5. Liath
LIATH
Iwoke to the mattress jolting violently beneath me.
“Oh God, no—”
Lorcan’s voice tore ragged through the darkness while his body thrashed hard enough to shake the bed frame. Sweat slicked his skin despite the winter cold filling the tower room.
My heart was already in my throat, my hand grabbing for his shoulder.
“Lorcan.” I shook him. Shook him harder when he didn’t wake. “Lorcan, wake up.”
His body jerked beneath my hands before his eyes snapped open, his breathing heaving out rough and panicked like he’d been drowning.
For half a second his eyes searched my face without recognition, his blue irises ringed with white, his mouth gaping open. I’d never seen him look so utterly terrified. So completely lost.
Then his expression slammed shut.
Lorcan shoved upright before dragging both hands down his face.
I sat up slowly beside him, placing a hand on his clammy shoulder, blankets pooling around my waist while moonlight cut silver across the tower room. “What is it?”
He climbed out of bed without looking at me, gray sleep pants riding low on his hips, his chest bare and still sheened with sweat from his dream.
The floorboards creaked beneath his bare feet while he paced once across the circular room, tension rolling visibly through his shoulders. His jaw stayed locked so tightly I could see the muscle flexing beneath his skin.
Something about the nightmare had shaken him. Badly.
He crossed toward the chest of drawers near the hearth and yanked one open harder than necessary, rummaging under his clothes.
I frowned. “Lorcan.”
He grabbed something before turning sharply back toward me. He threw a thick bundle of cash onto the covers beside me, green hundred euro notes scattering across the sheets.
“Once I’m gone,” he said flatly, “you need to leave.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Leave Ireland.” His voice stayed cold and clipped. “Go somewhere Alistair can’t find you.”
I shoved the blankets off my lap and climbed out of bed, the loose sleeves of his nightshirt sliding down my arms. “What are you talking about?”
Lorcan crossed his arms tightly across his chest. “It’s too dangerous for you.”
The tower suddenly felt colder. I wrapped my arms around my chest, holding my arms. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him another second before I let out a small scoff. “I’m not taking your money.”
“You need to. You’re a liability.”
“Don’t insult me,” I hissed. “I don’t need this kind of protection and you know it.”
Something pulled at the corner of Lorcan’s mouth. “I can’t protect you from Lasair Manor.” His gaze slid away from mine before returning. “It’ll be easier if you’re far away.”
I watched him carefully. Underneath his cold delivery, something wasn’t lining up.
His nightmare. The panic. This abrupt decision.
He saw something in his nightmare that scared him. Someone dead? Me dead?
“Is this because of tomorrow?” I asked.
Lorcan’s expression hardened.
“You just had a nightmare,” I said softer now. “It’s okay to be nervous.”
“This isn’t nerves.” The sharpness in his voice cut straight through the room. “This is my family.” He took another step back from me. “My mess. You’ll only get in my way.”
My jaw locked. “We said we’re the ones who end it.” I held his stare. “You agreed to that.”
Lorcan looked away, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
I continued. “You don’t get to take it back because you had a bad dream.”
His gaze snapped back toward me. “I don’t need you.”
The coldness in his voice stabbed me like an ice pick. He couldn’t mean that.
Wait. He was trying to wound me on purpose. Trying to force enough distance between us that I’d walk away myself.
The way he did when I bandaged his wounds.
I took a step toward him, nodding. “You’re trying to push me away.”
Lorcan’s jaw tightened, watching me like he might bolt at any second.
I crossed toward him carefully. “Lorcan, we’re better together.”
I reached for him.
Lorcan stepped back before I could touch him. “We were never together.”
I froze, my hand still extended toward him in the cold air, the floor stones barely registering under my bare feet.
His face was hard and cruel, no cracks, no softness left in the wall he’d put up between us. “You were a fling. Forbidden. Taboo. But I’m over it now.”
The words sliced cleanly through my chest as fear moved properly through me for the first time. What if he meant it?
He had been growing more and more distant since the carriage house fire. He’d stopped touching me. Stopped pulling me into his body when we slept. And earlier that evening, he’d barely spoken to me. Barely looked at me.
“Are you…” I tried again, my throat cracking. “Are you ending things with me?”
Lorcan held my gaze, no warmth in it. No apology. “My mind is made up.”
My knees wanted to fold.
“Alistair is my problem,” he said flatly. “Tomorrow, you leave.”
