14. Lorcan #2
The melancholy of it hit low in my chest. For the first time I saw past her home-cut hair and quirky hobbies and soft chatter. Beneath all that personality was someone who knew loneliness, someone moving through the world with a hollow place she never spoke of.
That small recognition unsettled me. Watching Nuala now, I understood her more in minutes than I ever had in months. And that silent kinship made the dossier in my pocket feel heavier.
Like spying on her wasn’t just betrayal of Finn, but of the part of myself that Alistair tried to break along with my violin.
At Lasair Manor, the storm inside had settled into a hard knot behind my ribs as I slipped through a side entrance and took the narrow secret passageway that cut behind the main hall.
I didn’t want to risk running into Rua. The old passageway creaked under my boots, stone walls closing on either side, the air cool and damp.
The passageway let out behind a tapestry on the upper landing, close enough to my father’s study that I could already smell his cigars. I pushed the heavy fabric aside and stepped out into the corridor.
Three steps from his door.
I reached for the handle and froze as voices drifted through the wood, snippets of a conversation. No, an argument.
Alistair’s voice came first, clipped and bored and sharp. “…accept it.”
“…strategy is madness,” the other man hissed, words tight and urgent. “…is only a girl…”
The other voice was familiar enough to make something itch at the back of my skull, but just out of reach.
I stayed in the shadow of the corridor, every muscle going tight. If Alistair caught me listening in, this would turn quickly.
Alistair answered in that smooth cutting tone of his. “…is history repeating itself. You remember how that ended.”
“If you just let me talk to him…” the other man shot back. “He’ll listen to reason.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” Alistair said. “She’s been promised as a set.”
“But when he finds out what we, what I have done…”
“By the time he finds out, he’ll be a Son.”
“He will never forgive me.” The other man let out a frustrated noise. “I will not condone it.”
They were talking about a girl. My mind went where it always went now.
Liath.
The weight of whatever the Sons were planning sank in with a slow, deliberate pull that caught under my ribs and twisted until my stomach tightened.
Alistair’s voice hardened in a way I knew too well. “Your loyalty is slipping.”
A tense pause followed, heavy enough to feel through the door. The other man answered in a low growl, “I am loyal.”
Alistair replied, colder, “Then prove it.”
I didn’t catch the reply. But after a beat, footsteps crossed the room, hard and furious, toward me.
I pressed back into the shadows as the other man left, my heart thudding, the angle from where I hid meaning I couldn’t get a look at his face.
I counted to hundred before I stepped out and into Alistair’s study with the folder clutched tight enough that the edges dug into my palms.
I found Alistair bent over a stack of papers, flicking through them. He didn’t look up. Didn’t acknowledge the sound of the door closing behind me.
For a moment I just stood there like a schoolboy waiting for a headmaster to tell him where to stand.
He still didn’t motion me forward. It was like he hadn’t even registered that I’d entered.
A beat of irritation pushed through my nerves. I straightened my shoulders and crossed the carpet toward the desk, keeping my steps steady, trying to hold on to whatever confidence I had left.
I slid the folder across the desk to Alistair, waiting for something in his face to shift. Approval. Interest. Anything.
He flipped it open with a single glance, barely skimming the pages before snapping it shut again. “Adequate,” he said and dropped it onto the desk as if it were nothing.
He didn’t push it back toward me or ask a single question. He just watched me stand there like he was waiting to see what I’d do with the insult, how I’d wear it. His silence didn’t feel passive. It felt deliberate, like he was reminding me who got to define the worth of my effort.
I stood there like an eejit, heat prickling up the back of my neck. I had followed Nuala through half the city, filled in every box, every blank line, squeezed details out of my best friend that made me feel like a fucking traitor, and he couldn’t be arsed to look twice.
I swallowed hard, keeping my face blank even as something low in my chest tightened.
“So…?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Did I pass?”
Alistair didn’t even look up from the papers he was sorting. “If you had failed, you wouldn’t still be standing here.”
That should have comforted me, but it didn’t. Not with how easily he said it.
“And the information…” I forced my voice steady. “You’re not handing it off to anyone. It stays here, yeah? Just between us.”
His eyes finally lifted, slow and flat. “Your concern is noted.” He turned away again. “But misplaced.”
A cold prickle worked its way down my spine.
Before I could ask anything else, he waved a hand in dismissal. “You’ll have your next task soon. Be ready.”
I stood there a moment longer, stupidly hoping he’d say something else, that he’d acknowledge the work or tell me what it meant.
He didn’t.
He had already moved on, rifling through another stack of papers, not sparing me a second glance.
As I backed out the door, he slid the folder into a drawer and locked it with a quiet click that felt too final. Not tossed aside. Stored. For a purpose.
A cold weight pooled low in my stomach.
Whatever he wanted that information for, it wasn’t some assignment.
The information I had just handed him, he had plans for it. It would be used by them. The Sons.
I just had no idea how.
I couldn’t tell Liath about Nuala. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.
I told myself it was to protect her. That this was one distraction she didn’t need right now.
But deep down, an uglier reason curdled my guts.
If I told her, she’d see what I’d become. And she would not love that man.