27. Liath
LIATH
Something in the dark had a hold of me.
It breathed wrong, moved wrong, its weight pinning me down through water that wasn’t water anymore, through cold that had gone solid and pressed into my mouth and lungs.
I fought, but it was no use.
The creature were still there, faceless, and with too many hands, greedy and insatiable.
A sound came in, quiet and unannounced, a low fractured chord of violins, raw and unsteady. It rose through the dark the way heat rises, and the thing that had a hold of me flinched from it. The grip loosened. The whisper lost its shape. The cold thinned at the edges.
The violins grew louder.
The creature backed away from the sound as though it burned, letting me go, and I surfaced.
I blinked. Once. Twice.
A ceiling I didn’t recognize came into focus above me, dark wood beams catching an orange glow.
Not my room.
I turned my head on the pillow, and the whole room shifted with it, heavy and strange. Dark wood furniture. A fire burned somewhere to my left, throwing warmth I could feel against the side of my face. The walls were not red damask.
“Lorcan.”
His name spilled out of my mouth before I had quite worked out where I was.
He leaned into my line of sight. His hair was slightly damp at the ends, curling at his neck and pushed back from his face.
Even without his raven mask, his expression was difficult to read in the firelight.
His little finger brushed mine where my hand lay against the blanket.
The touch was barely there, light enough that I might have imagined it.
He pulled back, disappearing out of my sightline. I thought he’d left.
But then the mattress dipped behind me and his arm came over my waist, heavy and certain, drawing me back against the solid length of him until my spine met his chest, his body curving around mine, the heat of him immediate and overwhelming.
I froze. Then the reality of it hit all at once. No nightdress. No sheet between my skin and his arm. No damp, ruined clothes clinging to me. Nothing. I was utterly naked.
Heat flooded my face so fast it burned. My stomach clenched.
Every place his body touched mine turned brutally vivid, his chest at my back, the weight of his arm at my waist, the hard line of his thigh bracketed behind mine, and the knowledge of my own bare skin against the sheets made panic snap through me sharp and wild.
What the hell?
He’d stripped me while I was unconscious.
Revulsion and something far more dangerous collided so hard it made my head spin.
This was wrong. Wrong enough to make my skin prickle and my breath catch.
He shouldn’t be touching me like this. I couldn’t let him touch me like this.
Couldn’t let him seduce me with heat and reckless need when he was still the same boy trying to expose me.
I jerked against his arm on instinct, trying to break free, panic giving me a burst of strength.
It was useless. He was stronger, all that solid, unyielding weight behind me turning the effort into nothing. The failure only made the panic bite deeper.
“Sleep,” he growled into the back of my hair. “You can go back to hating me tomorrow.”
I hesitated, my voice cracking. “If I stay, it’s not because I trust you. It’s because I don’t have the strength to fight you tonight.”
“Fair play.” He tugged me even closer to him, a position we fell into so easily like two puzzle pieces.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I whispered, even as I melted into him.
“Of course not.”
“I still don’t like you,” I muttered, no bite left.
“Feeling’s mutual.”
I lay there, rigid, staring at the dark wood of the far wall while the fire crackled and settled, the only other noise in this room besides his violins.
He wasn’t going to seduce me. He wasn’t going to drag his mouth over my skin or use my nakedness against me the way some dark, traitorous part of me had braced for.
The realization should have eased something. Instead, irritation flared, hot and sharp and humiliating. I was angry at him for not touching me. Angrier at myself for the need pooling low in my belly anyway, aching and unwelcome.
My pulse had also turned traitor on me, running fast and stupid in a way that had nothing to do with the nightmare I’d just climbed out of and everything to do with the boy who had caged me in his bed.
His chest rose and fell against my back, slow and even. Every place his body touched mine was too warm. His arm across my waist was possessive and heavy.
It was too much, too close. He felt too safe for it to be real.
I was furious at myself. At my own body for registering every point of contact and for wanting too much.
At him for lying there like this was nothing.
The fire burned. The room was quiet. Somewhere outside, wind moved through the grounds.
“Why?” I whispered at the wall.
Why did you pull me out of that lake?
Why did you bring me here, to your room, and not Rua’s?
