20. Liath
LIATH
Istumbled out into the hallway.
The corridor felt too long, too bright in places, too dark in others. The wall sconces hummed, but the shadows didn’t sit where they should. They pooled, then thinned, then swelled again, as if the asylum were breathing through the walls.
My body was buzzing, like someone had flicked a switch inside me. My skin was both too tight and too loose, like it didn’t fit properly anymore. