8. Liath
LIATH
Ipulled my hand back as if Bláthnaid’s touch had burned me.
Fiona nodded toward a lonely table in the corner. “You sat there your first night. You wouldn’t eat a thing.”
“You kept saying he was coming for you,” Dervla added.
“You wouldn’t sleep unless they let you leave the light on,” Maeve said quietly.
God. The details were too specific. Too real.
My stomach twisted. He did this. Somehow, Deargán had convinced them, every last one of them. I searched their faces for something solid, some sign that this was a lie they had agreed on, but all I saw was a mix of caution and something like pity.
Fiona leaned closer, her eyes flicking toward the orderlies. “Don’t let them hear you talk like that, Ru. You’ll end up in the Special Ward if you keep insisting you’re someone else.”
“Special Ward?” I repeated.
Maeve’s face tightened. “You don’t want to end up there.”
“For girls who aren’t cooperating,” Dervla said.
“Girls they say will never get better,” Bláthnaid added, her voice dropping.
My grip tightened on my fork.
Fiona glanced toward the nurses’ station before continuing. “What you want is to become an outgoing patient. To get out. To get signed off as improved enough that they can’t keep you.”
“Privileges first,” Maeve said softly.
“Then supervised visits,” Dervla added.
“Then the windows without bars,” Bláthnaid said.
“And then,” Fiona finished, “if you play the part well enough, they discharge you.”
“You were close,” Bláthnaid said.
“You were improving,” Dervla said.
Fiona did not look at me when she added, “He had taken a special interest in you.”
She did not need to say who.
If getting discharged was the only path to freedom, then maybe I needed to start thinking like them, or at least pretending well enough to win an Oscar for it.
“What’s the secret?” I asked, keeping my tone light even though my throat felt tight.
“Convince them you’re not a threat to the patriarchy,” Fiona replied.
I froze mid-chew. “The patriarchy?”
“Last week it was an alien conspiracy,” Dervla muttered as she stabbed at runaway peas with her too-blunt fork tines.
“I’m not making this up,” Fiona hissed, suddenly serious. Her spoon clattered against her bowl as she leaned in. “This place isn’t for healing. It’s for reprogramming. For silencing women who won’t stay in their place.”
My stomach tightened. My appetite vanished.
Bláthnaid gave an exasperated sigh and began scraping her mash into a neat oval with the side of her fork. “Could ye not start with that while we’re eating?”
Fiona continued. “They don’t want us better. They want us obedient.”
Maeve and Dervla both tried to shush Fiona, but she ignored them.
“And if they think you’re resisting,” Fiona added, her voice dropping lower, “they don’t discharge you. They tighten the leash. Or worse, they move you.”
An orderly appeared beside the table. “Is there a problem here?”
“Just joking, sir,” Dervla said evenly.
“She’s rehearsing,” Bláthnaid added with a bright laugh. “Drama therapy.”
“We’re grand,” Maeve said.
All of them looked at me.
The choice was simple and brutal. Keep my name or keep my seat. I had never realized how much a stupid booth could start to feel like a lifeline.
“We’re grand, sir,” I said.
He held my gaze for a moment, then stepped away.
As soon as he was gone, Maeve leaned closer and hissed, “Stop it, Fi.”
“Or you’ll end up like Maggie,” Dervla said.
Bláthnaid shivered. “Don’t end up like Maggie.”
Something cold curled low in my gut. “Who’s Maggie?”
No one answered.
A chair scraped somewhere down the hall and every head at the table flinched.
“Finish your dinner,” Maeve said gently. “Keep your head down, get through the assessments, and don’t give them a reason to send you there, Ru.”
“Liath,” I corrected.
She did not argue. She sighed, suddenly looking tired.
A hush spread across the dining hall in a way that felt coordinated even though no one had spoken.
I followed the shift in attention.
Deargán stood near the arched entrance in his white coat, still and composed.
His gaze found me immediately and held it. He tilted his head.
The table went quiet. Maeve lowered her eyes. Bláthnaid straightened. Fiona’s smile returned, tight at the edges. They were reacting to him.
“Don’t look at him too long,” Maeve whispered.
“He’ll turn ye to stone,” Dervla muttered.
But I could not look away.
An orderly stepped up beside him and said something under his breath. Deargán answered without breaking eye contact with me.
A low hum stirred in my chest, familiar and unwelcome.
Fiona nudged my mug closer. “Drink. Smile. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”
I looked around the table and found no one willing to meet my eyes.
I understood then that this place ran on obedience and compliance. Every girl at this table was trying to survive it long enough to earn her way out.
“Please don’t make it harder for us,” Maeve whispered.
Shite. If I kept insisting I was Liath, I would not only lose privileges, I would lose the only four girls in this room who had bothered to make space for me.
I would lose them.
The choice wasn’t between pride and submission. It was between keeping my name and losing my mind in isolation.
I looked at Maeve’s trembling hands and Dervla’s tight jaw, realizing I was about to bury Liath alive just to keep my seat.
I looked down into my tea.
“Sorry,” I muttered, the apology tasting like ash.
Deargán continued to watch from across the hall, the weight of his attention pressing on me even after I averted my eyes.
After dinner, we were all herded into the hallway, a long corridor where sconces cast flickering light against the damask wallpaper and the air smelled faintly of bleach and iron.
Up ahead, Nurse Murphy stood with her back straight, like a stern nun next to a tray of tiny white cups sitting on a side table like communion offerings.
