34. Liath
LIATH
Across the room, Lorcan and Deargán stood together. Neither looked relaxed. Both looked like they were seconds away from lunging at each other.
This was a disaster.
I needed to get there before one of them did something that unraveled everything, but I couldn’t just cut across the room, not with Alistair’s hand still at the small of my back.
A sharp laugh drew my attention to a cluster of men sitting along an overstuffed coach, a girl draped across their laps, her head lolling, her dress askew.
Their hands were all over her, groping her like she was livestock.
Her eyes were open, wide and completely empty, staring through the ceiling like she’d checked out of her own body.
Oh God. I knew her.
From the Special Ward. The girl who had pointed straight at me.
The meaning of it started to uncoil inside me and I turned away before I had to look at it head-on.
“Fresh stock?” one of the guests talking to Alister murmured.
Alistair’s laugh came easy and warm. “Entertainment. Enjoy.”
My stomach curdled.
Around me, not a single man flinched. No one looked surprised.
I swallowed down the scream as I scanned the room, looking at all the girls. Suddenly, their glassy eyes came into focus.
Oh fuck. They’d all been sedated.
Then my eyes caught on a familiar face.
Maeve.
Half-slumped against the bar, a few feet from the chaos of the party, pale despite her heavy makeup, like someone had draped her there as decoration. Her eyes were glazed, fixed on nothing.
The sweet girl with doe eyes who’d offered me forbidden sugar, who’d been locked away in the Special Ward, was standing in this drawing room in a too-short dress, barely present in her own body.
Oh God. Maeve.
I swallowed down my panic and forced an apologetic smile on my face. “Would you excuse me?” I said to Alistair. “I see someone in need of another drink.”
He let me go with an approving nod.
I aimed for the bar, walking up next to her, conscious of eyes on me. I leaned against the bar and made a show of picking out glasses, examining whiskey labels, for the benefit of anyone watching.
“Maeve,” I hissed low out of the corner of my mouth.
Her head turned toward me, slowly like she was moving through water. Then her eyes found mine and something in them flared back to life. Her hand found my arm, clumsy and gripping. “Help me.”
The guilt hit me somewhere below the sternum, sharp and mean. I had to do something. I couldn’t let them take her back.
“Wait here.”
I moved back into the crowd, my mind running fast under the fixed smile, and I aimed for Lorcan and Deargán.
“Pardon me, Mr. Mikhailov.” I arrived at Deargán’s elbow with a pleasant smile and a slight incline of my head. “Our host would like me to introduce you to one of our girls.”
I felt Lorcan’s eyes on me like a hand at the side of my face, but I ignored him.
I indicated for Deargán to follow. He did.
I led him toward Maeve with my smile fixed and my shoulders loose, though the weight of the room seemed to shift toward us with every step.
I kept my expression warm and turned toward Maeve with a hostess’s smile. “Mr. Mikhailov,” I said lightly, pitching my voice for the room, “may I present one of our loveliest girls?”
Then I dropped my voice and leaned closer to Deargán. “Take her with you.”
Deargán looked at Maeve. Then at me. One moment of silence, long enough that I thought he was going to say yes.
“No,” he said, quiet and final. “You’ll ruin everything for one girl.”
He set his glass on the bar and walked away.
The floor dropped out from under me. I stood there with trembling knees and my smile still fixed in place.
The ghost of Maeve’s hand was still warm on my arm. But Dervla rose up in my mind, then all those girls still trapped in the ward, then every name on every file I’d found in Alistair’s study.
I hated that he was right.
One girl for dozens. It wasn’t just about Alistair anymore. This was bigger than him. This was an entire corrupt system. I hated that some broken, brutal part of me understood it.
But I couldn’t leave her. I’d failed her once when I just stood back and let them lock her away in that ward. I just… couldn’t do it again. I would hate myself too much.
I scrambled for a plan, my eyes scanning for exits.
Okay, new plan. I’d accidentally spill a drink on her.
Feign taking her to my room to change her dress.
I’d pretend she’d jumped me, had gotten away.
I could fake a few injuries. I could make it look good.
Nuala would hide her. Guilt weaved in me.
I hated bringing Nuala into this, but… I had no choice.
