Chapter 15 Requiem for the Faithless #3
Padraig’s mouth keeps moving. Marriage. Alliance. How neat it all looks on paper. How the Malloy girl finally learned her place once a ring was slipped on her finger. How soft I’ve gone. How predictable.
He steps closer. Then closer still. Close enough that I can smell the smoke on him. Close enough that he thinks this chapel still belongs to him.
That’s his mistake.
I move. Fast. Clean. No warning. My hand fists in the front of his coat and I haul him back, twisting hard so his spine slams into my chest. The violin string comes up and around in one smooth, practiced motion, sliding beneath his jaw. I cross my wrists and pull.
The wire sings. Padraig Keane chokes. I force him to turn, using his body like a shield, dragging him so he’s facing the two men flanking the doors.
“Careful,” I murmur into his ear, calm as prayer. “You’ll tear it if you struggle.”
His hands fly up, clawing uselessly at the string. His boots scrape against the stone as panic finally cracks through his bravado. Behind him, his men react. Two guns come up. Two sharp inhales.
Padraig coughs out a laugh—wet, strained, still smug even as his face darkens. “See?” he rasps. “Three of us. Two of you.”
I tighten the string just enough to steal the rest of his breath. Finn steps in beside me—silent, lethal, exactly where he needs to be. I don’t look at him. I don’t have to. His presence is iron at my side, steady and unflinching.
Padraig laughs again, thin and desperate, convinced numbers still matter. The chapel goes still. Candles flicker. Stone remembers. And I hold him there—wire cutting into skin, his two men frozen with their guns raised, waiting.
“Funny thing,” I say quietly, the wire biting deeper as Padraig’s breath starts to hitch, “about men like you.” I lean closer, my mouth just beside his ear, my voice meant for him—but I don’t bother lowering it. “You always underestimate the woman standing in front of you.”
His pulse jumps beneath the string.
“My brother did everything right,” I continue, calm as confession. “He stood between me and the blade. Between me and the bullet. Between me and men who thought I was expendable.”
Padraig makes a choking sound that might be a scoff.
“And still,” I murmur, tightening my grip, “you all keep making the same mistake.”
One of his men panics. The gun comes up too fast. Too eager.
Too stupid. I move without thinking—yanking Padraig back hard, twisting him fully into my body as the shot cracks through the chapel.
The bullet punches into Padraig’s shoulder instead.
He screams. Blood sprays hot across my knuckles, across the front of my dress, across the stone that has already seen worse.
“Don’t,” Finn says, voice like iron slamming shut. The second man freezes, gun shaking in his hands. “Don’t fire again unless you’re ready to watch your boss die in front of you.”
Padraig wheezes, the laugh tearing out of him even as blood pours down his arm. “They’ll kill you,” he gasps, voice breaking now, panic finally winning. “Both of you. Before I bleed out.”
I feel Finn shift beside me—steady, lethal, unmoved. And I laugh. Soft. Genuine. Almost amused. I lean closer, the string cutting deeper into his throat as he struggles to breathe.
“Is mise an bhás a shiúil chugat,” I whisper in Irish. I am the death that walked to you.
Padraig chokes out a laugh that’s more blood than breath. “You can’t,” he rasps. “You won’t. You touch me and my family will burn Belfast to the ground.”
I smile.
“That’s the thing about families,” I say softly. “They always think they’re untouchable.”
Footsteps echo behind us. Measured. Familiar. I don’t turn. I don’t need to. My da steps out from the shadows at the back of the chapel, coat dark, eyes colder than the stone beneath our feet. A gun rests easy in his hand—no tremor, no hurry. Padraig’s eyes go wide.
I tilt my head, almost thoughtful. “Oh,” I say lightly. “Would you look at that.”
Finn shifts closer to my side, gun steady. My da raises his.
“Three,” I murmur, tightening the string just enough to make Padraig gasp, “and three.”
