7. Liath
LIATH
At first, Deargán didn’t reply. He just watched me, leaving a silence thick enough to choke on. A silence where my mind scrambled for answers but found nothing to grab on to.
Finally, he spoke. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
For a moment I just sat there, numb, a coldness creeping over me.
“Say it,” he prompted quietly.
I swallowed. “I… I remember standing.” My throat thickened. My fingers flexed. “Then you asked me something. And then…”
He waited.
“And then I was sitting,” I finished, hating how small my voice sounded. “I don’t remember the middle.”
“You dissociated,” he said mildly. “That happens when we approach something painful.”
He wrote it down, cataloging me, marking me with it. Another “incident” for my file.
He stood and walked to the door.
I sat there trying to understand what had just happened, trying to line up the order of my own body, and he moved like he’d already finished with me.
He placed his hand on the handle and paused, turning back to me.
“If I open it,” he asked, “where will you go?”
Shit. I didn’t know. I didn’t know the layout or the exits or how far they’d go to stop me. I didn’t even know what part of Ireland I was in or even if we were still in the country.
“You’re not a prisoner,” he said as he unlocked the door and stepped aside, leaving the doorway open. “You’re free to leave the room.”
I hesitated. My pulse kept slamming, my hands cold, my throat tight. I stood and moved forward anyway, my feet heavy underneath me.
As I neared the doorway, he shifted just close enough that I could smell him properly.
That dark spice and cello that shouldn’t have meant anything and somehow did.
My stomach flipped, sharp and wrong.
No. No, not this.
I was forced to turn my body to get past him, and my shoulder brushed his chest. The contact was nothing, barely a graze.
But my breath caught. Heat flashed low and sharp, as if some traitorous part of me had leaned toward him instead of away.
I hated the way my skin went aware. Hated the soft pull in my stomach, the instinct to freeze rather than flee, the way my knees threatened to loosen.
He didn’t move away. “And Rua?”
I hated the way his voice sounded saying a name that wasn’t supposed to be mine.
He leaned in close. “You can fight me all you like. I’m not going anywhere.”
I stiffened.
“And when you remember what you did,” he added, softer, “you’ll thank me for keeping you safe from yourself.”
My stomach turned hard.
I stumbled into the corridor. My hands were trembling and I didn’t remember when they’d started.
Something was wrong.
I tried to replay the session and the middle wouldn’t hold. There were gaps. I remembered standing, then sitting, then standing again, and the order was wrong, like my own timeline had been rearranged.
I tried to recall what question he’d asked when the gap happened and I couldn’t.
I tried to recall whether I’d said anything personal, whether I’d given him something he could use.
I couldn’t.
Terror crawled up my spine because not remembering was like handing him a weapon I couldn’t see.
As I walked away, the faint hum of a cello remained in my chest. Like he’d embedded a part of him in me without my permission.
My body felt subtly heavier, like something had already been reshaped.
That unsettled me more than anything he’d said.
I walked farther into the dining hall with my cheap plastic tray gripped too tight, pretending that was a choice and not the only way to keep my hands from shaking.
The vaulted ceiling swallowed some of the noise, but not enough. Chairs scraped across stone, cutlery knocked against plates, a laugh rose and cut off too fast, still feeling too loud in my ears.
The smell of rosemary and overcooked meat turned my stomach. My synesthesia tangled the scents into a tight vibration behind my eyes that made my jaw clench whether I wanted it to or not.
Girls sat in clusters with their shoulders angled inward, voices low, eyes lifting and sliding away too quickly when they noticed me.
Only a red-haired girl at the back lifted her hand in a small wave, her fingers fluttering like she was coaxing something skittish closer.
I hesitated long enough for an orderly’s gaze to lock on me. Standing alone suddenly felt dangerous.
I hurried toward the booth before I could think too hard about it. The bench creaked when I slid onto it and my tray knocked softly against the table.
Four girls sat there, all about my age. Maybe a few years older.
My attention caught on the stitching over their left breasts, black thread against white cotton, neat and deliberate. My eyes dropped to my own chest.
RUA.
The letters were slightly worn at the edges, softened by washing. The thread was not new.
Cold slid down my spine and my throat tightened so hard that swallowing hurt.
“There she is.” The red-haired girl, FIONA, smiled at me, her Cork accent warm and musical.
DERVLA sat beside her, her raven-colored hair cut into a short bob and bangs, her mouth flat. A lip ring rested between her teeth and she toyed with it slowly as she watched me without smiling.