Why haven’t you turned me in to Alistair?
He didn’t reply.
His breathing stayed even and I thought that was my answer. Thought that he’d fallen asleep while I lay here cataloging every place he touched me like a complete eejit, and I was going to have to spend the rest of the night awake and pissed about it.
Then his voice cut through the dark.
“I’m not finished with you.”
I woke rested, stretching lazily into the lingering warmth of the sheets where Lorcan had been.
His pillow smelled of woodsmoke and whiskey, and the faintest sound of violins stirred at the back of my skull. I stayed there with my face pressed into the fabric, breathing him in, for just a moment.
He pulled me out of that lake.
He carried me here and dried me. He’d put me to bed and stayed, and for a few hours, not a single thing had come after me in the dark.
I let myself feel it. The warmth. The quiet. The strange safety of a room that wasn’t mine and a bed that wasn’t mine and a boy who had no reason to be kind but had been kind anyway.
That was the mistake.
A throat cleared behind me.
I turned over.
Lorcan was in the chair by the bed, slouched, with one booted foot up on the mattress. He looked devastating, the morning light drifting in soft through the curtains, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the way his hair fell across his cheekbone and the dark ink curling up over his open collar.
Heat rushed up my chest at the memory of my naked body being pressed against the length of him in the dark, his arm tight across my waist. I pulled the sheet tighter around me as I pushed myself up to sit, suddenly very aware that there was nothing between me and the linen.
“Morning,” I said as I ran one hand through my hair to smooth it down.
He didn’t answer right away. One arm was relaxed along the length of his armrest, turning something small, rectangular, and flat between two fingers, slow and idle, like a man considering whether he was going to play his card.
I clocked the photo as he angled it toward me.
My own face looked back at me.
For a second I didn’t understand what it was.
Then I recognized it.
Me in a purple bedroom, a vintage minidress, fairy lights strung across a headboard. Two fingers up. An easy, open smile I hadn’t worn since before any of this started.
My photo.
Stupid girl. Deargán had been explicit: take nothing of Liath’s. But I’d stolen this Polaroid off his wall anyway, tucked it into my pocket.
A talisman. Just one small piece of myself I didn’t have to bury when I’d put on Rua’s life like an ill-fitting coat.
He hadn’t just gone through my things. He’d found the one thing I’d kept for myself. The only piece of me I’d brought into this house.
The warmth left my body in one fast pull. My fingers went cold where they’d curled into the sheet.
Lorcan’s mouth curved, slow and deliberate.
“Good morning, Liath.”
My name. My real name, in his mouth.
The version of Rua I’d worn and held together snapped at the seams all at once.
I had to get out. Out of this bed, this room, this house, this whole cursed plan. Right now. Before he could do anything with what he had. Before he walked it down the hall to Alistair.
I grabbed the nearest edge of linen and dragged it around myself, knotting it hard at my chest.
“I don’t know who she is,” I said as I clambered out of his bed. “I’ve never seen that photo before.”
“Really.” He set the Polaroid down on the arm of the chair, my own smiling face angled up at the ceiling, visible from anywhere in the room. Then he stood. “Because I found it in your room.”
I made a beeline for the door.
“Please.” I kept my voice light, breezy, wholly unconcerned. “That photo could have come from anywhere.”
But he was already there. One step and he’d put himself between me and the door with his arms loose at his sides.
“You and I both know that it didn’t, Liath.”
“I told you.” I held his gaze. “I’m Rua. You’re delusional. Move.”
I reached past him, my arm brushing his side, grabbing the door handle and pulling.
The door opened two inches before he leaned his back against it. It slammed shut with a bang, like a nail driving into my coffin.
“Gaslighting me?” He clasped a hand to his chest, the picture of wounded dignity. “I didn’t think you of all people would stoop so low.” He paused, his pale eyes steady on mine. “Given what’s in your file.”
Pure dread pooled at the base of my spine. I tried not to let my panic bleed out of my face.
He pushed off the door, closing the distance between us, forcing me to back up.
“We could always ask my father.” He tilted his head. “He’d be delighted to settle the question of who you are.”
The threat of Alistair punched into my chest. Everything in me contracted.
