3. Deargán
DEARGáN
In Rua’s cell, the heat and the walls closed in around me. Liath’s voice screamed my name from somewhere beyond the stinging smoke. From somewhere I could not reach anymore.
“Get vengeance for me,” I cried out.
There was a loud crash as part of the ceiling collapsed. I flung my arms up over my head.
A beam slammed across my chest, knocking me down, pinning me to the floor, the burning wood searing like a brand across my torso and the side of my face.
A scream punched out of me.
A sudden burst of white light consumed me as death came for me.
Fuck. I’d been so wrong. If I had never sent her into Alistair’s house. If I had pulled her out the night that boy started sniffing around Magdalene. If I had taken her out of Ravenwood instead of digging us both in deeper.
I should have let the revenge rot.
If only.
I’m sorry, Liath. I should have chosen you.
I stared into the light and waited for death.
But the fire kept stinging my skin, the smoke kept filling my lungs. There was no peace. No oblivion.
The light faded, sharpening at the edges into daylight pouring through a crack in the far wall, a hole at ceiling height, big enough for a man to crawl through, for me to crawl through. If I could just reach it.
I had to get out. She wasn’t safe. If Alistair learned Liath was still alive, he’d come for her.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not after everything. Not after I had been the one to throw her into his crosshairs.
I shoved at the beam with everything I had left.
It wouldn’t budge. The roof groaned somewhere to my left, warning me that I didn’t have much time.
I tried again, my palms blistering on the burning wood, a roar tearing out of me. The beam shifted an inch. I twisted and kicked, dragging my hips out from under it before it could settle again.
My legs pulled free. I scrambled to my feet, everything in my body aching, my skin on fire, and raced to the corner.
Underneath the hole was a pile of the crumbled stone wall. A pile just tall enough that I might be able to scramble my way up to reach the hole.
I clawed at the stone, screaming as my palms seared, skin sticking to the blistering surface. But I didn’t stop. The pain meant I was still alive.
Halfway up, the heap of stones betrayed me, loose and slick with ash. I slipped, the world pitching, and slammed back onto the charred floor. Air left me in one ragged cough. For a second the world narrowed to burning and bruises.
I saw Liath’s face the way it had looked when she screamed at me not to die.
“Not yet, little doll,” I rasped, pushing myself back up to my feet, every part of my body screaming in pain. “I’m not giving up yet.”
The ceiling groaned above me. Any second now and the whole building would collapse on my head.
I had one more try in me. One last push.
I braced, counted under my breath, then threw myself upward, pushing up against the stones.
My fingers hooked the jagged edge of earth and grass. The skin on my knuckles split, blood smearing the dirt. I pulled… just an inch more… then slipped.
The world tilted backward into fire.
A strong hand caught me. Fingers locked around my forearm and dragged me upward.
For a breath I thought I’d been saved by an angel.
Then the world tilted and pain exploded across my torso as I hit the ground outside. The grass was cold against my burned skin, cool enough to make me gasp as he pulled me all the way out. He didn’t stop dragging me until we were clear of the burning building.
I rolled onto my side, coughing, the world tilting. My rescuer’s silhouette stood above me, broad shoulders, dark hair, backlit by smoke and sun.
I peered up at him. “Who…?
But the pain and dizziness took over.
Everything went black.
The smell of antiseptic, sharp and chemical, stung my nose, then underneath was wax, wood-rot, and the hint of warm, spicy frankincense.
My body felt wrong. Too still. Too heavy. When I tried to move, pain bloomed across my skin like fire rekindled. Bandages tugged. My breath scraped through my throat, dry, rough.
“Liath,” I choked, the words barely formed.
“Welcome back.”
The voice came from somewhere farther in the room. Low, amused, threaded with a kind of practiced calm.
I struggled to focus on him, but my head was still so damn fuzzy.
“Liath?” I whispered again, every syllable tearing at my throat.
His footsteps crossed bare floorboards until he stopped by the bed I was lying in. “She’s safe.”
Relief hit like morphine. I let out a sound between a laugh and a sob.
He leaned in, and the lamp threw half his face into shadow. Intelligent blue eyes cutting through the dim like knives. Dark hair. Dangerous-looking tattoos climbing the side of his neck. That same arrogant smirk I’d seen before.
“You?” The word rasped out.
The skeleton-masked man I’d caught watching Liath at the bonfire party.
Bas. Pronounced bawss. Death in Irish.
The one who’d offered help. Help I’d refused.
Apparently, he’d helped anyway. He’d pulled me from the fire.
“You’re welcome,” he said with a smirk. “I make a damn fine nurse even if I do say so myself.” Then he paused, pursing his lips. “Although, Nurse Death doesn’t sound great, does it?”