I grabbed a drink off the bar.
But I didn’t get the chance to use it.
Alistair appeared at my shoulder, stepping between me and Maeve.
He said something to the man beside him. The man nodded and took Maeve’s arm.
Maeve stared up at him, her legs unsteady as he led her away. “W-where are you taking me?” she asked, her voice thin with fear.
The man did not answer.
Maeve glanced back over her shoulder at me, her eyes wide now, begging me to do something.
My fingers tightened around my drink, around my failed plan.
I wanted to scream. To lunge for her. To fight him off.
But I could do none of those things. I could do fucking nothing.
Not if I wanted to keep Rua in play. Not if I had any chance of finding a way of destroying Alistair’s entire twisted system.
Alistair watched me. “What did she say to you?”
I swallowed everything down as the door closed behind Maeve. Down, down, down just like I’d spent my life doing. Even as something inside me screamed that this could be the last time I saw her.
A smile stretched across my face. “Just that she was enjoying the party,” I remarked in a casual tone.
He looked at me for a long moment, as if weighing whether to believe me.
Lorcan was watching from across the room. I didn’t need to look to know it. I could feel the heat of his attention, the way it sat differently on my skin.
The seams of my performance began to snap. I had to get out of here or I’d break.
“I, um, need to find the ladies’ room.”
Alistair caught my arm as I turned. “Don’t stay away too long, pet.”
There was a guest en suite directly off the drawing room, small, overdecorated, and mercifully empty.
I locked the door behind me and stood in the silence for one second, two, and then I hit my palm against the door hard enough to sting.
I sank onto the closed toilet lid and grabbed my own hair, pulling until my scalp burned, trying to anchor myself to the pain. A ragged, ugly sound tore out of me, muffled by my knees.
Maeve’s empty, pleading eyes flashed behind my eyelids, Help me, over and over, syncing with the frantic, sickening thud of my heart.
I’d just fucking stood there. I’d just stood there like a fucking eejit while my friend got carted away. I had failed her.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until the pressure hurt. Cry later. Hate yourself later.
Maeve was still alive, which meant there was still hope. I could still save her, still save all those girls if I kept my head on straight instead of sitting here drowning in guilt.
I rubbed my thumb along the scar in my palm. “I won’t forget you.”
My hands shook so violently I could barely turn the brass taps on the sink.
The freezing water on my face didn’t wash away the guilt; it just shocked the hysteria down into a cold, hard knot.
I stared at my blotchy face in the mirror, my chest still heaving, demanding my muscles to lock back into Rua’s rigid, hollow shape.
I stared at myself in the mirror until my features settled, until the worst of the redness faded. Until I found Rua behind my eyes again.
I brushed the charms along her bracelet.
Then I took a steadying breath and walked back out into the den.
Someone caught my wrist before I’d taken three steps. He yanked me sideways and I was in his lap before I could blink.
It was the creepy one from earlier. “Look what I caught, boys.”
The laughter of the men around him cracked open.
Alistair stood three feet away, watching with a thin smile. He made no move. His friends could apparently handle his daughter however they liked.
Creepy’s hands landed on my hips and he leaned in, his sour wine breath making bile rise up in my throat.
I fought against him, trying to get away. “Let go of me.”
He laughed and his hand shoved up under the hem of my skirt, fingers cold and unwelcome against my thigh.
I pushed against his wrist, fighting against his attempt to get his fingers into my underwear.
One second Lorcan was across the room. The next thing he was ripping me out of the man’s lap. I slammed against his side, his arm locked hard across my ribs, his body planted between me and the creep. The speed of it knocked the breath out of me.
Relief hit before I could stop it. My breath broke. My body sagged into his side for one ugly, traitorous second, as if the violence he promised was safe.
He held a knife out, the blade catching the candlelight as his arm locked across my ribs. “Touch her again,” he said, voice low and lethal, “and I’ll gut you.”
The room was staring at us. Every masked face turned our way, the laughter gone, the air changed.
Deargán was staring at us, a darkness in his expression.
Even worse, Alistair was glaring at us.
Beyond him, other men had gone still too. Jackets shifted, metal flashing against the fabric. Guns.