MAEVE held a mug large enough to hide half her face, and the only thing visible above the rim were wide brown doe eyes.
“Where’ve ye been, Rua?” another voice added.
BLáTHNAID.
She rearranged her food into straight rows without looking up, nudging peas into a perfect border around her mash, then wiping her fingertips on her napkin as if the wrong texture on her skin might set her off.
My throat tightened again. “I’m not Rua.”
Because apparently I had decided to die on that hill before I’d even had my tea.
Bláthnaid’s hands stilled over her tray, her fork laid down exactly parallel to the knife.
The lip ring stopped moving between Dervla’s teeth.
“Christ.” Fiona’s gaze sharpened before she smoothed it over. She kept her voice low. “You want them to move you?”
My stomach dropped. “Move me where?”
She held my gaze. “Isolation.”
Dervla spoke without raising her voice. “No visitors.”
Bláthnaid finally looked up. “No talking.”
Maeve’s face drained of color. “No leaving.”
A step sounded behind me and the air shifted in a way that told me someone had moved closer.
Fiona straightened instantly and smiled too brightly. “We’re grand, aren’t we, Rua?”
Maeve’s small hand closed around my wrist under the table and squeezed once. The pressure was firm and deliberate.
I understood the warning without needing it explained. This was not paranoia, no matter how badly I wanted to label it that. This was survival with a smile and a thank you very much.
“Right,” I said, forcing my mouth to cooperate. “Grand.”
My pulse was still racing, but my face settled into something neutral out of instinct.
I looked down at the mug of tea in front of me, the surface dark and still. I lifted it and took a cautious sip.
It was bitter and metallic at the back of my throat, and I made a face. “Jesus, did they rinse the cups in the Liffey and call it a day?”
Maeve caught my eye. Her hand disappeared under the table and came back with a crumpled sugar packet, half hidden in her palm. “Here,” she murmured.
I stared at it, frowning. “I thought we weren’t allowed?”
Her smile barely formed. “We’re not.”
“You’ll get flagged,” Bláthnaid hissed.
“She won’t manage it otherwise.” Maeve tipped the contraband sugar into my cup, then crumpled the wrapper and poked it into the gray mash on her plate, covering it over with the back of her spoon.
An orderly stopped near our table. His gaze landed on my cup.
Maeve stirred once, slow and controlled, and lowered her eyes.
My lungs tightened in my chest while I waited for him to say something.
He did not. Thank fuck. After a moment he moved on.
I stirred my tea and took another sip. Thank God. It was no Barrys but at least it was drinkable now.
I lifted my eyes just enough to catch Maeve’s.
For a second, I did not trust my voice to behave the way I needed it to, so I said nothing at all. I just held her gaze and mouthed the words, Thank you.
Something flickered across her face, quick and gone, like she had not expected it or did not quite know what to do with it, and then her expression settled back into something neutral as she looked away again.
But the air between us had shifted, quieter now, steadier.
She had risked something for me.
And I would not forget it.
“So”—I picked up my fork, just to have something to hold—“how long have you all known Rua?”
Dervla stopped peeling the label from her juice bottle and looked at me properly for the first time.
Fiona swallowed and waved her fork at me. “Okay, not-Rua. I’ll bite. You’ve been here six months.”
“No. That’s not—” I stopped and changed gears. “You actually saw her? Spoke to her?”
They laughed like I had delivered a punch line.
“We’re besties,” Bláthnaid said lightly, straightening the edge of her napkin with one neat swipe.
“Gal pals through psych evals,” Fiona added.
“Friends off the deep ends,” Dervla said.
“Kins of the looney bin,” Maeve finished, lifting her mug a fraction.
Fiona dipped bread into her soup, then lowered her voice. “And before you ask, yes, they watch who sits with who, who talks too much, who stops taking the meds, who starts asking clever questions. They’ve probably a wee file on all of us somewhere.”
Bláthnaid rolled her eyes. “Here she goes.”
“I’m serious,” Fiona said, though the grin stayed in place like she needed the joke to cover how much she meant it. “I feel better knowing there’s someone in here with a wilder delusion than me.”
I forced myself not to shrink back. “And Rua looked like me?”
The laughter faded as four sets of eyes fixed on me.
Bláthnaid reached across the table and rested her hand over mine. Her voice softened. “Babe. You are Rua.”