I managed a hoarse scoff. “Fitting. I feel like death.”
My vision cleared enough to take in the room.
A slanted roof rose above me in heavy black timber beams, water-stained and warped.
The walls were unpainted stone. At the far end of the attic, a vast circular window stared down on us, its stained glass panes set behind the iron skeleton of clock hands that had stopped at half past three some time ago.
Colored light bled through the mosaic and onto the bare floorboards in soft patches of red and gold.
A wrought-iron spiral staircase corkscrewed up toward what I assumed was the bell tower above. We were in the attic room of a church.
I knew this place. Cill na Caoine. The Church of the Keening.
The bells hadn’t rung since I was a boy.
It stood abandoned on the edge of the Ravenwood estate. Locals refused to step foot on the church grounds again after a girl had been found sacrificed on one of the tombstones. Cursed, they whispered. Haunted, they said.
Whatever Bas had done to make it livable, he’d left the bones of it alone.
Pushed up against the stone wall behind him, a bank of computer screens cast blue light across his face. Surveillance feeds running on every one. The faint hum of hardware threaded underneath.
“I figured you’d be safer here,” Bas said, dropping into a chair beside the bed. “A hospital would have made it too easy for Alistair to finish what he started.”
He glanced at the screens, their blue glow like watchful eyes. “I’m watching the Garda’s patrol feed and body cams. I moved you before anyone could get a whiff. They won’t find any survivors.” His casual competence was chillingly thorough.
I studied him more closely. He was young. Mid-twenties maybe. But there was something old in his eyes. That kind of darkness that only came from surviving hell.
Bas had seen things. Lived through things that might have killed others.
There’s a reason they call him Death.
Now that my vision had cleared, I realized there was something wrong. I could only see from one eye. My right side burned. The world cut in half.
I lifted a trembling hand to my face, my fingers brushing against the bandages slung across my head. I glanced down at myself, bracing for the worst.
I had bandages all over me, over skin that itched and stung. There was an IV drip coming out of my right arm.
I tried to move, to sit up, but my head spun with vertigo, my body racked with shallow tremors, my joints stiff. My skin felt tight and tender, pulling at every movement.
“Fuck. Don’t try to get up yet.” Bas rushed forward, gentle hands pushing me back down to the pillows.
I winced as I collapsed. My labored breathing was like inhaling through sandpaper, sharp, dry, metallic.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’ve literally just come out of a coma.” Bas reached behind me and shifted the pillows.
The shame of needing his help cut deeper than the burns.
“How bad?” I forced the words out.
“You’re alive. That’s the good news,” Bas said. “I mean, I am a literal genius. Practically earned myself a medical degree in the last week. But I’m not God…”
I scowled. “Just give it to me straight.”
He hesitated, then his voice went clinical. “Extensive burns. Smoke inhalation. You might not get full use of your right eye.”
The details didn’t matter. Liath did.
“I need—” I choked and burst into a coughing fit, my lungs tightening like they were being squeezed into a vise.
“Smoke inhalation,” Bas said as he held up a glass of water, the straw pressing against my cracked lips. “Your airways will still be tender.”
The cool water felt merciful against my cracked throat as I sucked it down. Then I slumped back against the pillows. God, I was so tired.
“I need to get to Liath.” The words came out slurred, desperate.
“You’re not going anywhere. You’ll need time. Physical therapy, rest, antibiotics.”
“Where is she?”
Bas hesitated. “Yeah… about that—”
Desperation surged through me. I grabbed his collar before he could finish, ignoring the pain ripping across my arm. “Where. Is. She?”
He didn’t push me away, even though he could have done so easily. A look of knowing and the ghost of pain flashed over his face. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be… passed over.”
My fingers slipped from his collar as betrayal slammed into my chest, hollowing me out. “Lorcan.”
I could see that fucking boy touching her, whispering to her, holding her while I burned. My pulse roared as my heart blackened and I saw my hands around his throat.
“He’s useful… for now,” Bas said after a beat. “He’ll keep her safe. You, however”—he cocked his head—“need to recover before you can make your next move.”
“I died for her,” I said, the words quiet, deadly. Waking up alive to find out she was in his arms felt like being set on fire again.
Bas didn’t answer. He just watched me.
I forced myself to a seat, ignoring the bandages pulling at my skin. This time Bas didn’t move to stop me.
I saw nothing but red in front of my eyes. Red and smoke and Lorcan’s face.
Liath was alive. Lorcan was with her.
My mouth tasted like ash. The idea of her in Lorcan’s arms made a terrible new hunger unspool in me.
He thought he’d won.
But I was going to take her back.
Then I would use him to destroy Alistair.