10. Lorcan
LORCAN
How much more did Alistair know? What had Rua told him already?
My eyes flicked automatically toward the bedroom door, my pulse shifting harder beneath my ribs. I half expected the bedroom door to fly open under Alistair’s hand.
I turned back to Rua and forced my voice level. “What did you tell him?”
Rua slid slowly off the bed and took a step toward me. “Where did you really go, Lorcan? You weren’t here. You weren’t with me after the fire. You were gone.”
“Rua. I’m serious. What did you tell Alistair?”
“I texted you.” Her chin wobbled as she took another step closer. “And you didn’t text back. Not once.”
I stood my ground, my hands tightening at my sides. “I was busy. What did you—?”
“Busy?” Her laugh burst out brittle and too loud. “Busy doing what? Skiing?” Her expression smoothed itself flat again. “But your ski boots are still here. Your jacket too. I looked.” Her eyes narrowed. “So I know you didn’t go skiing in Switzerland.”
Fuck. My throat tightened. “Stop snooping through my shite.”
Rua flinched so hard it looked almost physical. “I wasn’t snooping.” Her voice shrank instantly. “I was just…” She hugged herself. “This is the only place in this house that doesn’t smell like him.”
A coil of unease wormed its way through my guts.
Her face crumpled. “He left me. Daddy left me there. In the fire.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I thought I was his favorite. I thought—”
Her gaze snapped upward, her gaze focusing on me with intensity, the sudden shift in her mood unnerving. “And you. You didn’t even look for me.”
I took in a steadying breath. “Rua, focus. What did you tell Alistair?”
Rua stared at me another second before her eyes shifted, catching on something near my sleeve. She plucked something from the cuff of my jacket before I could pull away.
She held it up between them like evidence.
A reed.
“You were at the lake.” Her voice splintered again. “Is that where you’ve been hiding her?”
My pulse slammed beneath my ribs. But I kept my voice even. “Was with Finn at his boathouse.”
Rua dropped the reed and watched me carefully for a second longer. “I didn’t tell Daddy,” she said, her voice leveling out. “At least, not everything.”
I went very still.
Her unblinking eyes stayed fixed on me. “I didn’t tell him about you and her. I protected you.”
My lungs loosened just enough to pull in a full breath. My cover held.
For now.
She had chosen to protect me. But she didn’t do it out of the kindness of her heart.
I studied her. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” She let out a harsh laugh, no humor in it. “What do I want?” She stepped closer, hurt sharpened her tone into something ugly. “You looked right through me, Lorcan. You said her fucking name.”
Silence stretched tightly between us.
Her voice came out quiet. “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to see me.” Her free hand spasmed halfway toward my chest before curling tightly into a fist instead of touching me. “That’s all. Just see me.”
Exhaustion sat heavy in my bones. Perhaps if I was a better man, I’d know what to say to her.
“That’s enough, Rua.” I took her wrist and tugged her toward the door. “I don’t have time for your games.”
Darkness twisted across her expression. “This is because of her, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I opened my bedroom door and nudged her out into the corridor. “I’m tired.”
“She thinks she can have you?” Rua spun to face me in the doorway, her eyes sharp, her mouth lifted in an ugly snarl. “I’m going to find her, Lorcan. I’m going to find where you’re hiding her. And I’m going to hand her over to Daddy myself.”
Fear surged through me hard enough to taste metallic, but I kept my face blank. “Good night, Rua.” I started to close the door.
Rua shoved herself into the narrowing gap before it could shut fully. “She can’t have you. She can’t take you from me. I won’t let her. I won’t.”
I pushed her back out of the way and slammed the door hard enough to shake the frame.
I stayed motionless, my palm flat on the wood, her voice floating through the door, sing-song and deeply disturbing. “I see you when you’re sneaking. I know when you’re awake. I know when you’ve been bad or good. And I’ll be right here. Watching you.”
Rua didn’t know where Liath was.
Yet.
Every instinct in me drew me back to the tower, back to her warmth, her smile, the way she looked at me like I was still redeemable beneath all this cruelty.
But every time I went to Liath, I left a trail behind me. Rua would track every absence from the manor. Every visit to the tower risked leading Rua to Liath.
The thought of staying away from Liath felt like peeling skin from bone, but the thought of Rua finding her hurt worse.
The only way to protect Liath was to stay away from her.
In the cold dawn, my hand slid onto the stone at the base of the tower staircase. I glanced up toward my ma’s old bedroom.
Something my father had said last night had dislodged something in my head. “…they’ve been poisoning you for months.”
I couldn’t stop hearing his voice, echoing over and over. They’re poisoning you. Poisoning him. You’re poisoning him.
The corridor at Lasair Manor blurred at the edges, present and past folding together.
Children’s music tinkled up faintly from the party below.
My ma’s hand tugged urgently at my arm. “Come on,” she hissed. “Before he notices we’re gone.”
Father had gotten me a pony. But Ma didn’t want me to play with him. She didn’t want me to go to my party at all.
My father stepped around the corner, his eyes landing on her, his words cracking through the corridor. “You are poisoning him.”
Ma flinched. She stepped in front of me, blocking my view of his face.
Then she was running up the tower stairs.
I followed her up.
I was angry. So angry. It was my birthday. My pony. My party and she was ruining everything.
“I don’t want to go,” I said as I pushed her.
She stumbled backward.
Then I was leaning out the tower window, looking down.
At her.