I stepped into line, Maeve and Bláthnaid in front and Fiona and Dervla behind me. My stomach twisted as I watched one girl after another step forward across the worn and uneven floorboards and Murphy hand a cup to them.
As I neared the front of the line, Dervla bumped my shoulder. “Let me go ahead of you,” she murmured, voice too low, too loaded with meaning to argue with.
I hesitated but stepped aside, allowing Dervla to go first.
She stepped up, tossed the contents of the little cup into her mouth, chasing it with a swallow from a second plastic cup. Tipping her head back, she opened wide with a sharp, performative ahhhh.
Nurse Murphy peered in and nodded. “Next.”
Dervla turned, eyes catching mine. Before she brushed past, she dipped her head slightly, then opened her mouth for just a second. The pill was still there, tucked under her lifted tongue, glinting white.
“Next! Come on, Rua. We haven’t got all night.”
I stepped forward and Nurse Murphy handed me a cup.
“What is this?” I asked, staring at the unmarked white pill rattling in the bottom.
Murphy looked unmoved. “They’re prescribed by your doctor.”
“Yeah, but what do they do?”
From behind me, Fiona’s voice rang out. “Brainwashing pills!”
“Pipe down or I’ll make it double for you tonight,” Murphy barked.
My skin prickled as a feeling, dark and unwelcome, slithered beneath my skin. I didn’t know what these pills were, but something told me I didn’t want them in my system. Not tonight. Not ever.
I took the second cup of water, slipped the pill into my mouth and pressed it beneath my tongue for my fake swallow.
When I opened my mouth, Murphy peered in and nodded. “Next.”
I turned to follow Dervla, waiting for me at the base of the main stairs just down the hallway.
As I reached her, something cold slid across the tops of my shoulders like an icy breath.
He was watching me.
I scanned around, my belly tumbling before I even saw him.
Deargán stood on the mezzanine above, leaning against the ornate iron railing, half-shadowed behind a dark marble column.
He was staring at me. And he made no move to look away even after our eyes locked.
Something sharp and hot skittered through my chest, unsettling and uninvited.
Was he watching me, or was he watching what they were doing to me?
Dervla and I climbed the circular stairs in silence, each of our steps echoing, hollow and rhythmic. Above us, a wrought-iron chandelier spiraled from the ceiling like a waterfall of thorns.
I looked toward the mezzanine as we rounded the final bend, but Deargán was gone. The air still smelled like his ghost, that dark spice and cello scent-song lingering like a secret pressed against my skin.
The hallway upstairs leading to our bedrooms was darker, quieter. Fewer lights and more shadow.
I glanced around, making sure no one was around, then spit the pill into my hand.
“What is it?” I asked and wiped its bitter coating off my tongue with the back of my other hand.
Dervla opened her palm, revealing her own pill. “As far as I can tell… sedatives.”
“They drug us?” I stared at her. “Every night?”
She shrugged. “Easier to manage a ward when half the girls can’t stand—”
She clamped her lips together, grabbing my hand as O’Shea walked toward us in the opposite direction, the orderly who had been outside my room.
As he passed, his eyes scraped over me like grease, oily and lingering.
My stomach twisted. It wasn’t like Deargán’s gaze. Deargán’s stare was darkly intense and exacting. O’Shea’s was… violating.
Dervla didn’t speak until he was gone.
She leaned in, her voice a mere whisper. “Some of the more unsavory orderlies use the pills to make girls more compliant to their nightly visits.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t need her to explain. I could already see it, feel it.
Girls locked in dreams they couldn’t wake from, their bodies helpless as shadows moved over them. Muffled screams, hands pinned, and no one around who could help.
And even if they told, no one would believe a bunch of “hysterical” girls.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said quietly.
“Just wish someone had told me…” Dervla’s voice went hollow as she trailed off, a haunted look coming over her eyes.
She didn’t need to say anything more. I already knew what had happened.
Someone had taken advantage of her when she first arrived. Someone who knew she couldn’t fight back.
I reached across the narrow space between us and closed my hand around her arm, my grip firm enough that she would feel it, steady enough that she would know I meant it.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
Dervla stilled under my touch.
For a second, something cracked through her sharpness. Her eyes glossed, the hurt there too quick and too raw before she could hide it.
Then she huffed out a breath and shook herself, like she was physically shrugging it off.
“S’grand,” she muttered, pulling her arm free. “Not like it hasn’t happened to every woman in some way, right?”
The words landed wrong, too casual for the truth that sat underneath them. It was fucked up that she was right. Whether it was outright rape or just plain ol’ sexual harassment, I didn’t know a single woman who had escaped assault.
We reached my door, the brass number 113 shiny against the wood. I hesitated, not sure what came next, almost wanting to beg her to stay with me. “Well… this is me.”
Dervla paused, playing with her lip ring. She looked like she wanted to say something else.
“What is it?” I pressed.
“You two. No loitering!” a nurse barked from down the hall.
Anxious to get out of the exposed hallway, I opened my door. “Good night.”
But Dervla stepped closer and whispered in a rush, “Whatever you hear at night, don’t leave your room.”
Then she turned on her heel and hurried away.
I stared at her back as she disappeared behind a door far down the hall.
What was she warning me about?
I closed the door behind me, leaving me in this strange dark bedroom, alone. My pulse hammered, my mind already conjuring figures in the shadows.
God help me, I’m about to find out.