Chapter 21 Sorcha
Sorcha
Silently, I move down the hallway to where Ciar is sitting in an armchair across the threshold, facing the door. I know he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t move a muscle. I reach him and lean down to wrap my arms around him, resting my chin on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Playing guard dog.”
“Where are Axl and Cillian?”
“Gone back to the townhouse.”
“Alone?” I say sharply, trying to straighten up, but Ciar’s massive hand clamps down on my arm to hold me in place.
“Not alone. Together.”
“You know what I mean. Why are you here and not there?”
“Someone has to protect you.”
“It really pisses you off, doesn’t it?”
“Protecting you?” he growls. “No.”
“No, I mean being left behind.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, it fucking pisses me off.”
“I know it does,” I murmur, my lips brushing against his ear. I can feel the tension coiled in his shoulders, a dangerous, barely contained energy. “You’re a fucking force of nature, Ciar MacMahon. A bolt in the chest doesn’t change that.”
He snorts, but doesn’t pull away. His hand on my arm doesn’t loosen; it just changes, his thumb starting to stroke the sensitive skin of my inner arm.
“It makes me a fucking liability,” he grits out, his gaze still fixed on the front door.
I cup his jaw, turning his head so he can see me. “No. It makes you human. It makes me want to burn down the world for the bastard who did it to you.”
His eyes darken, the blue turning to a stormy navy. He sees the truth in my words, the matching rage that burns in me.
His hand leaves my arm and comes up to cover mine on his cheek. He leans into my touch, a silent surrender.
The front door clicks open, and we both tense. Ciar raises his hand with the gun levelled at the doorway.
Axl and Cillian slip inside, silent as death, their faces grim in the dim light.
Axl holds up the two halves of the cross. “Look what we found.”
“You found more than that, by the looks of it,” I say.
Axl’s smile is sharp. He sets the cross down on the coffee table with a heavy thud. “We had a visitor. He was looking for this.”
“Was?” Ciar’s voice is a low rumble from beside me, his grip on the gun still tight.
“He won’t be looking for anything ever again,” Cillian says.
“He confirmed it was Kavanagh who sent him,” Axl adds.
“Are they really this thick?” I ask, my voice loud in the hushed silence from before.
“What?” Axl asks.
“What do you think the cross is going to do? Magically have the deed inside? Don’t they know we have moved on this already?”
“Maybe there is something else inside,” Axl says, giving it a look of renewed interest.
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, staring at the thing. “Another fucking puzzle? Ardal Gannon was a sadist.”
Axl ignores me, picking up the cross. He turns it over in his hands, his gaze forensic. Cillian leans over the table, his shadow falling across the glinting metal. Even Ciar shifts in his chair, his focus narrowed to a single, burning point.
“Here,” Axl says, his thumb pressing down on something only he can see.
There’s a soft click. A section of the cross’s thick base pops open, revealing a small, hollow compartment.
Inside is a single, ornate key. It’s smaller than the one for the gates, made of silver, with a shamrock carved into its head.
We all stare at it. Another key. Another locked door. This game just keeps getting deeper.
“What the fuck does that open?” Ciar’s voice is a low growl of frustration.
Axl picks it up, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. It looks delicate, ancient. “Something important,” he says. “Something worth protecting with more than just a deed and a lock on the main gate.”
My mind flashes to the chapel. The altar. The tunnels beneath. There are a thousand locked doors in St. Bart’s. A thousand secrets that Kavanagh is willing to kill for. For this.
“Then we find the fucking lock,” I say, my voice hard. “Starting with the chapel. The religious cross, the fact that it was buried underneath it, it’s the oldest part of the university… there are a dozen reasons why we need to go back.”
“Agreed,” Axl says. “Get dressed.”
I nod and take the bag that Cillian hands to me over Ciar’s head.
I don’t bother to ask if he’s up for it.
He will come, even if it means dying at our feet when we get there.
I won’t stop him. Apart from the fact that I can’t stop him, he needs to do this.
He is wallowing, and that is making him a danger to himself.
The more he does, the more normal he feels.
We will just have to deal with the consequences when all of this is over.
If we make it that far.
I retreat to the bedroom and tip the contents of the bag onto the bed.
Black jeans, a dark grey thermal top, a leather jacket.
A uniform. I pull them on, the unfamiliar stiffness of the clothes a kind of armour.