The panic finally hits him. Real. Unmistakable. And delicious. My father steps fully into the light, the chapel candles catching the silver at his temples. He doesn’t look at me first. He looks at Padraig.
“Is mise an bhás a shiúil chugat,” I whisper in Irish. I am the death that walked to you.
Padraig chokes out a laugh that’s more blood than breath. “You can’t,” he rasps. “You won’t. You touch me and my family will burn Belfast to the ground.”
“You lied,” he says mildly. Not loud. Not angry. The kind of voice that has already decided how this ends. “About the sale. About the signatures. About whose blood gave you the right to stand on Malloy land.”
Padraig swallows against the string at his throat. It makes a thin, pathetic sound.
“The Thorns of Belfast don’t sell,” my father continues. “We bury. We defend. We outlast.” His gaze flicks briefly to Finn—acknowledgment, respect—then back to Padraig. “And we don’t take kindly to men who think ink on paper means more than bones in the ground.”
He finally looks at me then. Not with worry. Not with regret. With pride.
“I raised my daughter,” he says, voice steady as stone, “to hear lies the way other people hear music. To know when a man’s mouth is running faster than his courage. To cut clean when it matters.”
Padraig’s breath stutters. “She—she’s just—”
“Careful,” my father warns softly. “You’re speaking about a woman who survived your best attempt at erasing her.
” He takes a step closer. “I didn’t raise her to be gentle,” he goes on.
“I raised her to be precise. To know that monsters always underestimate girls who learned violence before they learned fear.” His eyes harden.
“And I raised her to finish what men like you start.”
Silence crashes down around us. Padraig is shaking now. And I tighten the string. My father exhales slowly. Not relief. Not fear. Acceptance.
“This is on me,” he says, voice carrying through the chapel like a verdict. “The marriage. The timing. Selling you into it like a bargaining chip.” His jaw tightens. “I raised you for violence and then pretended I was shocked when you became good at it.”
Padraig wheezes beneath the string, forgotten now.
“I taught you how to survive,” my father continues, eyes never leaving mine. “But I didn’t teach you how to be a daughter. That’s my failing.”
My grip tightens reflexively.
“I knew,” he says quietly. “Knew that night wasn’t Finn’s doing. Knew the lies were moving faster than truth. And I let it stand.” His voice roughens, just barely. “Because chaos made room for power.”
Finn stiffens beside me.
“And because,” my father adds, “I thought if I bound you to him, it might keep you alive.”
The words land wrong. Too late. Too sharp.
“I don’t get to rule anymore,” he says. “Not after this. Not after what I turned you into.” He nods once—decisive. Final. “It’s your turn now. You and him. Together.”
My breath catches. He looks at me fully then—not as an asset, not as a weapon. As his daughter.
“If anyone deserves to end this,” he says softly, “it’s you.”
The chapel tilts. My hands tremble around the string. For the first time since we walked in, I don’t know where to stand inside my own body. Anger, grief, loyalty, hatred—everything collides at once. A tear slips free before I can stop it.
I hate it. I don’t wipe it away. And the silence that follows is heavier than any gunshot.
Padraig can’t help himself. Even choking, even bleeding, he finds one last shard of cruelty and spits it between gasps. “Look at her,” he rasps. “Tears at last. Took a wedding and a leash to break the Malloy girl.”
The word leash lands. Everything snaps. One of his men lunges, gun coming up too fast—aimed not at me, but at Finn.
The shot cracks. My father fires in the same breath.
Clean. Efficient. The Keane man drops before his finger finishes the pull.
Finn answers the second threat without a sound.
One shot. Center mass. The other man collapses against the chapel wall, sliding down stone that’s already memorized blood.
Silence roars back in. Smoke hangs low. Brass rolls and settles. I still have Padraig. The string is tight at his throat, his breath sawing thin and frantic. He jerks once, then stills, eyes wild, finally understanding that the numbers are gone. That the noise is over.