Christ. There were levels of danger in this room I had only just started to understand.
“Stand down,” I hissed against Lorcan’s shirt.
His arm stayed locked around me. His knife did not lower.
Somewhere, a gun cocked.
The sound was small and mechanical and it cut through the music, the murmur of conversation, the last edges of laughter still dying in the air around us. Everybody in the room went still.
Shit. If he pushed this, they were going to shoot him.
Lorcan’s arm stayed tight around my body, his knife still out, his jaw set.
“Please,” I whispered into his shirt. “I couldn’t stand it if they hurt you.”
For one painful moment, he didn’t move.
His arm didn’t loosen. But the knife came down.
Alistair’s laugh broke the silence first, warm and easy, as if nothing more dramatic than a spilled drink had occurred. “Forgive my son. He is very protective of his little sister.”
The tension in the room exhaled in increments. Not all the way. There was still something coiled and waiting in the men nearest us, a readiness that hadn’t fully stood down.
But a glass lifted. The conversation restarted. The girls drifted back into service like someone had wound them up and set them down again.
Lorcan put his knife away.
From somewhere behind me, I overheard, “…is he a Son?”
“Not yet.”
The phrase snagged in my head. I knew those words. But I wasn’t sure where and why they niggled at me.
I shoved it down with everything else. The hand up my skirt, Lorcan’s threatening knife, the click of the gun. Down, down, down. I could fall apart later.
Lorcan looked me over, checking for damage. “Are you okay?”
“I’m…”
Across the room, Deargán was slipping out a side door.
What the fuck was he doing?
“I’m grand.” I stepped away from Lorcan. Or at least I tried to.
His arm tightened around my waist and pulled me in closer. “You stay near me.”
Shit. His grip was too tight to shake without making a scene.
I hated myself for the low blow I was about to make. But I couldn’t let Deargán run loose in this house. He was going to get himself killed.
I shoved at his chest as I hissed. “You don’t get to play protector now, Lorcan. Not after last night. Save it for someone stupid enough to believe you mean it.”
His glare turned lethal. But he let me go.
I didn’t wait for him to answer. Didn’t wait for the guilt to catch up. I moved into the crowd before he could close the distance and I did not look back.
I slipped out the side door and into the servants’ hallway after Deargán.
The air here was cooler, the space dimmer. The wood panels gave way to plain plaster and narrower walls that held the smell of polish, starch, and old dust. I hurried along it until it spilled out into a small winding staircase that curled toward the upper floors.
I spotted a flash of a long cloak and a hook mask upstairs moving toward the bedrooms.
Where the fuck was he going?
He was going to get himself caught.
Upstairs, the noise of the party dropped to a heartbeat under the floorboards. I thought I lost him as I crept along the hallway. Until I turned the corner and found him coming out of my bedroom.
I crossed the distance in four steps and dropped my voice to a hiss. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He didn’t have the decency to look guilty. “What are you doing? We had a plan. Instead, you’re taking stupid risks just to soothe your bleeding heart.”
“Fuck your plan. Fuck revenge. I had a chance to get Maeve out tonight and you blew it.”
“No. You are blowing it.” Something shifted in his voice. “All those girls are still trapped while you lose yourself to him. That boy is your enemy. Not your fucking lover.”
The air between us changed. His jaw set under the mask, and a stillness came over him, his cello scent-song pulsing low in my head like a warning.
Oh.
Oh, that wasn’t only the mission talking.
He was jealous.
He leaned in, his voice dropping into a threat, the cello flaring. “If you don’t take care of him… I will.”
For one sick second, the threat flashed whole in my head. Deargán going after Lorcan. Lorcan getting hurt, or worse, because I had gotten too close.
Deargán was supposed to be the side of this I stood for, the side I understood. The necessary one. The right one.
But Lorcan’s face kept cutting through that certainty. The knife in his hand. His arm around my waist. The way he’d moved to protect me without thinking. The way he just… saw my disguise from the very beginning.
The pull of it turned my stomach. Loyalty on one side. Something far more dangerous on the other.
The violins flared half a second before his voice reached me.
“What are you doing?”
I turned.
Fuck. Lorcan stood at the end of the corridor, glaring at us.