28. Deargán
DEARGáN
Ikneeled over the boy, my lungs burning from the fight, pain pulsing through my ribs every time I breathed.
The boy lay trapped beneath me, his chest dragging shallow breaths in and out, the paralytic locking his body down.
His furious blue eyes locked on my face and refused to break.
I pressed the knife against the side of his throat.
“Close your eyes,” I said roughly, forcing the words out past the hammering in my chest. “I’ll make it quick.”
He did not. He stared straight back at me, defiant and unflinching.
The same stubborn refusal that used to live inside Maggie every time she challenged the world around her. Every time she challenged me.
Something sharp twisted low in my stomach.
I tightened my grip on the knife.
This was necessary.
This was the only way.
I dragged the blade across Lorcan’s throat, but it felt like a hand was holding me back.
A thin line of blood welled beneath the knife edge before beginning to spill slowly down the side of his neck.
Warm blood coated my fingers. The scent of iron thickened the air.
The cut was not deep enough to kill him instantly like I’d planned.
No matter. He’d bleed out in few minutes.
The boy still did not look away, those pale icy blue eyes staring right back at me.
Maggie’s eyes.
Jesus Christ.
In the corner of my vision, Pie stood motionless in the darkened room, her figure blurred against the shadows.
“Bron, wait.”
Her voice slid through me like a knife between my ribs.
The bedroom vanished.
I stood outside the library, caught between Maggie and my revenge.
Maggie tugged at my arm, the boy at her other side. “Let it go.”
I glared at the library doors, the old man’s voice muffled through the wood.
Anger had festered in my soul for the last five years that I’d rotted in Skellig Mor prison. And tonight it demanded justice.
“Please,” Maggie said, “If not for me. Then for Lorc—”
I ripped my hand free from Maggie’s grip.
The old library door burst open under my hand.
William Lasair spun toward me, older than when I’d last seen him in the courtroom.
As he lied to the judge’s face about me.
As he ruined my life.
Revenge surged through me so violently it drowned out everything else.
I shoved the old man backward against a bookcase, his wide wrinkled eyes fixed on mine, his pathetic pleas bouncing off me.
Terror flashed across his face when I pressed the knife to his throat.
He’d been too frail to fight back properly.
“Bron, stop!” Maggie’s scream tore through the library.
I would not. The bastard deserved it.
I cut, deep and true, right to the bone, no hesitation in my hand.
His vile Lasair blood poured over my fingers. His eyes emptied while I watched.
The library fell silent.
And I’d felt nothing.
I had stood there covered in his blood and felt absolutely nothing at all.
The shouting started. Guards stormed the library before I could escape, hands grabbing me from every direction.
Maggie kept screaming somewhere behind me.
And beside her stood the boy, only four then, clutching tightly to her hand, his wide terrified blue eyes fixed directly on me while the guards dragged me away.
The memory shattered apart. The bedroom rushed back around me.
Lorcan stared up at me.
The same eyes.
The exact same fucking eyes.
Maggie’s eyes looked back at me as though decades had never passed.
Pie still lingered silently in the corner of my vision.
I forced myself to breathe through the pressure crushing my chest.
No.
I knew why I was doing this.
He had to die.
His death would destroy Alistair.
It would destabilize the asylum.
It would give me the leverage to take everything.
And Liath…
Liath would finally come back to me.
My hand refused to move, refused to cut deeper, to end this properly.
I had killed men for less than this.
I had survived Skellig Mor prison. Had twenty years stolen out of my life. Everything I loved had been ripped away from me piece by piece.
This boy’s life was a small price compared to the wreckage left behind.
Maggie’s eyes kept staring back at me.
“No,” I muttered under my breath, though I no longer knew who I was speaking to. “This is the only way.”
I tore my gaze away from Lorcan’s face before the hesitation inside me spread any further. My eyes landed on the mirror across the room.
The pale half-mask had shifted during the fight, revealing the raw red scar tissue of the ruined part of my face.
For one horrible second, I barely recognized the reflection staring back at me.
Not a man.
A monster crouched over a dying boy.
The knife trembled in my hand.