25. Liath
LIATH
Ihad no reason to stay at this party now that Nuala had left.
For some stupid reason, I glanced back to where Lorcan had been standing. But he was gone.
I pulled my wrap tighter and made my way around the edge of the party, aiming for the path back through the black rosebushes toward the main house.
Up ahead, the thorned hedges opened into a corridor just wide enough for one person, and the dark peacefulness at the other end was the most promising thing I’d seen all night.
“Going so soon?”
Lorcan stepped out of the shadows in front of me, blocking the path, raven mask dark against the firelight, feathers lifting in the breeze.
I pursed my lips. “The only interesting guests are gone, so…”
I tried to move around him but he was in front of me again.
“My lady, you jest. Surely there’s at least one gentleman left worthy of your attention?” He extended a hand, a slight bow at the waist, the other arm swept wide in mock invitation. “Perhaps you’d care to dance with him?”
I blinked at him. At the coy smile he wore, at the twinkle in his eye. The coiled intensity I’d come to brace for was nowhere on him tonight. In its place was something looser, almost playful, the kind of ease that on anyone else would have been charming.
On him, it just made me suspicious.
“No,” I said, taking a step back. “I’m no dancer, and you’re no gentleman.”
He grabbed his chest with both hands, staggered back half a step, eyes widening through the mask. “You wound me.”
Over his shoulder, Aoife stood at the edge of the firelight, arms folded, glare fixed on us.
“Aoife looks lonely,” I said and turned, seeking an alternative path back to the house. “Go ask her.”
“Aoife’s always lonely.” He fell into step beside me without being invited, steering me back toward the party with his body. “Stay.”
“No.”
He tilted his head, something close to amusement moving through his striking eyes. “That dress is wasted if you’re just going to leave.”
He reached past me toward the drinks table, unhurried, leaning across my space without asking, close enough that I had to halt or I’d run into him. His scent cut through the night air, whiskey and woodsmoke, and low in my skull a broken chord of violins shivered awake before I could shut it down.
“It suits you,” he said.
“You say that like you’re surprised.”
“I say it like I picked it.”
He straightened with two small glasses in his hand, something yellow and shimmering inside them catching the firelight.
He held a glass out, his eyes on my face. “Have a drink with me.”
“No.”
His mouth curved. “That’s the third time tonight you’ve told me no.”
“You don’t like it when people tell you no.”
He smirked. “People never tell me no.”
“I’ll keep going ’cause you obviously need the practice.”
I turned again to leave.
I took two steps onto the gravel path between the black roses before his hand slung around my waist and he pulled me back against him. My body hit his, hard and firm, all heat and muscle, and a sharp, traitorous shiver ran through me before I could stop it.
Before I could protest, his mouth came down on mine without warning. His lips were firm yet soft. Warm and tasting like licorice.
My whole body went rigid.
Heat hit first, sudden and violent, surging through my body until my skin felt too tight to contain it.
For one fractured second, some last sane part of me flashed to the thought that someone could appear and see us like this, see his arm tight around my waist and my body caught against his. But the thought barely formed before the force of him obliterated everything else.
My head spun. The world dropped away in ragged pieces, the fire, the music, the crowd, all of it collapsing until there was nothing left but the hard length of him and the mouth on mine. His violins in my skull swelled until it was the only thing I could hear.
My pulse turned wild. My knees went soft. Every nerve in me lit at once and I hated it, hated him, hated my own body most of all for answering him like it had been waiting for this.
This was my enemy.
The boy trying to expose me.
The boy who could ruin everything.
I fought it. I did. I held myself stiff for one useless, shaking second, trying to keep the line between us intact, trying to remember every reason I should shove him off and run.
Then something I’d been holding back gave way.
A broken sound caught in my throat. My fingers tightened in his shirt.
I kissed him back before sense or reason could stop me.
Once I gave an inch, the rest of me followed.
I melted against him with a sick, helpless ache, my body yielding where it should’ve resisted, leaning into his heat like I belonged there.
His hand came up to cradle my jaw, his thumb against my cheekbone as his soft tongue pressed against my lips.
The gentleness of it was a trap. I forgot to be suspicious of it.