Her arms were outstretched above her head, fingers clinging to the ivy on the side of the tower, her legs dangling out over the drop, her face twisted.
Lorcan, no! she screamed at me as she fell.
The thud hit a second later.
Father came up behind me. I didn’t hear him on the stairs.
One second I was alone.
The next he was there, his hand settling on my shoulder while we stared down at the courtyard. At her. Her arm at the wrong angle. I just wanted to fix her arm.
“Your mother was sick,” he said. “She jumped. Understand?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The memory shattered and the corridor at Lasair Manor came back hard around me, stone beneath my palm. My pulse slammed uneven against my ribs and my lungs stopped pulling air properly.
I frowned at the tower staircase, trying to fit the pieces together, certain that something terrible sat underneath.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
My head snapped around.
Rua stood halfway down the corridor watching me.
Christ. She’d been following me.
Her nightdress hung loose around her body. The wall sconces threw a weak glow across her pale gaunt face, dark shadows under her eyes. I bet she’d spent the night at that fucking vent again.
Her gaze tracked slowly between me and the staircase. “What are you doing here?”
My jaw locked. “What do you want, Rua?”
She stepped closer toward the tower entrance.
Toward me.
“I told you, Lorcan…” Her smile cut a line down my spine. “I’m watching you.”
Rua was waiting outside my bedroom door when I’d finished getting ready. She’d smiled up at me, too wide, too bright, as if waiting for me, pressed up against my door was normal.
At breakfast, she sat close enough for her knee to brush mine every time she shifted. She kept plucking invisible crumbs from my sleeve, humming under her breath, watching me instead of her plate.
At one point, she tilted her head in the exact way Liath did when she was thinking, soft and curious and heartbreakingly familiar. But Rua’s version was wrong, hollow, like a childhood drawing of a face… close, but soulless.
My stomach turned. She wasn’t just stalking me. She was imitating what she thought I wanted.
I pretended not to notice. I pretended my pulse wasn’t thundering.
When I tried to leave, she shadowed me down the manor steps, practically breathing against the back of my neck like my own distorted twin.
I’d hoped the ride to Ravenwood would shake her.
She stood behind me while I strapped on my helmet, her fingers twitching like she was fighting the urge to touch my jacket. When I revved the engine of my motorbike, refusing to rise with her in the car, she whispered, “I’ll be right behind you.”
By the time I pulled into the Ravenwood car park, Rua climbed out of the towncar before my engine even cut. Her eyes locked on mine through the visor.
I bit out a curse and strode across the quad, forcing distance, boots splashing through shallow puddles.
But Rua’s footsteps clicked quickly behind me, matching my pace.
One step behind, a shadow that refused to detach.
No fucking escape.
I wasn’t going to get to the tower to see Liath before class like I’d planned. The itch of being without Liath sharpened to pain.
I turned a corner sharply and spun.
She barreled straight into my chest with a soft gasp.
I slammed my palm against the stone wall beside her head in warning. “Stop. Following. Me.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t shrink. Instead, she lifted her face toward mine, inhaling like I was a scent she needed to survive.
“You smell like the lake again,” she whispered. “Like secrets. Like… gray.” Her voice trembled before smoothing out eerily.
A surge of heat clawed up my throat, a violent urge to shove distance between us, to tear myself free from the warped reflection wearing Liath’s face.
I swallowed the impulse, flattening my voice until it sounded dead. “Rua. Go away. Or I’ll have you committed. Again.”
She blinked, slow and glassy, and then almost sweetly. “Lecture halls are that way, Lorcan.” Her gaze flicked past me, toward the direction of the tower, before sliding back with a trembling smile. “Why were you walking this way?”
My pulse slammed once, loud enough I felt it against my ribs. “Mind your own business.”
She smiled. “You are my business.”
My hands shook at my sides as I held back my rage, fear, the clawing need to bolt to Liath.
Rua’s eyes latched on the tremor with a soft, breathy sound. “You’re shaking,” she whispered. “Is it because of me?” Her hope was so sharp it almost cut me.
I pushed off the wall, storming past her with more force than necessary, boots splashing as I cut away from the tower path and headed toward the lecture building.
Rua’s footsteps followed, light, quick, and unshakeable.
She called out, “I’ll never leave you again, my love. Never.”
In the lecture hall, I slid into my usual seat beside Finn, Rafe, and Breezy, shaking rain from my sleeves and trying to ignore how my skin still crawled from my earlier encounter with Rua.
The hall buzzed with pre-lecture chatter, rustling papers, muffled laughs echoing off the high ornate ceilings, but it all felt too loud, too close.
I glanced toward the far door on the opposite side of the hall and cursed that our usual spot was so far away. If I left during the lecture, even to take a piss, it would draw her attention.
But maybe I could slip out during the break, sprint to the tower, check on Liath, and get back before Rua could sink her claws into me again.
Then I saw her through the glass panel beside the door.
Rua stood in the corridor, hands flat against the glass, her face pressed close enough to fog it. Her eyes locked on mine. She lit up in a soft, fragile way that made my stomach twist, like seeing me was the first air she’d breathed in days.
She drifted down the aisle with small, floaty steps, ignoring every empty seat that wasn’t directly in my path.
Then she chose one between me and the main exit and sat, angling her body to face me fully.
Her hands folded in her lap with prim, doll-like precision, fingers perfectly aligned, too still to be normal.
She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. She watched me the way a porcelain figurine might watch a child who’d wronged it.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
Whatever plan I’d had shriveled into dust.