I held the reaction down and gave him a shrug instead. “If you want to bother him with something so ridiculous. All I see is a grainy photo of some girl that could be anyone and a paranoid brother.”
“Perhaps.” He took another step forward.
My back hit the wardrobe and he caged me in with his hands on either side of my face.
“If taken in isolation.”
He was close now. Close enough that the woodsmoke and dark warmth of him suffocated me, and the violins rose, low and fractured, pressing against the inside of my skull.
His gaze held mine. “But that Polaroid has your handwriting on the back. Not Rua’s.”
Shit. He was right.
With each item, the room had gotten smaller. The ceiling lower. The sheet knotted at my chest twisted tighter in my fist until my knuckles ached.
He leaned in even closer. “And your file at Magdalene has you claiming your real name is Liath Byrne.”
His hand dropped to the edge of the sheet, and without hurry, without asking, he pushed it up my thigh.
The air hit my skin and I gasped, the sound escaping before I could catch it. His fingers were warm against my thigh and a shiver moved through me before I could react with outrage.
He looked at the tattoo. At the Medusa staring up from my skin in the gray morning light.
“And this tattoo is a fake.” His thumb brushed the Medusa’s lips, causing a rush of heat up my leg. “Too new. There’s bleed on the fine lines.”
He let the sheet drop.
With each piece of evidence he’d listed, the room had gotten smaller. The ceiling lower. The sheet knotted at my chest twisted tighter in my fist until my knuckles ached.
He looked up at me, and the corner of his mouth pulled. “Paints a compelling picture.”
He had enough. He had more than enough for Alistair.
I was absolutely, catastrophically screwed.
“Where is Rua, by the way?” he asked, the question almost lazy.
I weighed it for a half a second. The truth was a match, and I had no idea what kind of fuel Lorcan was made of. Telling him his sister was dead, here, now, was a risk I couldn’t measure. Better if I lied. At least until I knew what he’d do with the truth.
“I don’t know.” The lie tasted ugly in my mouth.
His head tilted half an inch. “Ah, my sweet Gray.”
The set of his shoulders eased a fraction and the cold calculation behind his eyes gave way to something smoother, almost warm.
My mutinous body reacted first, the tight coil of dread loosening half a turn before my brain could remind it what pleasant Lorcan had cost me the last time.
Last night. The kiss. The drink he’d forced into my mouth after I’d said no.
Then he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his knuckles grazing my cheek so gently that it sent a shudder through me.
My spine stayed rigid. My skin had other ideas, heat prickling up the side of my neck toward his touch.
“You’re not actually in danger,” he said pleasantly. “As long as we’re in agreement.”
My throat closed around something hard. I swallowed it down. “What do you want?”
He studied me for a moment. “I keep your secret.”
“And?” The word came out steadier than I felt.
Something glinted in his eyes. “You owe me.”
“W-what does that mean?”
He leaned in, just slightly, the distance between us collapsing by another inch. “When I want something, I’ll take it.”
The words landed and sat there. A blank check made out to a boy with no conscience and a talent for collecting what people couldn’t afford to lose. My skin prickled with the understanding of it, fear mixing with a stupid rush of anticipation.
I was not ready to admit he’d won. Not yet.
“Why aren’t you just turning me in?”
His gaze traced slowly down over my whole body, the hint of a dark smile toying with his lips. “I haven’t decided what you’re good for yet.”
It would almost be easier if I just let him turn me in.
I considered saying no to him. Wanted so badly to yell it in his face. But I pushed that urge down.
Exposing Deargán’s plan to Alistair wasn’t just the end of the mission. It was the end of every girl still locked inside Magdalene. The end of finding out what had been done to Dervla. To Maeve. The end of getting them out.
I could keep my cover. For now.
All I had to do was make a bargain with the devil.
“Fine,” I said.
Lorcan lifted a thick dark brow. “Fine, what?”
The audacity of him. I bit down on the flash of fury. He wanted to hear me say it.
“Fine,” I said, choking on every word. “I owe you.”
The grin that crossed his face was slow and full of a dark, unhurried pleasure that settled over me like a second skin.
The second the words left my mouth, I understood exactly what I’d done.
I just made myself his.