So, stupid me, I opened up for him.
His hand around the back of my head tightened, locking me into place, and the taste of anise spread across my tongue, warm and faintly bitter as he forced liquid into my mouth through our kiss.
I swallowed out of instinct before I choked.
I’d said no to a drink. He’d forced one into me anyway.
I shoved him back hard, my hand already at my mouth, fingers wiping my lips as I coughed. “What the fuck?”
The change in him was instant and absolute. Gone was the playful boy from ten seconds ago. Here was the Lorcan I knew, cold and ruthless, glaring at me with something that looked a hell of a lot like hatred.
Understanding hit like a slap. He’d set me up. He’d played me, and I’d fallen for it like a stupid, stupid girl.
His hand clamped around my arm before I could step away, his grip hard and bruising. “You’re going to tell me the truth, Gray.”
Not Rua. Not sister.
Gray.
My real name’s meaning in Irish.
My stomach dropped. He shouldn’t know that name. Nobody at Ravenwood knew that name. Except Nuala. Something cold prickled at me. Was this why Finn was sniffing around her? Had Lorcan sent him to dig into my secrets?
Or perhaps he’d found something at Magdalene. Talked to someone. Put two and two together.
I shook off these thoughts. No, if he knew, then he’d have thrown me in a heap at Alistair’s feet. Lorcan guessed. He suspected. But he had no proof. If he did, he wouldn’t need me to confess.
I tugged at his hand, but his grip was like iron chains. “What truth? God, you’re so paranoid lately. Perhaps you need a stint at Magdalene.”
He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch at my feeble attempt at gaslighting him. He just watched me struggling against him. Like he was waiting for something.
The firelight through the narrow gap in the rose hedges softened, the edges of my vision blurring. The dark roses shuddered as I turned my head.
The music stretched, the laughter from the bonfire warping half a second past where it should stop, the individual sounds pulling apart from each other.
Fuck. That’s why Lorcan wanted me to drink with him. He’d put something in that shot.
Past Lorcan’s shoulder, past the bonfire, a figure in a dark coat stood there staring across the flames, directly down the path, at me, at us. A skeleton mask covered the lower half of his face, but something felt so familiar about him. Familiar in the statue-like stillness as he watched me.
Deargán?
He was here. Watching.
If he was even here at all.
Lorcan yanked me against me, blocking the masked skeleton, forcing my attention solely on him. His icy eyes seemed to warp in my vision, the features of the raven mask seeming to shiver.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice low and clipped. “Why are you here?”
My fingers and toes seemed to disappear like I was floating where I stood as an unnatural numbness came over me. A detachment. Like maybe it would be okay if I just told him. That would be okay, wouldn’t it?
All these secrets were just so heavy. So damn heavy. I could just let go of them. Share them with him. He’d like that. I’d like that.
The feathers on his raven mask rippled, as if something beneath was breathing.
My free hand lifted to the mask. My fingers found a feather, and it was warm against my fingertip.
God, he was so pretty. So viciously pretty.
“I’m here,” I heard myself whisper. “For you.”
Lorcan went very still.
Something moved through his face, but it was gone before I could decipher it.
I slapped my hand over my own mouth.
Christ, why did I say that? Why did I say that?
Lorcan shifted his weight. “I mean why are you here masquerading as Rua?”
I couldn’t tell him that. That would be my ruin.
But for some stupid reason, the truth bubbled up my throat, trying to get out.
I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying to bite back the words. Trying to salvage the plan.
I shook my head, over and over, Lorcan’s face and the rosebushes around us rattling around in my vision.
The features of the raven mask twitched.
Once. Then again.
I stopped shaking my head. What was that?
A black beak pushed outward, lengthening in a sick, jerking movement that made my stomach turn.
The eye sockets seemed to deepen and narrow around the same ice-cold stare Lorcan had fixed on me a hundred times before, only now those eyes belonged to something else, something alive and wrong and hungry.
Feathers shivered, and the whole thing pulsed like it had found a heartbeat.
Horror slammed through me with a force that turned my knees to water and hollowed out my core. My skin went cold and tight all at once. Every muscle locked.
What the hell was happening?
The raven tore itself free with a wet, twitching jerk, as if it had been trapped beneath Lorcan’s skin and had finally clawed its way out.
Black wings burst wide in front of me, feathers shedding out of the shadows, the hooked beak opening on a silent scream.
The thing beat its wings against the air, huge and wrong, before it launched at me.
A raw, animal panic ripped up my throat before I could swallow it down.
I wrenched my arm out of Lorcan’s grip and ran.
“Grayyyy.”
The hedges around me loomed high, their dark leaves sprouting crimson roses, petals slick with blood that dripped all over me, making me slip.
An eerie lullaby curled through the air, sweet and awful, over the demonic sound of cawing.
I clamped my palms over my ears and sprinted faster, the thorns snagging at my dress and skin, unsure where I was running to. Just knowing I had to get away.
Rua. Ruaaaa. This way, Rua.
As I tore left and right through the hedge maze, the air grew thick, heavy with rot and sugar, each breath syrupy and hard to swallow. My pulse hammered against my temples as the hedges swayed like they were breathing with me.
I burst out into an open space at the edge of the lake and stumbled to a halt.
The lake lay black under the night, rippling as if it were trying to coax me in. The reeds at the bank hissed in the wind like whispering voices, and the cold coming off the lake hit my skin with a clammy, grave-deep chill that made every instinct in me recoil.
I’d gone the wrong way.
I spun and froze, my heart jamming up into my throat.
Three figures spilled out of the maze, blocking my path.
Three familiar figures dressed in the asylum cotton dresses.
Bláthnaid, Maeve, and Dervla.
I froze. “W-what…?”
How did they escape the asylum? How did they get here?
As if they were puppets, they tilted their heads toward me all at once.
Maeve smirked at me. “Get her.”
But it was not Maeve’s voice. It sounded like… like Aoife’s.
They seized my arms, tugging me with urgent strength. I stared at Maeve, but her face kept shifting, my vision unable to hold on to her features properly.
She couldn’t be here. She had no reason to be standing in the Lasair grounds in her asylum dress.
My voice came out flat, like I was reading something off a page. “You can’t be here.”
She smiled and continued dragging me back.
“And you.” I turned to Dervla at my side as she dragged me by the elbow, her grip cold and too strong. “You’re in that cell. How did you get out?”
They didn’t answer me; they just tightened their grip on me, their hands like chains.
“Where are we going? What’s happening?”
Their faces shifted, distending, their skin leaching to red, robes swirling until they were no longer my friends but cloaked wraiths.
The black lake opened its mouth as they dragged me to it.
“No, wait… What are you doing?”
“Bride for the lake,” they chanted, their voices warped. Their nails bit into my skin, too strong, too cold, like iron manacles.
Then I was falling and the cold dark swallowed me.
Water hit like a fist.
The cold drove the air out of my lungs and the world contracted to black and pressure, the surface already gone, no way to tell which direction was up.
Sound reached me distorted, their laughter pulling apart into something high and discordant, a screech of bubbles rising through the water column and color bleeding into the dark.
Around me flashed white and red and the stone gray of the Special Ward.
Fingers slid around my wrists, my waist, under my arms.
I was being dragged down the corridor, kicking and fighting, but my screams couldn’t fight past the thick almost solid icy air trying to rush back into my lungs.
Then heaviness pressed me under, shoving me deeper, deeper into the dark.
My mouth opened, but no scream came out. No sound.
My chest heaved against the pressure, against his body on top of mine, desperate for air, but all I could taste was panic and his salty tang.
His shadow loomed over me as his fingers tore at my clothes. Legs forced apart, the bite of fingers digging into soft flesh, bruising me open.
Soft whispers in the dark, faceless and cruel, vibrating through my bones as he held me down.
“…my unlucky girl.”
My limbs refused to move, a prisoner in my own body, even as I fought inside my head until my mind shattered.
Pieces of him invaded me everywhere. Tearing. Forcing. There was no escape.
I splintered under him, breaking apart piece by piece.
Somewhere very far above me, so distant it was almost nothing, a violin began to play.
Then everything went black.