24. Lorcan
LORCAN
The sack came off my head, torchlight stabbing into my eyes. I blinked against it while rough hands shoved me forward.
The caves opened around me in layers of black stone and firelight. Flames hissed inside iron brackets fixed to the rock walls while shadows crawled across the cavernous ceiling high overhead. The air smelled damp and mineral-rich beneath the smoke, and voices echoed through the cavern.
I stood with the two other probationary members against the back wall of the chamber. The full member Sons gathered farther forward toward the raised platform up front, their full gold masks glinting in the light.
My gaze caught on the person standing to my left, on the shape of his shoulders and jaw under his probationary half-mask.
Recognition settled uneasily inside me as he turned to face me.
“Montgomery,” I said.
Elias’s mouth curled. “Lasair. Looks like they’re letting anyone in these days.”
I looked him over slowly before answering. “Watch how you speak to your future lord, creatin.”
Elias’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer.
Movement stirred at the front of the chamber and the room quieted immediately.
Alistair stepped forward on the platform, robed like the rest of them, but there was no mask on his face. The Sons shifted subtly around him.
“Tonight marks the culmination of years of work,” Alistair announced, his voice carrying easily through the cavern. “Our expansion plans are nearly complete.”
A low murmur moved through the chamber.
“Our first spring auction has been set for the equinox and invitations will go out to our buyers soon.”
Auction? Unease weaved through me. An auction for what?
Alistair nodded to one of the Sons near us.
“Move it,” he said gruffly, ushering us out into the hallway.
Fuck. I wouldn’t get to hear the rest.
Our guard directed us down a narrow craggy passageway deeper inside the caves. The corridor twisted tightly through the rock before opening into another chamber lined with mahogany desks.
Black paper waited stacked neatly beside gold ink and quills.
“Handwrite the invitations,” he ordered. “Names and addresses are on each desk.”
He stood guard near the entrance.
“We get to do the grunt work, huh?” I said to him. “What’s the auction for anyway?”
He just glared back at me.
I glanced around at the other probationary members who were already sitting in their seats.
I lowered myself into the chair and picked up the quill. The expensive black paper felt thick beneath my fingers. The gold ink glimmered wetly under torchlight while invitation after invitation passed through my hands. I wrote out each name, title, and address.
The scale of it spread outward with every invitation.
Russia.
Dubai.
Colombia.
Brunei.
Men converging from all over the world toward this remote part of Ireland.
To the mysterious spring Auction.
Every completed envelope received a gold wax seal pressed with my signet ring. The C wrapped around the S.
The thorned metal dug into my skin every time I used it. By the time I’d finished the fifth invitation, blood slicked faintly beneath the ring.
The next name stopped me.
Aleksei Mikhailov.
Deargán’s fake Russian cover that he used to get into my father’s drinks evening.
I forced my face to stay neutral and kept my hand moving. Kept writing. But my pulse no longer settled properly afterward.
The Sons limited how much information I had as a probationary member. I didn’t have time to wait to become a full member. I needed access now.
Deargán likely knew more about this fucking auction than I did.
I would not stand for it. We did not need him.
I set the completed invitation aside before standing and walking up toward the guard.
“Bathroom,” I said.
He glanced at me briefly before jerking his chin toward the corridor. “Hurry up.”
I walked out at an even pace. But the moment I disappeared beyond the bend in the passageway, I turned toward the main chamber instead.
Torchlight flickered faintly ahead, voices carrying through the rock. The meeting was still going.
I approached slowly, glancing around, ears perked for the sound of approaching footsteps. The heavy wooden door came into view.
I stopped beside it and cracked it open just enough to see through.
“Should this auction prove successful, we will secure a formal partnership with Briarthorn Academy. They’ve graciously agreed to trial the arrangement and will take delivery of one of our pre-purchased stock and begin the training process immediately.”
Alistair pulled the crimson cover off a tall birdcage-like object and the chamber erupted into a hushed applause.
It was a large human-sized golden cage, bars glimmering in the torchlight.
A creature cowered—
No.
A girl.
A girl cowered against the furthest bars inside. She was naked.
She lifted her head from her hands, tears coating her cheeks.
Oh God. I knew her.
Alistair lifted one hand, the clapping fading instantly. “That is all. Go forth, my Sons.”
“Thank you, Father,” they all chorused back.
