4. Ava
AVA
T he police officer loomed over me, his judgmental gaze flicking between me and the body on the floor. “What happened here?” he demanded.
I opened my mouth to answer, to confess, my body trembling with the weight of the truth. I took a step forward.
But Ty moved faster.
He stepped in front of me, his hand brushing mine for the briefest moment before shoving me behind him. He pushed me hard into Ciaran’s arms, shielding me with his body.
“I did it,” he said, his voice steady, unshaken. “I poisoned him.”
“No!” The word tore out of me, raw and desperate. “Ty—”
“Quiet, Ava.” He turned on me, his glare like a whip, sharp and commanding, forcing the protest to die on my tongue. Then his eyes shifted to Ciaran, whose face had gone ashen.
“Keep her calm ,” he snapped.
And then it hit me—what he was doing.
He was taking the blame.
“Ty, no!” I screamed again, my voice breaking, but it didn’t matter .
Ciaran’s hand clamped over my mouth, silencing me with a firm grip.
“Quiet, Ava,” he hissed, his voice strained, his hold on me anything but steady.
My vision blurred as the officer snapped handcuffs onto Ty’s wrists, securing them behind his back. The metallic click echoed like a death knell in the room. They began leading him away, the officer’s grip firm and unyielding.
“No!” I struggled harder, my voice muffled against Ciaran’s palm.
Ty twisted his head, his gaze locking on me for a fleeting second. “Wait,” he said, his voice sharp and desperate. “I just need to talk to Ava—”
“No talking,” the officer barked, shoving him toward the door.
Ty’s body tensed, his shoulders pulling back in defiance, but another officer grabbed his other arm, hauling him forward like a caged animal.
I felt Ciaran falter behind me, his hold loosening just enough.
I slammed my elbow into his stomach with all the force I could muster. He let out a guttural groan, his grip releasing.
“Ava, no!” he gasped, but it was too late.
I bolted after Ty.
The rain hit me the moment I burst through the mansion’s front doors, cold and slicing, soaking through my thin dress. Red and blue lights painted the sprawling lawn, illuminating the gravel drive and the blackthorn trees lining the estate. I felt like I was drowning in those lights, the colors spinning and blurring as my bare feet skidded against the wet gravel.
“Ty!” I screamed, my voice hoarse, almost swallowed by the storm .
Ciaran’s strong arms wrapped tight around my shaking body, holding me back.
I saw Ty in handcuffs, fighting against the officers who were trying to drag him toward the police car.
Ty shouted at me, eyes wild like a trapped animal, but all I could hear was the roar of blood rushing in my ears.
The crack of the officer’s knuckles against his cheekbone brought sound crashing back in.
I heard officers shouting and rain splattering. For a moment his head hung heavy between his shoulders, most of his weight supported by the men dragging him backward.
But as they opened the door to the police car to shove him in, he lifted his head and found me with his gaze.
His eye was already swollen from the knuckles of the police officer’s brutal fist. But the pain etched across his face was deeper than the darkest bruise.
He screamed, “I love you more!”
“Wake up, Ava.”
A soft nudge pulled me from the depths of sleep, and I blinked groggily, the world outside the car window a blur of dark shapes and scattered lights.
“We’re almost there,” Ty said, his voice low, smooth, and calm in the quiet hum of the car.
I sat up straighter, my heart stuttering in my chest as I looked out the window.
The familiarity hit me like a punch, sharp and disorienting.
The neat rows of grand old Victorian mansions stretched along either side of the street, set back from the road, their facades steeped in history, their wide, sweeping drives flanked by towering birch and oak trees, their heavy wrought-iron gates gleaming in the soft light of gas-style lanterns lining the cobblestone sidewalks.
My stomach twisted, nerves churning as I tried to process the flood of emotions rushing through me. Anticipation, dread, hope—it was all tangled together, suffocating.
It all looked exactly the same. Like nothing had changed in the three months since I was taken.
But everything had changed.
I was a murderer.
I had killed Ty’s father— Ciaran’s father.
I hadn’t meant to. God only knows, I hadn’t. I just wanted him to stop . The tea was supposed to make him sleepy, nothing more.
But I must have put in too many flowers. Too much oleander. Too much poison.
And Ciaran—poor, clueless Ciaran—had taken the tea to his father, unaware of the deadly concoction he was handing over. He didn’t know he was delivering a death sentence.
But I did. I did this.
Did that make me a monster?
The question twisted in my mind, sharp and jagged. I hadn’t planned to kill him. But when I’d thrown up that drugged hot chocolate, I had been too awake.
I had remembered.
And then he’d taken me to the hospital… left me alone for a week.
But then the bruises started again.
I had wanted him gone. Wanted the fear and bruises to end. Deep down, hadn’t I known what I was doing? Hadn’t I known that oleander wasn’t just for sleep? Had I really miscalculated… or had some part of me wanted it to happen?
That night at Mr. Buckley’s farmhouse still haunted me, but I felt no guilt killing the masked men who had come after me.
Self-defense felt… justified. They’d come for me, and I fought back.
I was a survivor. I did what I had to do that night to survive.
