17. Deargán
DEARGáN
The next night I watched from my perch on her balcony until well past midnight.
Lorcan still had not come back. There had been no sign of him on the grounds, no word, nothing. For a man who was meant to be so devoted, he was doing a poor job of staying near her.
He left you alone. Again. He might leave you. But I won’t.
When I slipped in through the window, she was still awake. Sitting up in bed, hair mussed from fingers that had clearly been tugging through it too often, a book lying open and forgotten in her lap. Her head snapped up.
“Deargán…” Her words cut off, mouth flattening. “I told you I…”
“I am not here to fight.” I lifted both hands, palms out in surrender. A gesture I did not offer anyone else. “He left you alone tonight. Again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “He is on a mission. You know that.”
“Does it keep you warm, that mission of his?” I snapped, the words slipping out before I could catch them. I softened my tone. “You hate being alone at night. You always have. I just want to sit with you while you fall asleep. Nothing more. I swear.”
Suspicion flickered across her face, then faded into a bone-deep tiredness that made something in me twist. This tower had felt like a cage to me rather than protection. Now it looked like it was weighing on her, too.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she muttered. “Breaking in whenever you feel like it.”
“If you really want me gone, say the words. But I will just sit on your sill and keep watch. It looks cold tonight, maybe rain coming, but I will stay out there through it all rather than let you spend one moment unprotected.”
Her gaze met mine, then slid away. “Fine. You can stay. But don’t you dare try anything.”
The words stung, but there was something under them. Something like a crack.
“I won’t touch you,” I said. “Not unless you ask me to.”
She sucked in a breath. “I won’t ask.”
I forced a shrug. “We’ll see.”
I settled on the floor beside the bed, between her and the door, my back against the wall. From here I could see the curve of her hip as she turned to face away from me, the shine of hair spilling across her pillow.
A silence fell across the room. But it was not still. It was heavy and thick with static like the air before a storm.
The old urges moved through my muscles, restless and sharp. Climb over her. Hook her leg around my waist. Take the space he had left empty. Remind her how good it was. How good we were. My hands twitched with it, fingers digging into my own palms until they ached.
But I forced my body still. I had lost her trust. I would rebuild it. Then she would choose me.
Breath in. Breath out. Slow. Controlled.
Fuck, learning to sit in the want without acting on it felt like trying to hold a live wire in bare hands.
Her breathing gradually slowed. The tension in her shoulders eased by degrees until they rested loose against the mattress. Her breaths evened, lengthened, sliding into the rhythm of sleep.
My hand moved without meaning to, lifting from my knee toward the edge of the bed. Fingers hovered in the air, inches from her shoulder. Everything in me strained toward that tiny distance.
She had asked me not to touch her.
I let my hand fall back, knuckles hitting the floor harder than necessary.
Teeth grinding, I tipped my head back against the wall. The restraint burned, but there was a strange, painful satisfaction in it too. As if every second I held myself still was proof that I could be something else for her.
Something better. Someone better.
Someone more than the man who took what he wanted and had used her in his plans for revenge.
I pulled out a small spring of black violets that grew wild in the cemetery. They reminded me of her.
“He doesn’t get to have you,” I whispered into the dark as I placed them on the pillow next to her, on the pillow that should be mine. “I’ll figure out how to make you mine again.”
Even if she chose him with her words, I would be the one in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. Until she chose me.
I came back the next night, too.
And still, Lorcan had not returned.
The tower felt quieter, as if it had been waiting for me. She was already in bed when I broke into her room.
This time she did not jolt upright. She rolled onto her back, eyes squinting at me in the dim light.
“You are very stubborn,” she muttered.
“I see he’s not here. Again,” I said, trying to keep the smugness out of my voice. “Has he told you where he is? What he’s doing?”
Her shoulders stiffened but she didn’t answer.
I knew he hadn’t.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said, rolling onto her side to face away from me. “I’m tired.”
“As you wish.” I sat on the edge of the bed this time, my back to the wall, closer than before.
She stiffened as the mattress dipped under my weight. But she didn’t turn around.
Fuck, she was so close. I could reach out and touch her soft hip, that dip in her waist.
The air between us felt electric. Charged. Every nerve in my body lit up, but I forced myself to stay still.
Silence stretched for a long moment. It did not feel empty. It felt full of things unsaid, of all the versions of us we had never been.
I kept wanting to ask her questions, my mouth opening but then shutting because she had asked me not to speak. And I was trying to be good for her. Better for her.
