37. Liath
LIATH
I’d overheard some nurses whispering to a wide-eyed intern: Sir Arthur Ravenwood, the wealthy and highly religious founder, had converted his newly built hospital into a research facility, desperately trying to discover a cure for his sick wife.
The poor woman had died anyway and he’d been found hanging from the bell tower of the Cill na Caoine, the church he’d built for her.
The authorities had discovered the horrible experiments he’d been performing on women who wouldn’t be missed. Runaways, “fallen” women, women from the poorhouse.
Afterward, Ravenwood had been converted into a college and teaching hospital open to the public. Apparently the sole living heir still owned the grounds, but no one had ever seen him or her.
Maybe the nurses were just trying to frighten the poor intern, but they claimed that the lost souls of the women who’d been experimented on roamed the woods.
Even now, as I slipped through the trees on the sprawling Ravenwood grounds, I swore I could feel eyes on me. But every time I stopped, listening for voices, watching for movement, I heard and saw nothing. Just the winds moaning through the trees.
I hugged my jacket even tighter around me as I made my way back toward the tower.
I had watched Alistair’s car take Lorcan away that morning. I’d stayed hidden among the trees long after the vehicle disappeared. Long after common sense told me to leave, expecting Lorcan to return there.
But he hadn’t.
By the time I’d made my way around from the hospital to the college, the afternoon had started bleeding toward evening. Shadows stretched long between the trunks, and the wind carried the damp scent of moss and rain-soaked bark.
The tower rose through the trees ahead of me. Relief loosened something inside my chest. For one brief moment, I let myself imagine climbing the stairs and finding Lorcan waiting there.
The thought carried me up the stairs and through the door.
The room greeted me with silence.
No Lorcan.
The fire had burned low while I was gone. Orange embers glowed weakly beneath a blanket of ash, throwing just enough light to stain the stone walls a pale gold.
The room felt abandoned.
I crossed to the window and looked out across the courtyard, willing him to appear by the path by the lake. Then further across the lake and to the jagged rooftops of Lasair Manor.
Where was he? Where had Alistair taken him? What had Alistair done with him? Another Sons task?
Or something worse?
I started pacing, the narrow room forcing me into tight circles around the furniture.
I could leave and go find him. I could sneak onto the grounds of Lasair Manor, into his bedroom.
But the risk of being caught was high. If Alistair did not know about us yet, I would be handing myself over to him.
If something had happened to Lorcan, I had to remain free to help him.
One sighting. One person noticing me. That was all it would take.
I stopped beside the dresser and pressed both palms against the wood corner. I hated it, but the best thing I could do for now was to sit still rather than make it worse. I had to trust he could handle whatever the Sons threw at him.
I frowned.
On my dresser, my brush sat slightly crooked. Two perfume bottles had switched places.
And the green bead from the fountain was gone.
Someone had touched my things.
Someone had been here.
A soft noise sounded somewhere above me like the scuff of a shoe.
My head snapped upward and a coil of annoyance wound through me.
Deargán.
Even after I’d told him to stay the hell away. I mean, who else climbed into this tower uninvited?
I headed for the stairs, keeping my feet light as I climbed to the top. I shoved the door open, ready to eat Deargán’s head off.
I smelled wormwood and green anise and everything inside me went cold.
Alistair stood inside Kathleen’s room, holding one of her photo frames.
For a second, my brain simply refused to process what I was seeing.
“Come in, my unlucky daughter,” Alistair said, placing down the photo frame.
Survival slammed back into place. I spun and ran down the stairs, my heart slamming in my throat.
I skidded to a halt.
Two orderlies in Magdalene’s pale-blue uniforms were climbing up toward me, their shoulders filling the narrow staircase, their bodies blocking the only way down.
I backed up, trapped, and they herded me back up into Kathleen’s old dorm room.
The orderlies positioned themselves on either side of the doorway.
Panic clawed upward through my chest as I stood between them and Alistair. Where was Lorcan? How much did Alistair know? What had he done to Lorcan?
I forced myself to swallow it down. I needed to stay calm. I needed to keep Alistair talking. I needed to find out what he knew about Lorcan without outright asking him, just in case he hadn’t found out about Lorcan.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
Alistair smiled. “You really haven’t treated your sister very well, you know. Stealing her things.”
“Rua,” I said, my heart crushing. My own twin betrayed me. “What else did she tell you?”
“You know, I keep underestimating you.” His gaze lingered on me, a hint of what looked like admiration in his eyes. “You’re so much like Kathy, you know? Beautiful. Spirited.” His face softened as he traced the photo of my mother outside the stone cottage.
For one unguarded moment, I did not see Alistair. I didn’t see the man who ran the Sons. I didn’t see the man who beat Lorcan or abused Rua. I didn’t see the man who drugged girls and locked them in cells.
I saw the man who had hung my mother’s painting where he would see it every night. I saw the man who still loved her.
My chest ached and I hated that it did.
“Clever.” His eyes returned to me and whatever had opened in his face snapped shut. “Too clever for your own damn good.”
Something green rolled between his fingers as he held it up between us. “I didn’t realize I’d left anything behind.”
The bead he’d stolen from my dresser. The bead from the fountain.
Oh fuck.
A green bead scattered into the fountain from a broken necklace.
The green necklace hanging at Kathleen’s throat in every photograph. It wasn’t a necklace; it was a rosary.
The broken rosary chain hidden in his bedroom drawer.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
I knew how Kathleen died.
He had drowned her in the fountain. The rosary had broken in his hands while she struggled. He had dragged her body to the lake and had changed the story to suicide. He’d kept what remained of her rosary in his bedside drawer for decades.
I staggered back, my lungs seizing.
Alistair slipped the bead into his pocket and lifted the drowning portrait carefully from the wall with both hands, handling it almost reverently.
He stared at it for a long moment. “You were too clever, my sweet Kathy. But so fucking stupid.”
The painting was not of her drowning in the lake. The lake didn’t have blue lotus flowers.
It was the stone fountain.
And the figure standing on the edge was Alistair.
My breath caught. But how had Kathleen known? How had she made that connection before it happened? How did she know he would drown her in the fountain?
I grabbed for my dresser to hold me up, my head spinning, my legs shaking.
“You drowned her,” I accused.
Something cracked in his expression, revealing an old anger that still burned hot. “She could never have been my wife.” His jaw tightened. “But we could have had a good life.”
He had offered her a place beside him. Not marriage. But the role of mistress and accomplice.
Kathleen had refused.
And he had killed her for it.
“If she had just accepted her place. If she had just done what she was told…” He spun, slamming the painting against the bottom post of the bed. The wood punched through the canvas, straight through Kathleen’s painted face, the sound ripping through the room.
I jerked back, every muscle in my body locking at once. For a heartbeat, I could only stare at him as he recomposed himself into his calm genteel facade.
He was not hollowed out by what he had done. He was not haunted. Eighteen years later, he was still angry at her. He was still blaming her. He was still convinced she had forced his hand.
Any empathy I felt vanished instantly.
“Kathleen had a gift for making men forget what they were.” His gaze drifted around the room once more. “I almost forgot. Almost.”
He turned his cold gaze onto me. “Just like you. I’d spent decades molding that boy. You had him wrapped around your finger in mere days.”
The words hit like punch to my stomach, stealing my air.
Lorcan.
Alistair knew. He knew about us.
No, he can’t know. Rua might throw me to the wolves, but she’d never betray Lorcan.
He might suspect but he can’t know. He was fishing. Well, he’d get nothing from me.
I shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Alistair smirked. “We shall see, won’t we?”