The silence stretched between us.
He held my eyes without blinking. “Don’t ever come back.”
The words hollowed the air out of the room.
For half a second, he held my stare, something at the corner of his mouth pulling tight.
Then he tore his eyes away.
He turned toward the door, his movements stilted, like every muscle was fighting him on the way through it. His shoulders had hunched by the time he reached the threshold. He didn’t look back.
The tower door pulled shut behind him with a final slam.
I stood frozen in the silence.
My hands had gone numb. My fingers wouldn’t quite close. The cold of the stone floor crept up through the soles of my bare feet and stopped somewhere around my knees.
Oh God. This can’t really be happening.
Wait. He was still there. Still standing there on the other side of the wood. He hadn’t left.
Come back. Please, come back.
His heavy footsteps moved down the spiral staircase. Then the door of the room below us opened. Then closed.
Silence rushed back into the tower room all at once.
I slowly looked down at the money on the bed. At the notes we were reduced to.
Heat flooded up into my face and I swept the cash off the bed, notes scattering across the floor like fallen leaves.
I climbed back into bed alone where the sheets still held his warmth.
I pressed my face into the collar of his nightshirt. The faintest trace of him was still there. Woodsmoke, violins, and the warm soap-and-skin scent I had been falling asleep against for weeks.
My first sob tore loose into the pillow.
A hand brushed over my shoulder in the dark.
The sensation dragged me out of sleep, heavy and disoriented beneath the thick warmth of the blankets. For one suspended second, I stayed trapped between sleep and waking. Until fingertips glided across my wrist.
Someone was touching me.
Lorcan. He’d come back.
I jerked awake, already reaching for him.
Moonlight spilled silver through the tower windows. The fire in the grate had burned low, leaving the tower room drowned in shadows and soft orange embers.
The bed beside me was empty.
Lorcan was still gone.
A stab of pain sliced through me again at the memory of our fight. I must have cried myself to sleep.
But if it wasn’t Lorcan touching me…
Cold prickled across my skin.
I pushed myself upright slowly, the blankets slipping down my body while the strange crawling sensation lingered beneath my skin. My chest felt tight, my heartbeat galloping like something had followed me out of the dream.
Movement caught my eye. A gray moth fluttered across the room toward the moonlight coming in through the window.
I frowned as I watched the moth flutter toward the window, the powdery wings tapping softly against the glass, begging to be released from this stuffy enclosure. Seeking freedom.
Something in my chest pulled painfully toward her.
I am the gray moth.
I slid from the bed. The stone floor bit cold against my bare feet as I moved toward the glass.
Outside, Ravenwood slept beneath mist and moonlight.
I opened the window to let her out, pulling my shoulders in against the bit of cold that blew in from the opening. The moth landed on the window latch before lifting again, fluttering upward, out of the window and up.
I leaned out the window and followed it higher.
Right to the dark peak of the Ravenwood tower disappearing into the mist.
Be free, my little gray moth.
Something shifted in my head, like dirt slipping off the edge of something long since buried. Unease curled through me as I tried to grasp for it.
Only when an icy wind lashed through my bones did I shiver, and I pulled my head back in.
As I closed the window, my gaze went out across the lake, like a black mirror.
I went still.
There was something white in the water. The moon? No, the moon’s reflection was across the water. This was closer to the lake’s edge.
I peered closer, wiping the condensation from the window from my breath to clear my vision.
It was a figure floating in the water, her white nightgown and long dark hair drifting around her like petals.
Oh God. She was drowning.
For a moment the black water of the lake closed up around me, an icy chill gripping my body, dragging me under.
“No—” The word tore out of me. I spun and bolted for the door, throwing it back open with a bang against the stone wall.
The tower staircase blurred beneath me as I raced downward barefoot in Lorcan’s oversized shirt. My hand skidded against damp stone walls as panic punched through my ribs.
“Liath!” Lorcan’s voice echoed somewhere above me.
I ignored him and kept running.
The heavy front doors yielded open beneath my hands. Winter air sliced into me, freezing my lungs while dew-soaked grass slipped beneath my feet.
The grounds were silent except for the wind.
I sprinted through the courtyard, racing out past the silent stone arches toward the lake.
Reeds slapped against my bare legs, my cold muscles aching at the sudden burst of effort, mud splashing up my calves.
I came up hard at the bank, breath skidding in my chest, my eyes raking the water for her. I pivoted, looking up and down the bank, my feet sinking into the cold mud up to my ankles.
