Chapter 54
CARWYNN
The world stopped. Mental walls closed in.
It felt like a serpent coiled around my chest, constricting. Tighter. And tighter. My breath became shallow and fast. The edges of my vision tunneled. I was seconds away from passing out.
Lochlainn’s laugh was ice. Cut-throat.
“What are ya playing at?” he hissed. “Of course I had eyes on her. She was a foreigner, under the Aos Si’s protection, showing up unannounced.
I did what I had to! To assure the protection of my people.
I needed to know who they’d brought in.” A glass slammed and I flinched.
“And I didn’t assign Finley,” Lochlainn snarked. “He volunteered.”
The blood drained from my body, like a tree wilting in the shade without light.
“He marked her.” Pogue growled. “Was that part of the job too?”
Lochlainn coughed, choking on his drink.
“What did you just say?” he spat, a touch lethal.
“He. Marked. Her,” Pogue growled, dragging out each word.
Marking—what the hell did that mean? A mark on my skin? Some enchantment? A tracker? How else had they violated me so deeply?
Lochlainn drew a sharp breath. Then, silence.
I was going to be sick.
The tightness in my chest spread to my stomach, making it knot and churn. My throat thickened until I could barely breathe. I was drowning.
Finley.
Finley spied on me?
The fresh memory of us in the old, sacred ruins—his lips on mine, my body arching toward him, feeling safe in his arms. The images twisted, blackened, then rotted from the inside out.
My eyes burned.
And Lochlainn . . .
Oh my god. That first day. That first job.
My hand clutched to my chest. As if I could hold myself together, as if I could keep my heart from being torn out of my rib cage.
My brain screamed, this can’t be right. But my ears whispered, it’s loud and clear.
The. Whole. Fucking. Time.
I couldn’t take it any longer. The dam broke. A single sob escaped my mouth. The muffled sound was raw and agonizing, bleeding through the hand over my lips.
The door immediately flung open.
Lochlainn stood, looking struck. His face immediately paled as eyes shot to Pogue. Deep rage and sinister accusation swirled in them like a storm.
Pogue’s mask cracked, ever so slightly. A small frown tugged at the edge of his mouth as he took me in. His facade wouldn’t hold up. I saw the strain—the war behind his eyes.
“This . . .” I gasped. “Whole time?”
Lochlainn opened his mouth, but the words were stuck. He just stood there. Frozen. Scanning me as if looking for external wounds—wounds he wouldn’t find. Not the kind he’d left.
My hand brush against my soaked cheek.
“Did you take bets?” I fumed, voice shaking with rage.
Lochlainn flinched. “What?”
“Who’d fuck the foreign freak first?” My words were like poison, venom injected into each syllable. “Kingpin getting first dips, of course.” My chest quivered, the threat of more tears clawing up my throat.
“No,” Lochlainn said quickly. “I—” He hesitated, having the gall to look pained as he searched my eyes. But I didn’t believe it. Not anymore.
Slap!
My hand cracked across his face with vicious force.
He’d always been able to see it coming—to catch my wrist before it hit its mark. But he didn’t bother. Not this time. He took it like the dog he was . . .
The paleness of Pogue’s skin was haunting next to the inky dark aura that thickened around him. The muscles in his jaw worked. It was almost as if I could feel his gaze begging me to look at him—but I couldn’t.
My hand curled tight into my chest, and without another word, I turned and walked out.
I was about to reach the end of the hallway, back to the ballroom, when the door creaked open.
Finley appeared, smiling like the sun itself.
And I was simply the slab of fair skin that’d sizzle, scorch, and blister in its rays.
“There ya are! Someone said they saw ya come this w—” He stopped. Dead. As if his body locked up in postmortem. “Carwynn, what’s—”
“Don’t,” I growled. The word wasn’t just sound, it was a living beast on my tongue.
My eyes searched that sweet, handsome face. But it transformed, contorting into something I no longer knew. Unrecognizable and grotesque.
“You played me,” I whispered, breathless. “Had me falling for you.” My voice broke. “Lies. All filthy, pathetic lies! And I fell for every single one.”
Every ounce of brightness snuffed out. Finley’s eyes glistened with tears but remained unshed. He swallowed hard.
“Carwynn, please . . .” Finley rasped, voice near-cracking. “Let me explain. It wasn’t all—” His voice hitched. Desperate. He raised his hands as if in prayer and rested them against his chin as his eyes pleaded. “Of everything, I need ya to know this one truth . . . that I love—”
“Don’t!” The scream ripped through me. Guttural. Laced with such raw, unleashed might it rattled my bones.