With the professor, it wasn’t the same, was it?
They were faceless men.
But the professor was a father to two boys, a complicated man who was tough but who loved his sons fiercely.
I had options, didn’t I? I could have gone to Ty. Told him everything. He would have listened, right?
The professor’s voice crept into my thoughts, cutting through my attempt to rationalize. His low, menacing tone echoed in my head, sending a shiver down my spine.
“My sweet, sweet girl, this is our little secret. Besides, even if you told anyone, no one would believe you.”
The memory tightened my chest, shame and fear swirling together in a nauseating cocktail. I’d been so sure back then that he was right. That if I tried to tell Ty, he wouldn’t believe me.
The professor was his father, after all. A man Ty respected. Looked up to. Loved.
What if Ty turned on me? What if he sided with the professor and not me? What if telling him made everything worse?
I’d been on my own. No one to turn to, no one to trust.
But none of that erased the truth: the professor—Ty and Ciaran’s father, their only other family—was dead. Because of me.
Was that why Ty kept me locked up? Had he been subconsciously punishing me? Had he actually never forgiven me even though he said he did?
Ciaran only told me he’d killed the professor because he’d been masquerading as Ty. But did he know? Could he forgive me?
Could I forgive myself?
And then there was the nagging voice in the back of my mind, cruel and insistent. He deserved it.
The man I’d poisoned wasn’t just a victim. He was a monster. He had hurt me, hurt others, twisted his power into something vile.
Didn’t I do the world a favor? Didn’t I save myself, save Ciaran, save countless others from his cruelty?
I shook my head, disgusted at the thought. That wasn’t justice. That was murder. It didn’t matter what he’d done. It didn’t change the fact that his life ended at my hands. What does that make me?
I glanced over at Ty, seeking something—stability, reassurance, maybe even distraction—but the moment our eyes met, my breath hitched.
He was already looking at me, his gaze steady and intense, even as he drove slowly down the quiet street. No cars. No people. Just the two of us.
The weight of his stare made my chest tighten. Before I could look away, his hand slid over mine.
His touch was warm, grounding, but it only made the chaos inside me worse. He opened his mouth, like he was gearing up to say something—something important .
I couldn’t handle it.
I tore my eyes away, yanking my hand out from under his.
The loss of contact was immediate, but I ignored the pang it brought, reaching for the radio and flicking it on in one jerky motion.
Anything to fill the silence, to avoid whatever he was about to say.
“Ava, you can’t avoid talking to me forev—”
“Shh,” I snapped, twisting the volume knob to drown him out. My stomach flipped as the announcer’s voice cut through the tension.
“…Darkmoor student Marie McConnell, who went missing last week, has tragically been found dead. Preliminary reports from the coroner’s office suggest she was poisoned by a drug derived from oleander…”
The words hit me like a blow, a cold shock spreading through my veins.
Oleander. My foster father’s vile recipe. The Sochai.
This is the Society cleaning up.
My hands clenched into fists in my lap. My stomach churned, nausea rising as the weight of the truth pressed down on me.
If we didn’t take them down, if we didn’t stop them— I’m next.
I glanced at Ty again, but he kept his gaze locked on the road, his jaw tight, his hands gripping the wheel a little too hard.
He was thinking the same thing. I could feel it. The unspoken fear, the urgency crackling like static in the air.
The car slowed as we pulled up to the gates of my mansion in Dublin, the wrought-iron looming dark and silent against the backdrop of the glowing city beyond.
I stared at it, my chest tightening further.
Home.
But the word didn’t feel right anymore. I felt like an intruder, like somehow I didn’t belong here anymore.
My gaze shifted to the mansion next door—the one Ciaran had been living in. Its windows were dark, the porch light extinguished, leaving it shrouded in shadows.
A pang of uncertainty gripped me. Was he still there? Had he waited for me, night after night, hoping I’d come back? Had he been looking for me? Or had he left, given up, moved on?
The thought twisted painfully in my chest, but deep down, I knew the truth.
Ciaran wouldn’t stop looking for me. He couldn’t. No matter how much time had passed, no matter what had changed, he would never give up on me.
He loved me.
Another wave of fear twisted in my stomach, tangling with the other emotions already flooding me.
How would Ciaran react to what happened over the summer? To what I’d done? To me ? Would everything still feel the same between us, or had everything changed for him too?
The car rolled to a stop, and Ty turned to me, his smirk breaking the tension in a way that felt too easy, too deliberate.
“Welcome home, hummingbird.”
The nickname made me blink, caught off guard .
“Why do you call me that?” I asked, my voice quieter than I intended.
His smirk deepened, his eyes glittering with a private meaning he didn’t share. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you,” he said, his tone teasing, maddeningly cryptic.
Before I could press him, he leaned in. His hand found my chin, tilting my face toward his, and for a moment, all I could feel was his warmth, his presence enveloping me, consuming me.
My breath hitched, my lips parting instinctively as he drew closer, the world narrowing until it was just him.
Just Ty.
And as much as I told myself to stop him, as much as guilt and fear clawed at my chest, I couldn’t move.
I didn’t want to move.