14. Liath
LIATH
“What? Why?” Maeve asked, confusion bleeding into her voice, turning her head between them as they drew her down the corridor in the opposite direction from breakfast. “I didn’t do anything.”
My trance broke. Reality came back into sharp relief. “Hey! What are you doing to her?”
The orderlies ignored me.
“But I didn’t break any rules.” Maeve didn’t fight as they hauled her away. She just froze, her muscles locked so they had to half drag, half carry her. “I… I’ve been good.”
“Stop! Where are you taking her?” I started forward, reaching out for her. “Maeve.”
Dervla’s fingers clamped around my arm.
“Liath,” she hissed. “Don’t.”
I swear she just called me by my real name. It landed like a warning.
I went still, glancing around the corridors for more orderlies. For more trouble.
“Derv?” Maeve twisted to look back at us. “Ru? Tell them. I didn’t do anything.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Dervla held me back as they pulled her around the corner out of sight.
“Don’t interfere,” Dervla whispered.
“We can’t just do nothing.”
“You can’t help her. If you try, they’ll just take you, too.”
“Take me where?” My voice came out thin and reedy, and I hated how small it sounded.
Dervla pressed a finger to her lips in a frantic plea for silence, then grabbed my hand, tugging me down the hallway.
We followed the orderlies from a distance as they took Maeve down a set of stairs, deeper and deeper into the underbelly of the asylum.
Down in the basement, the air changed. It thickened in my lungs, damp and mineral. There were no windows on this level, no hint of morning, only dim wall sconces that cast shallow pools of yellow light and left the spaces between in shadow.
Heavy wooden beams ran low overhead, dark with age, like the bones of something buried. The stone walls sweated. Water dripped somewhere out of sight. Spiderwebs clung to the corners where the beams met the ceiling, fine and silvered.
It seemed like we were utterly alone down here. Like I could scream and no one would hear me.
Dervla paused at the end of the corridor before motioning to the corner.
I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the edge.
Maeve was being guided toward a door at the end of a narrow hall, solid and metal, brass letters glinting in the dim.
Special Ward: Restricted Access Only.
I sucked in a breath, fear prickling my neck. This did not look like a ward for the troubled patients.
This looked like a cell. A basement torture chamber. Where they hid the ones they could not tame.
Some terrible instinct in me said that if Maeve went in there, she would not come back the same.
One of the orderlies pulled out a key from around his neck and unlocked the door with a loud click, the sound similar to a gun being cocked back.
Maeve’s confusion shifted into fear. “Wait. Where are we going?”
Neither man answered.
Something moved in my periphery. My gaze caught on a familiar figure standing in the shadows several feet back from the door.
Deargán.
He was watching, his hands folded loosely behind his back.
He did not move.
He did not speak.
Maeve saw him too.
“Dr. Deargán,” she said, relief flooding her voice. “Tell them. They don’t need to take me.”
The door opened wider.
Deargán held her gaze for one long second.
Then he looked at the orderly and gave him a barely perceptible nod.
My breath caught halfway in and refused to move, something tightening behind my ribs.
I took a step forward despite Dervla’s grip and called out, “Dr. Deargán, please.”
My voice carried farther than I intended.
Deargán froze. Only his eyes shifted until he held my gaze.
I searched his face for something, an explanation, a flicker of doubt, anything that might soften what was happening.
He offered me nothing.
He turned his back on Maeve and walked down the corridor, past me and Dervla without acknowledging us any further, his cello scent-song thrumming low like a warning.
A cold, suffocating weight dropped into my stomach as I realized the horrific truth: Deargán wasn’t just playing mind games with me. He was the warden of this hell, and with a single nod, he had just thrown a sweet, terrified girl to the wolves.
I hated him. God, I hated him.
“I didn’t do anything,” Maeve said again, her voice growing smaller, swallowed up by the ward.
The door closed behind her, a final click as it shut.
I heard nothing more. No muffled voices. No muffled screams.
As if the entire Special Ward was designed to make girls just disappear.
The dining hall was louder than usual as Dervla and I walked silently through as if on autopilot, the clatter of plates and scrape of chairs scratching against my skin.
Fiona looked up from her tray as we arrived at our usual booth.
“Where’s Maeve? I got her the last pudding!” She poked a spare black pudding on her plate with pride. “Bish better be grateful.”
“They took her.” I slammed my tray down on the table, my teacup and plate rattling. “They just fucking took her.”