When I walk back out, the guys are a fucking unit preparing for an incursion.
Axl tucks a blade into his boot. Cillian moves with a chilling economy, checking the action on his Glock.
Ciar is on his feet, the gun tucked into his waistband as he checks his blades.
He catches my eye, a flicker of something fierce and possessive in his gaze that tells me he’d crawl there if he had to.
My chest tightens, but I say nothing. This is his fight as much as it is mine.
“Ready?” Axl asks, shoving the small key into his expensive coat pocket.
I nod, words feeling useless. We slip out of the bungalow, melting into the shadows.
The walk back to campus feels different this time.
It’s not just a mission; it’s an invasion.
We’re taking back what’s ours, one locked door at a time.
We’re trespassing on campus as our boots hit the grass, fugitives on what will legally be mine in a few hours.
The irony is so thick I could choke on it.
The campus is a fucking graveyard. Statues watch us pass, their stone eyes cold and dead.
Every gust of wind through the trees sounds like a whisper, a warning.
We move in a tight formation, Axl in front, Cillian a ghost at our back.
I stay beside Ciar, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him, the sheer force of will holding his body together.
His steps don’t falter. He’s a fucking mountain, just like Axl said.
The chapel rises from the manicured lawns like a black monolith, its stained-glass windows dark, empty eyes.
It is centuries older than the rest of the college, steeped in a silence that has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with secrets.
We stick to the shadows, our boots silent on the damp grass until we’re pressed against the cold stone of the side entrance.
Axl holds up the small silver key. It looks insignificant in his hand, but the weight of it feels immense. He looks from the key to the heavy, iron-banded oak door. There’s no visible lock on the outside.
“It’s not for the door,” Cillian murmurs, his gaze sweeping over the stone archway above us.
Axl tries the handles. The doors swing silently open. “Let’s move inside, look for anything… small.”
“Genius plan,” I mutter, letting the sarcasm drip from the words as we enter.
He snickers, but accepts that we are flying blind and running out of time.
The silence in here is absolute, a heavy, oppressive weight that presses down on my chest. Moonlight streams through the high, arched windows, casting long, distorted shadows that dance like ghouls on the stone floor.
We break apart into the four corners. My gaze sweeps over the rows of pews, the ornate pulpit, the towering crucifix that dominates the far wall.
It all feels like a distraction. My gut pulls me towards the altar, the place where this all started.
I run my hands over the cold, carved stone, tracing the intricate patterns of saints and martyrs, wondering if Liam has retrieved his dad and his guys yet.
“Nothing here,” I murmur.
“Axl?” I call out, my voice swallowed by the vast, empty space. “Anything?”
A beam from his torch cuts through the gloom, landing on my face. “Just a lot of fucking dust.”
Cillian’s voice comes from the shadows near the pulpit. “Here.” It’s not a question. It’s a command.
We converge on his position. He’s pointing his light at the base of the lectern, a heavy, ornate thing carved from dark wood.
“What?” Axl asks, his impatience showing.
Cillian doesn’t answer. He just runs his fingers over a small, carved shamrock, identical to the one on the key’s head. In the centre of the carving is a tiny, almost invisible keyhole.
“Fucking hell,” I breathe. Hidden in plain sight. “How did you spot that?”
“I was looking for anything… small,” he says with a smirk.
“You have eagle eyes.”
Axl steps forward, the silver key glinting in the torchlight. He slides it into the lock. It fits perfectly. With a soft click, a small, shallow drawer pops open from the side of the lectern.
It’s empty.
“Dammit,” I hiss, although I’m not sure what I expected after two hundred plus years. To be quite frank, I’m surprised we even found the blasted cross after all this time.
“Wait,” Axl says, pressing the bottom of the drawer and then rapping on it. “False bottom.”
He drags the drawer out and turns it over, carefully feeling his way along the sides to remove the bottom.
“If it’s another fucking key, I’m not going to be responsible for my actions,” I mutter.
A thin piece of wood slides free, revealing a hidden cavity beneath. Tucked inside is not another key, but a small, leather-bound book, no bigger than his palm. It’s ancient, the leather cracked and worn, held shut by a simple leather tie.
Axl’s torchlight illuminates the book as he carefully unties the brittle strap. He opens it to the first page. The script is elegant, faded ink on yellowed parchment.
“What does it say?” I whisper, leaning in closer, my breath fogging in the cold air.