She had been right there. Right at the edge.
The softest brush of lavender hit my nose. A faint melody threaded through the back of my skull. Not a full song. Just a few trembling notes.
But the sharp scent of lake water and wet earth swallowed it before I could be sure.
“No, no, no—”
I stepped forward into the icy water, the shock of it punching the air out of my lungs. I gasped but kept going, the water rising past my knees, reeds tangled at my calves. I parted them with both hands, dragging them aside, looking for fabric, looking for hair, looking for skin.
The water was empty.
Strong warm hands grabbed my arms, pulling me back out from the water.
I gasped against the suddenness of it.
“Gray.” Lorcan’s breathing came hard behind me as he carried me back through the reeds. He set me back on the grass and turned me toward him, eyes sharp with alarm as mist dampened the dark strands of his hair. “What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“There was a girl,” I said around lungsful of air. “In the lake.”
His gaze searched the water. “There’s nobody there.”
“She was drowning.” I turned toward the reeds. “I saw her.”
Lorcan went still, his brows pressing in as he studied me carefully. Too carefully.
The cold started sinking deeper beneath my skin.
A face at the window. Imagined hands on me as I slept. Hearing voices. Seeing drowning girls that weren’t there.
My pulse stuttered. Was I losing my mind?
“Gray.” Lorcan’s grip softened, his voice lowered. “Guilt can make you see things.”
I stared at him, trying to read the ghostly flickers behind his eyes.
“My ma was everywhere after she died,” he said quietly.
Something inside my chest tightened. “What?”
Lorcan pulled me closer and tucked me under his chin.
I melted into his warmth, only realizing then how icy my limbs were. I curled one fist in the front of his shirt, the other gripping his firm bicep, my fingers digging into him through the fabric.
His hands slid around me, one hand spread wide across my spine, the other locked at my waist, locking me in against his bare chest.
An ache flared from deep inside me, from underneath the wreckage of the fire, an ember waiting to catch alight.
God, I missed his touch. Missed this. Missed him.
I slowly tilted my face up, my lips brushing up his neck, my breath catching on the way as his pulse kissed me back. A shudder went through his body and his fingers dug into my flesh, a low vibration sounding deep in his throat.
I kept going, brushing my lips against his jaw, drawn toward him while something bruised and frightened held tight inside my chest. Wanting him felt dangerously easy. Trusting what came after did not.
Close the distance. Take it back. Take all of it back.
Hours ago he had told me to leave the country. Hours ago he had said he was over it. But his pulse was hammering against my mouth and his hand was locked around my back like he couldn’t let go even if he tried.
Please. Take it back.
He pulled back slightly, his brows pressed together, something raw and broken in his eyes. His mouth was inches from mine. Close enough that I could feel his next breath against my lips.
Something shuttered in front of his eyes.
“Jesus, Gray, you’re freezing.” His voice came out low and rough, turning his head as he said it, his mouth angling away from mine, his hand at my spine moving up to rub warmth into me.
I dropped my eyes. Had he pulled away because he wanted to? Because his don’t ever come back still lived in him? Had we truly destroyed us?
He started leading me back to the tower, his arm around my shoulders, pressing me into his side, his nearness making my head spin along with what he’d said.
I glanced up at him, my fingers digging into his waist. “What did you mean… about your mother?”
His lips pressed before he let out a breath that huffed a white cloud around us.
“I’d see her. Standing at the foot of my bed.
Watching me from windows. Disappearing around corners.
I kept hearing her, too. Her voice, whispering to me at night.
Her violin playing, pulling me out onto the grounds, toward…
” The corners of his mouth turned down before he swallowed it back.
My mind tumbled over. Were my hallucinations born out of grief? Of guilt?
I glanced up at Lorcan, his jaw set and his gaze fixed forward as we passed under the courtyard arches. “Why were you guilty over it?”
His step faltered before his strides steadied again. He wouldn’t meet my eye. “Just leave it.”
I shouldn’t push, sensing he didn’t want to talk about whatever it was that was causing his jaw to work.
But I had nothing left to lose. I had already lost him.
“No.” My voice was filled with bitterness. “If you’re going to ruin us anyway, at least give me that.”
He halted so abruptly I jerked back, his muscles locking beneath my hand. Something violent pulled across his face, twisting his mouth tight before his eyes shuttered like he was bracing for impact.
“Because I killed her.”