To my surprise, it was her voice that broke the quiet, soft and unexpected. “Do your burns still hurt?”
My first instinct was to lie. The no sat ready on my tongue, the easy, careless brush-off I had used whenever Bas asked about pain. As if admitting it gave someone a weapon.
“Yes,” I said instead, the word scraping a little coming out. “Sometimes it feels like the fire never went out. Especially at night.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered finally.
The apology sank under my skin. “I would burn again,” I said, before I could stop myself. “If it meant saving your life.”
Her hand shifted under the blanket, fingers curling over the edge of the blanket, as if some part of her wanted to reach back for me but could not quite make itself do it.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For saving me from the fire.”
The words slid into a place inside me that had been raw and open since the flames. For a second it was hard to breathe.
My hand moved, inch by inch, across the mattress, across the infinite divide between us, until it rested close to her upper back, bare skin over the thin strap of her nightgown. So close I could swear I could feel the heat of her skin.
If I just reached forward a breath, I’d be touching her.
“What would it take,” I whispered, the question that had been building in me since the fire, since the moment I realized too late what she meant to me, “for you to choose me instead of him?”
She didn’t answer so I kept tumbling on.
“What would I have to do?” I kept my voice low. “How much more would I have to give? How much better would I have to become for you to look at me the way you look at him?”
But her breathing had evened. The tension slipped out of her shoulders. She had fallen asleep, the way she did when exhaustion finally dragged her under.
The ache in my chest spread out, slow and steady.
My mind tortured me with images of her. Her in a small kitchen, hair up, laughing at something I had said, the window cracked to let in sea air.
Her wearing my shirt. Her sitting on my lap in front of a fire that did not hurt, a hand resting on my scarred chest like it belonged there.
Each image felt too clear, too detailed, like memories from a life I had somehow missed instead of fantasies I had no right to.
“You should have been mine,” I whispered. “From the start.”
Her legs shifted under the blanket as her hips rocked and she let out a soft moan. The sheet tugged up along her thighs. Her breath changed rhythm, deepening. Her fingers twitched, slipping under the edge of the covers.
For one raw, stupid, hopeful moment, I let myself believe she was dreaming of me.
Desire twisted through me, sharp and immediate and I clenched my hands on my knees. It would be so easy to slide under the blanket, to mold myself against her, to turn whatever she was dreaming into something that involved my hands, my mouth, my cock.
I reached toward her, fingers shaking. I stopped half an inch from a strand of hair that had fallen across the pillow. Close enough to feel the heat of her, yet not close enough to touch.
“Liath,” I murmured.
Her lips moved. “Lorcan,” she breathed.
The sound of his name on her mouth punched my heart out through my ribs.
For a second everything in me flared white. Pain, rage, something wild that wanted to rip the blankets away, to shake her awake, to force her to look at me, say my name instead.
My hand shot out, catching the first thing it hit on her bedside table.
Glass pressed into my palm. I looked down.
It was a man’s cologne. His cologne. The hint of woodsmoke and musk that clung to her like a fog. The bottle dug into my skin as my fingers curled. I wanted to hurl it against the wall, watch it shatter across the floor.
I set it back down instead, my hand shaking from being so gentle.
Head dropping, I drew in a long breath through my nose and let it out slowly. Once. Twice. A hundred times. Until the urge to destroy thinned out into something colder.
He was in her dreams. Even though I was the one sitting on the edge of her bed, watching over her while she slept.
He had her heart.
I just had the scars.
My gaze drifted back to Liath’s face, soft in sleep now, mouth parted slightly, her hand curled near the pillow, as if reaching for something she could not quite grasp.
“I am trying,” I whispered, the words barely more than breath. “To be better for you.”
Her lashes did not flutter. She did not wake. The only answer was the slow rise and fall of her chest.
“I will not lose you twice,” I said as I pulled black violets from my jacket pocket and placed it on the pillow next to her. “Not to fire. Not to him.”
The promise settled in my bones, quiet and deadly simple.
Lorcan stood between me and the life I saw when I looked at her. If Lorcan was the obstacle, Lorcan would be removed.
It did not have to be tonight. I did not have to rush it. I could wait. Watch. Let him show me his weakest angle.
I would not force her back to me. But coax her. Gently show her the true face of the man who claimed to care about her.
I’d collect proof of the monster Lorcan was. Then she’d have no choice but to choose me.