25. Liath
LIATH
Isat on Lorcan’s lap in my mother’s old tower room while his violins filled the silence between us with soft, melancholy music that made my chest ache. I could feel every rise and fall of his breathing beneath me, and the heat of him soaked through the thin fabric of my nightgown.
I didn’t want to move. God, I missed him. Even now, even after everything.
The memory of Nuala screaming as they dragged her into the van still rushed like poison through me.
I understood why he had done it. But understanding it did not stop it from hurting.
His hands rested carefully against my waist, completely still.
I became painfully aware of how close we were. I noticed the scrape of stubble along his jaw, the faint whiskey-and-woodsmoke scent clinging to his clothes, and the thick muscles of his thighs beneath mine.
I should have slid off his lap already, but I could not make myself do it.
Lorcan glanced toward the folded letter lying face down beside us on the bed.
My mother’s letter.
But he did not ask about it.
My chest tightened painfully because so much sat unsaid between us now. My thoughts drifted back to the letter anyway, to the lines I had reread so many times that the words no longer felt real.
You probably have questions about your father. For your protection, I can’t reveal him. But know I named you after the way I see him.
Lorcan shifted slightly underneath me.
“Have my violins changed?” he asked quietly.
I blinked and looked at him. “What?”
He shrugged one shoulder, but pain flashed across his face before he hid it again. “Now that you hate me,” he said carefully, “does it change the way you see me?”
Something inside my chest twisted hard enough to hurt. “I don’t hate—”
The words stopped halfway out, but his question stayed lodged inside me.
Does it change the way you see me?
My gaze drifted toward Kathleen’s paintings lining the walls, with their wild brushstrokes and violent color, every figure layered with strange hues that felt more emotional than physical.
That was the way my mother saw people. She saw essences instead of faces.
…I named you after the way I see him.
My breathing slowed as I stared harder at one painting near the far wall, a crowded table surrounded by laughing figures with no features or details at all. There was only color.
Recognition hit me so suddenly that my stomach tightened.
The painting in Alistair’s bedroom.
The one I thought Rua painted.
But the brushstrokes had been wrong. They had not carried Rua’s sharp precision.
That wasn’t Rua’s painting in Alistair’s bedroom.
It was my mother’s.
She had painted Alistair in red and gray.
My lungs locked.
Red and Gray.
Rua and Liath.
A sharp gasp tore out of me.
Lorcan stiffened underneath me. “Gray?”
The realization slammed into me so violently that I stopped breathing around it.
Alistair was my father.
The thought sat inside my chest like swallowed glass, sharp and impossible.
Alistair’s blood ran through my veins.
My eyes dropped instinctively toward Lorcan’s hands resting against my waist.
My half brother’s hands.
Horror ripped through me, and I scrambled backward off his lap.
Lorcan stepped forward, reaching for me. “Liath?”
“Don’t touch me.” I stumbled backward while panic roared through my body hard enough to make my hands shake.
“Liath, what’s wrong?”
“The painting,” I said, though the words sounded strange and disconnected. “In your father’s bedroom. I thought Rua painted it.”
Lorcan went completely still.
“It wasn’t Rua’s,” I whispered. “My mother painted it.”
The room tilted around me, everything spinning as the ground felt like it was snatched out from under my feet.
“She saw your father in red and gray. That’s how she saw him,” I said, though my voice sounded distant even to my own ears. “In her letter. That’s why she named us… Rua and Liath.”
I watched the realization move across his face, saw him follow the same horrifying path I had. Something flickered across his expression before vanishing too quickly.
Then his jaw hardened. “You’re nothing like him.”
Oh God. He still didn’t get it. “No, don’t you see? We… you and I are…” My stomach twisted violently. “Oh God. You and I…”
Lorcan grabbed my arms. “That doesn’t matter.”
I stared at him in horror, pulling myself back out of his grasp. “How can you say that?”
“Because Alistair is not my real father.”
Everything inside me stopped.
What?
Lorcan’s chest rose sharply beneath his shirt. “I overheard it,” he said. “At the meeting. I was going to tell you. But it was already too much.”
I stood there in silence, my world still spinning.
He dragged one hand through his hair. “He was arguing with Bewley about my induction. Bewley let it slip that I wasn’t his.”
My mouth parted. “Then who…”
The words trailed off before I finished them because I already knew.
If Lorcan was not Alistair’s, then there was only one other possibility.
Shock rolled slowly through me while I stared at his face. I had been looking at it for months. The dark hair, the sharp line of his jaw, and the press of his mouth whenever he was trying not to feel something.
It all suddenly looked painfully familiar.
I had seen all of it before.
In Deargán.
Father and son.
Both of them. This entire time. Both of them fighting over me.
One of my hands found the metal edge of the bed frame, and I gripped it hard enough for the cold to bite my skin.
“Deargán,” I whispered.
“No.” Lorcan’s expression twisted. “He’s not my father.”
He turned away, crossing to the window before flattening one hand hard against the stone wall beside it.
I did not argue.
I crossed toward Lorcan.
He stayed facing the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want it to be true either.”
He turned from the window, then looked at me for a long moment.
I continued. “You didn’t choose him and I didn’t choose Alistair and none of it—” My throat tightened. “None of it is who we are.”
Lorcan’s jaw moved. “But it’s between us anyway. You. Me. Alistair. Him. And it’s never not going to be.”