your choice is simple, my prince,” Beckett said, looking down at Damian’s broken form on the floor. “The abdication, the ring, and Delacroix in exchange for the brat’s life. Bring them to Blackthorn House by dawn.”
He gestured to his men. They swarmed the room, scooping up the royal ledger and Reid’s discarded pistol. The map. The documents. They were thorough.
Beckett shoved Toby into the dark and laughed. “The abdication, the ring, and Delacroix in exchange for the brat’s life. Bring them to Blackthorn House by dawn.” He turned away, and the tunnel door slammed.