Finn lowers his gun, steps closer—close enough that I feel him at my back again. Solid. Present. My father doesn’t move. And I don’t let go.
I tilt my head, breath steady, hands calm despite the tremor still living somewhere deep in my bones.
“Any last words?” I ask him.
Padraig’s eyes are bloodshot now, bulging, rage burning brighter than fear. He spits at my cheek. Misses.
“Rot in hell,” he chokes. “You’re nothing but a bastard girl in borrowed power.”
I laugh. It surprises even me—soft at first, then sharp and bright, echoing off the stone like a note struck true. I lean close, my mouth brushing his ear as the violin string bites deeper into skin.
“Is mise iníon na nDealg,” I whisper. I am the daughter of the thorns.
His breath stutters.
“Malloy by blood,” I continue, voice low and reverent. “O’Callaghan by choice.” I tighten my grip, the wire humming faintly. “And queen by right.”
I draw the string back. Slow. Deliberate.
The E string sings as it cuts—thin, merciless, made for precision.
It sinks into flesh with a sound that makes my stomach twist and my spine straighten all at once.
Padraig claws at my wrists, boots scraping uselessly against the stone as the wire saws deeper.
I don’t rush it. I don’t look away.
His gurgle turns wet. Desperate. Ugly. His body jerks once, twice—then slackens as the string bites through what’s left holding him upright. Blood runs hot over my knuckles. I pull. Hard. Final.
Padraig Keane collapses at my feet, the violin string snapping free and recoiling like a severed promise. His body hits the chapel floor with a dull, unceremonious thud—no heroics, no witnesses worth impressing.
Just stone. Just blood. Just the end.
The chapel goes silent again. I stand there, chest rising and falling, fingers still curled around the string that once made music and now makes history. Finn doesn’t speak. Neither does my father. And somewhere deep in the bones of Belfast, something old and rotten finally stops breathing.
The silence afterward is heavier than the violence. It presses into my ears, my ribs, the hollow behind my eyes where grief used to scream. The chapel breathes around us—stone damp with blood, candles guttering low, saints cracked and watching like they always have.
Useless. Witnesses only.
I loosen my fingers at last. The broken E string slips from my grasp and coils on the floor beside Padraig Keane, red and gleaming, like it’s proud of itself.
I should feel lighter. I don’t.
This doesn’t bring Ciaran back. It doesn’t give me seventeen again. It doesn’t unteach the way love learned to sound like gunfire in my bones. But it does something else.
Finn’s hand finds the small of my back. Not possessive. Not protective. Present. Steady. The kind of touch that says I see you standing in it and I am not afraid of you.
Behind us, my father exhales. It’s a small sound. Broken. Human. I don’t turn around. That man does not get my face tonight.
Instead, I lift my violin again. The body is stained now, varnish darkened where blood kissed the wood.
I should mourn it. I don’t. Instruments are meant to be played.
So are girls like me. I raise the bow. The first note shivers through the chapel—low, raw, unpolished.
Not a lament. Not a prayer. A reckoning.
The sound of Belfast streets at dawn. Of doors locking.
Of power shifting quietly when no one is looking.
This is not the song I played for a boy I loved. This is the one I play for the woman I survived into. The melody coils upward, sharp and aching, threading itself through stone and smoke and memory. It does not ask forgiveness. It does not beg absolution.
It claims.
Finn watches me like I am a cathedral rebuilt from ash. Like he understands that this is not grief anymore—it is inheritance. And he stands at my side not as my keeper, not as my shadow, but as my equal.
When the final note fades, it does not echo. It settles. I lower the violin. Padraig Keane lies cooling at my feet. My father stands somewhere behind me, alive and ruined and waiting.
And I—I stand in the chapel where it all broke, breathing, unbroken, bloodied but upright. This didn’t fix what they took from me. But it marked the beginning of what I will take back.