Their feet shuffled against the stone floor as they all turned, heads bowed as they filtered toward the exit.
Toward me.
I backed away, glancing down the long hallway. If I went back the way I’d come, they’d see me.
I ducked into a darker passageway, moving away from the crowd as they shuffled out from the hall, their murmurs echoing closer.
I couldn’t go back that way. I could only hope there was another way back around to the other side of the hall. I moved through the caves, torchlight flickering against the wet walls around me, trying to imagine the layout of the caves. I must be nearing the back of the hallway now.
A low voice carried down the corridor ahead and I slowed instinctively.
Another voice answered it, the cold and clipped register triggering recognition in me before I was even near enough to distinguish his actual words.
Alistair.
Something immediately tightened inside my chest. I stepped closer to a wooden door where the voices seemed to be coming from, careful to keep my steps silent.
I stilled completely outside the door.
The first voice spoke again, bitterness clear in his tone. “…given you twenty years. Twenty years. And now the boy takes precedence.”
I recognized that voice from too many Ravenwood assemblies.
Headmaster Bewley.
“There are reasons he must be allowed in,” Alistair replied, his tone utterly unaffected.
Every nerve in my body sharpened. They were talking about me.
“You told me he wasn’t yours,” Bewley snapped. “That she’d made a fool of you. And now you’re handing him everything I was prom—”
The crack of something hard hitting flesh exploded through the room.
I flinched, my breathing going shallow.
Silence followed for one heavy second.
Then Alistair spoke again, his voice hard and brusque. “He is useful to us. But that usefulness has a shelf life.”
Ice slid slowly down my spine.
Alistair spoke again. “This conversation never happened. Understand?”
The response came instantly. “Yes, sir.”
I backed up as the implication of what I heard made my head spin.
“Lasair,” a smarmy voice said from behind me.
Every muscle in my body tightened as I turned toward him.
Elias stood a few feet down the corridor, his eyes glinting beneath the gold half-mask. “What are you doing?”
I straightened, banishing all traces of guilt off my face and shoulders as I held his stare. “It will be my operation soon. I intend to know everything about it.”
Elias watched me for a long moment, torchlight flickering across the sharp planes of his face. His gaze moved to the door beyond my shoulder. “Not sure your father would like to hear you’ve been eavesdropping.”
I saw the calculation already moving behind his eyes. How he could use this. What it might buy him.
Threatening Elias would be the wrong move. He already hated me. He didn’t need another reason to throw me to the wolves.
I had to make him a better offer.
“You could tell him,” I said. “But my father’s getting old. I’ll take over sooner than you think. Wouldn’t you rather ingratiate yourself to the next era of power rather than the one that’s dying? Be loyal to me, I’ll be very good to you.”
For the longest moment, silence stretched between us.
Elias’s expression gave away nothing.
Then slowly, he stepped backward, enough space for me to pass. “After you, your highness.”
I walked by him with my chin up.
But I could still feel his eyes on me like daggers.
I had no idea whether the gamble had worked at all. Or whether he was just biding his time to stab me in the back.
I forced myself to stride back down the corridor even as my head spun violently and the cave walls suddenly felt too narrow around me.
Alistair did not trust me. He never had. The trials, the induction ceremony, every carefully measured promise, all of it had been calculated.
Alistair keeping me close enough to use. Until I was of no use to him anymore and could be discarded.
And underneath all of that sat the second realization. The one that hollowed something out inside me completely.
That I might not be Alistair’s son.
I checked the Ravenwood courtyards twice before crossing them, studying every archway and every stretch of shadow beneath the cloisters.
I paused beneath the stone arch and scanned the dark windows overlooking the grounds, but nothing moved.
No footsteps echoed behind me, and no shape lingered too long at my back.
Every instinct inside me had sharpened painfully after the Sons meeting. They felt bigger now, older and more organized than I had ever fully understood, and for the first time since infiltrating them, something dangerously close to panic kept pressing against the inside of my ribs.
And now, I didn’t have a blood tie with Alistair to protect me.
I slipped up the stone steps toward Liath’s tower room, glancing once more down the spiral staircase before slipping inside.
But the room was empty.
The cold knot inside me tightened immediately. Where was she? Did they find her? Did she do something stupid like go after Nuala herself?
A faint shuffling noise came from upstairs, from Kathleen’s attic.