45. Liath
LIATH
Istared at the black eye of Alistair’s gun, pointed right at me.
Then at his glare, hatred and fury etched into every crevice.
I knew then that he’d do it. He’d look me in the eye, his own flesh and blood, and pull the trigger. He’d gladly watch me die.
It was too late to stop him. I braced myself for the shot, for the inevitable pain and for certain death. My only comfort was knowing that his empire was destroyed. I’d be gone. But so would the Sons.
Everything happened at once.
Lorcan came out of nowhere, his own gun coming up as he threw himself into my path.
A gunshot boomed through the hall.
I screamed.
Alistair staggered as blood blossomed across the front of his robes, spreading wide and fast. He stumbled backward and collapsed onto the stone floor.
I clutched at my chest, waiting for pain.
No pain.
Lorcan had gotten the shot off first. Thank God. Relief hit so hard my knees almost buckled, but it lasted less than a heartbeat.
Alistair wasn’t dead. He had one hand clamped over the wound in his chest while the other reached for the pistol he’d dropped, ready to shoot again.
I raced to him, kicking the weapon out of his reach as he clawed toward it. I snatched up a broken piece of a golden mask lying beside him and turned it in my hand, the light catching on it.
Alistair looked up at me, his cold mask faltering, his eyes widening, growing wet as his lip quivered.
“Liath,” he breathed, as blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. “Darling daughter. Please.”
His lips twitched into something that almost resembled a pleading smile. “You wouldn’t kill your old man. Would you?”
He spoke as if he could still talk his way out of it. As if he could manipulate the kindness in my heart against me.
My mother filled my mind, her face looking so much like mine.
The fountain above us where he drowned her.
Her broken rosary he’d kept like a souvenir.
Her life that had been cut short at the same age as I was now.
He hadn’t just killed her; he’d destroyed the lives of everyone around her. Mine. Rua’s.
He was the reason Rua had stood alone backstage with no one choosing her. He’d broken her, his hand pushing up her nightgown in a way a father’s never should. “You’ll have to keep quiet so your brother doesn’t get jealous.”
He was the reason for every girl chained beside me. Every girl who had disappeared before us and who would have come after us. For every girl, like Maeve, who had never been given a chance to fight.
For Maggie, gaslit and her life raped hollow, until he’d pushed her from the tower he’d imprisoned her in.
And Lorcan.
Alistair was the reason for the scars carved across his back. For the wounds inside that would haunt him forever. For the family Alistair had stolen from him.
I lowered myself onto one knee beside Alistair Lasair, my father, the fallen leader of the Sons.
He suddenly looked so ancient. So fragile, like a crumbling relic.
“Vagus nerve,” Lorcan whispered in my ear as he pressed against my back. With his arm around me, he pressed the scalpel along the side of the cadaver’s neck, then with a flick, he made a small incision. “Do that and the body simply stops.”
I drove the sharp end of the shard into the side of Alistair’s neck exactly where Lorcan had shown me, ignoring the slice of pain from the edge in my palm, against Dervla’s scar.
Lorcan was right. Alistair simply stopped, his eyes turning glassy, his body stilling as life left him.
For a moment, I remained kneeling beside him while blood pooled beneath us. I’d expected a flood of regret, some terrible reckoning, some lightning strike that would tell me I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.
Nothing came. There was only a strange, impossible stillness.
Lorcan would understand. He might be the only person in the world who ever could.
I let go of the mask shard and stood.
Around me the Sons were breaking apart. Their leader was down.
Buyers and Sons shoved one another toward the exits while the girls were still running, still unlocking chains, still escaping, some of them picking up fallen weapons and standing guard, Dervla’s voice carrying across the hall as she directed them.
We’d done it. We’d actually done it.
We’d won.
Victory swelled in my chest.
“Gray?” Lorcan’s voice came out weak.
I turned on my heel.
Lorcan stood several meters away with one hand pressed against his chest. Red spread rapidly between his fingers, far too fast for a graze.
Horror clawed at my throat, trapping air in my lungs.
He hadn’t shot first. They’d fired together. He’d taken Alistair’s bullet that had been meant for me.
I hadn’t known.
His knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the stone floor.
“Lorcan!” The scream ripped out of me as I sprinted toward him, my heartbeat slamming in my ears, my periphery closing until I could only see him.
I dropped beside him, the unforgiving stone bruising my knees. But I barely felt it.
The beautiful music of his violins was ruined by the deafening screech of blood, a sound I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Dervla!” Her name ripped itself raw from my throat. “Help me!”
Somewhere, Dervla shouted that she was getting help, but it sounded like it was coming from underwater.
“You hear that?” I pressed my hands onto his chest, trying desperately to hold the tide of red back. “Help is coming. You’re going to be fine. It’s over. We did it. It’s over. You just have to stay with me.”
But his life just kept slipping through my fingers.
“Liath…” His voice was too quiet. Too careful.
“Don’t talk,” I whispered. “Save your breath.”
“There are so many things…” He sucked in a pained breath. “I never got to tell you.”
No. He was saying goodbye. Damn him, he was trying to say goodbye.
“No,” I commanded him, my voice shaking as I pressed down on his chest harder, as if I could hold him to this earth. “You stay with me. Lorcan, goddammit, you will not leave me.”
I lifted my head. “Someone help me! Help!”
When I looked back at him, his eyes were soft and open, fixed on me. “My Gray.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “My little imposter. I’ve lived more in those stolen hours with you, shut up in a forgotten tower, than I’d ever lived before. If that is all we had—”
“No,” I raged. “This is not it. This can’t be it.”
“I lo—”
A violent cough cut him off, and dark blood spilled from his mouth.
“Stop,” I said. “You can tell me when you’re fixed up. Just… stay.”
His hands covered mine. They were still warm. But the strength had left them. “I should have told you in the hospital.” Another cough sent blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “I should have said it every day from the moment I met you.”
“Lorcan, please.” My voice cracked on a sob.
“I love you.”
I bent down and kissed him to shut him up.
His mouth tasted like salt and copper.
I poured everything I felt into the kiss. The aching for him, the yearning, the anguish that I’d only just gotten him back. Rage that he seemed to be giving up.
The I love you, too that I was afraid to say because I feared it would send him on his way. As if the words I held back could keep him here, a lure to keep him tethered to this earth.
To me.
His mouth moved against mine slowly, deliberately, as though he was trying to memorize the feeling.
Then… his lips went still.
His fingers loosened, and his hand slipped from mine.
“No.” I pulled back.
No.
No, no, no.
Oh God. He wasn’t moving.
I pressed my ear against his chest.
His heart still beat beneath my cheek, a faint weak thudding. But it was music to my ears.
He was alive.
Barely.
A hand seized my arm.
It was Deargán.
In his other hand he held Alistair’s gun, his gaze glancing between me and the exits. “We have to go. They could be back any minute with reinforcements.”
“No!” I tore against his grip. “He’s—”
“Leave him,” Deargán snapped. “He’ll be dead before help arrives.”
“You eejit.” The words ripped themselves out of me, promise be damned. “He’s your son!”