47. Liath
LIATH
Istood on the other side of the observation glass without moving. The smell of antiseptic should have buried everything else. Instead, beneath it, the faint reed of a cello note still lingered, tangled with cloves and pepper.
Inside the theater, nurses crossed from one side of the room to the other with practiced efficiency as machines were wheeled into place and monitors blinked awake. The surgeon spoke quietly, and everyone moved as he orchestrated them into place.
Deargán lay in the middle of it all.
Still.
Silent.
I’d never seen him like that before. He had always filled every doorway he walked through, bending every room around himself until everyone else adjusted without even realizing they were doing it.
Now he was just a body on an operating table.
My eyes settled on his hands resting quietly by his sides. Those long fingers had cut my hair. They had washed my body with impossible gentleness. They had also held a knife against Lorcan’s throat. They had done terrible things. They had done kind ones too.
The cello thinned until it was barely there at all.
He had kidnapped me, lied to me, manipulated me into carrying his revenge, and almost killed Lorcan. None of those things had stopped being true. But If I could erase what he’d done… would I?
My throat tightened around the answer.
No.
Because then there would have been no Lorcan. No Dervla. No Nuala. No girls running free, out through the Ravenwood tunnels tonight. No breaking the curse that had poisoned the Lasair family for generations.
Everything good that had happened to me had grown from the same poisoned roots.
I didn’t know what to call that. It wasn’t forgiveness. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But I didn’t look away as the anesthetist injected something into the line in his arm.
I stood witness, with my palm against the cold glass where his had rested, as his chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths until his eyelids fluttered once before finally closing.
A knot tightened somewhere beneath my ribs, my fist flying to my mouth as a sob threatened to break out.
The last of his cello disappeared into total silence.
Time dissolved into hospital corridors, hard plastic chairs, white walls, and waiting.
Fuck, it felt so wrong to just sit here. To wait. Every instinct inside me wanted movement, a plan, a target, something to solve.
For the first time in months, there was genuinely nothing I could do.
I leaned back in the unforgiving chair and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d already spent every prayer begging God not to take Lorcan. I had nothing left.
Footsteps echoed along the corridor and stopped in front of me.
I looked up to find Dervla standing a few meters away.
She was still wearing the lingerie they’d auctioned her in, although someone had wrapped a hospital blanket around her shoulders.
Her hair was a tangled mess, her lip ring was gone, and she looked like she’d survived a war.
She had.
She lowered herself into the chair beside me. For a while neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. She was here. I was here. We’d kept our promise.
“Is Lorcan okay?” she asked.
I looked down at my hands. “He will be.” The certainty surprised even me. “Deargán is giving him his heart.”
She lifted a brow. She knew who Deargán was. She knew what he’d done inside Magdalene. But she couldn’t understand why he would do that for the man I loved.
But bless her, she seemed to recognize that this was not the time to ask. She reached across and took my hand. Our palms met, the raised scars pressing together.
Dervla was free.
Half my promise had been kept.
But Bridgit and Nuala were still missing.
And the girls had escaped the building but not the nightmare. They would need help, a refuge while they healed. The promise wasn’t finished. There was still work owed.
My fingers tightened around Dervla’s hand.
Lorcan had to live.
Not simply because I loved him.
Because I needed him.
Because I couldn’t carry any of this without him.
The surgeon appeared, snapping the mask off his face, the lines around his mouth seeming deeper than before.
I was already on my feet, clinging to Dervla as I braced for news.
His smile was small and tired. “The transplant was successful. Lorcan is stable.”
My lungs finally worked again.
Then his smile faded. “But Bron is on life support. He has hours, not days.”
The words settled heavily between us.
“We’re moving them into neighboring rooms in the intensive care ward,” he said gently. “You can visit both. You can… say goodbye.”
I didn’t remember walking.
Only stopping outside Lorcan’s room.
Through the glass window in the door, I could see him lying beneath the machines, monitors blinking steadily while his chest rose and fell in slow, steady breaths.
Alive.
Dervla squeezed my hand once before letting go. “I’ll be right here.”
My hand settled around the door handle and I closed my eyes for one steadying breath.
I still had to tell him what his father had done.
I still had to tell him that the man lying in the room next door had chosen to save him.
And that the clock had already started counting down.