Footsteps echoed behind me. I didn’t turn, I knew who it was. Pogue and Lochlainn had come to watch the show. Or prepare for clean-up duty.
Finley’s fractured gaze darted past me, then shifted as they vaulted to Pogue’s, sheer fury taking hold.
“I will bury your corpse in the fecking ground!” he roared, stepping forward when—he stopped.
My hand was raised. He saw it and knew I was readying to strike. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Stood there, eyes wide, waiting. Willing to accept it.
My arm trembled, shaking with restraint.
Finley. The man who’d walk me home. Who ignited my laugh, my smile. Who’d helped me gently heal when the world made me feel I didn’t belong. Who made me believe I could be safe again with someone. And the whole time, he was waiting—waiting to push me off the ledge I’d been balancing on for so long.
My hand shook harder, wrath urging it forward. But the shattered girl inside me still saw him.
I couldn’t do it.
My arm dropped. And with it, every last piece of hope I had broke. A thousand tiny shards, shattered across the path I now had to walk barefoot on.
You’re safe with me, Carwynn. Always, the gentle words echoed through my mind. His words.
A sob tore out of me as I collapsed to my knees, dress bunching around my legs. My arms clutched my middle as I rocked slightly.
“Finley,” Lochlainn whispered. Maybe a warning. Maybe an apology.
Warm, painfully familiar hands reached for me.
“Don’t touch me!” I slapped Finley’s hands away with all the strength I had left and stood. My voice became ice. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!”
A single tear slipped from those once-beloved green eyes.
I didn’t wait to see where it landed. I pushed past him, leaving my heart back in that hallway to decay. It was no use to me anymore.
My vision tunneled, homing in on the nearest exit.
Glass doors . . . Gardens . . . Air . . .
I shoved my way through the crowd, bumping into bodies, a phantom slicing through the living.
My power hadn’t stirred. Maybe I’d been sliced so deep, even my magic had bled out. Going silent.
Cool air brushed my cheeks, like ice packs pressed to swelling skin. My footstep quickened, crunching over the pebbled path lined with towering decorative bushes and ivy-clad walls.
I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed to go. To create distance. To breathe. My lungs worked overtime, hyperventilating, stinging with shallow breaths.
A small babbling brook cut across the path. My heels tapped over the arched bridge that guided me forward. I didn’t slow until the tension in my chest began to ease, and I no longer felt like I was suffocating on my own sobs. My brain fogged, a cloud of dissociation muddled my thoughts.
The path opened up to a circular area within the garden. A beautiful, long stone bench sat tucked between thick rhododendron shrubs at its side. The flowers were deep red, the same hue as my dress. It was as if I was one of their buds, finally blooming.
I exhaled a long, steadying breath. Wiping my face, I resigned to slumping down on the seat. Cool stone seeped through the layers of my gown. It sent a shiver up my spine, all warmth in my body stolen away.
But the chill kept going, creeping up, spreading to the back of my neck and into the corners of my mind.
Something felt wrong.
Well, no shit. Everything was wrong. They’d played autopsy with an alive cadaver—me. Carving out my fucking heart for sport.
My insides stabbed as my inkling went alight, something else triggering it.
“Whatever it is—fuck off!” I yelled into the empty void of the gardens.
My nerves. Focusing on my alarmed senses was a welcome distraction. I glanced around. The moonlit greenery looked peaceful. Elaborate fountains trickled nearby and the air was sweetly scented with floral aromas. Not a soul in sight. The hum of the party had faded behind the castle walls.
That’s when I felt it. The disgusting pressure of something crawling.
I jerked my head down. A black spider skittered up my arm. Shrieking, I launched upright, slapping it off with a mortified swat.
I absolutely loathed spiders. Just the thought of one touching my skin made me want to—
“Ah!” Panic struck me. An excruciating pain radiated in my lower leg. I yanked my skirt up. Another spider, larger, had sunk its dripping fangs into my calf.
I smacked it off in a frenzy, then stomped around in horror. Hoping to squish any lingering ones.
My body went deathly still.
Several feet ahead, hundreds of black dots began encircling me. Skittering out from the bushes to my sides and closing in from the open path afront.
Then, they froze. As still as death, halted in place. Waiting.