Several heads lifted at the noise. One girl at another table looked straight at me, then quickly down at her tray.
A staff member at the far wall shifted his weight.
Dervla’s hand slid over mine on the table as she took her seat.
“Careful, Rua,” Dervla said softly in warning, her sharp eyes darting around.
Rua.
Not Liath.
The name landed wrong in my chest.
Had she ever called me Liath or had I imagined it?
I lifted my teacup and took a sip just to stop myself from blurting out anything more, the heat sliding over my tongue before the bitterness hit the back of my throat and made my mouth tighten.
My gaze went automatically toward Maeve’s side of the table for one of her contraband packets of sugar.
Maeve’s chair was empty.
The loss sat in my bones, sharp and sudden.
Fuck. They took her. Sweet docile Maeve. No reason why. No explanation. Just like that.
The ground under me became even more unstable.
Fiona’s eyes flicked toward the staff stationed around the hall. Her voice lowered immediately. “What d’ya mean they took her? Took her where?”
Bláthnaid unfolded and refolded her napkin into a perfect square, her face pale. “For what? For how long?”
“They didn’t say,” I said, heat rising in my throat. “She kept saying she didn’t do anything and they just—”
I sensed him before I saw him out of the corner of my eye.
Dervla went utterly still.
Bláthnaid’s expression shuttered and she stared into her lap, letting her honey curls fall over her face.
Fiona looked down at her plate.
O’Shea placed a hand on the back of my chair, heavy and claiming. “What’s the craic, girls?”
Then his fingers slid through my hair, slow and testing.
My spine locked. My shoulders climbed toward my ears before I could stop them. I shifted subtly to the side, angling my body away.
“You’re all very quiet this morning,” he said. “Lose someone?”
His gaze flicked to the empty chair and lingered there a beat too long.
Bastard. He knew. And he was taunting us.
My throat tightened, my hand curling tighter around my fork. His hand was right there. And it looked so fucking stabbable.
He slid his hand from the chair to my shoulder, just resting there.
Fuck. I didn’t move fast enough this time.
His thumb brushed the hollow where my neck met my collarbone and my skin crawled.
“Something wrong, Rua?” he asked softly.
My stomach turned. I leaned forward slightly, forcing his hand to slide off my shoulder as I reached for the salt. My food didn’t need any more salt.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said evenly. “We were just talking about breakfast.”
“Yeah,” Dervla said, joining in, spearing the black pudding on Fiona’s plate that was meant for Maeve and placing it on hers. “’Bout how there’s never enough pudding to go round.”
O’Shea ignored Dervla, his eyes traveling slowly down my body and back up again.
“Good,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you girls upsetting yourselves over misunderstandings.”
He reached forward and tapped Maeve’s empty table spot with one finger. His fingertip lingered on the wood as if checking whether it was still warm.
“Some girls,” he said lightly, “struggle to adjust.”
He let the implication hang.
His gaze returned to me like he was assessing me.
“You sleeping alright?” he asked me specifically.
He shifted to my chair again, close enough that his upper thigh brushed against my arm.
Fiona’s fork scraped too loudly against her plate and then stilled.
Bláthnaid stared at O’Shea without blinking, jaw tight, but she did not speak.
Dervla’s fingers tightened around her knife.
But no one interrupted him.
No one pointed out how inappropriately close he was to me. How he was practically rubbing his cock against my arm.
“I’m grand,” I said, my voice coming out steady, but my hand beneath the table trembled.
“Are you?” O’Shea’s tone softened, almost intimate. “You don’t look grand.”
He bent down, his lips to my ear, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “I’ll make a note.”
I could feel him studying me, his oily gaze sliding over my profile. I curled my fingers into my palm until my nails bit skin.
“Sleep’s important,” he added softly. “We don’t want you wandering.”
My blood iced over.
Did he know I left my bedroom to meet up with the girls? Did he see me?
Dervla’s hand slid over mine under the table and squeezed hard.
O’Shea straightened slowly, as if disappointed I hadn’t reacted more dramatically.
“Well,” he said, louder now. “Eat up. Big day ahead.”
As he stepped away, his fingers slid over the curve of my shoulder.
Just enough to let me know he could have done more.
My skin still crawled where he’d touched me.
My gaze swept the hall instinctively.
Deargán was at the staff table. Watching.
Bastard. He saw and did not intervene.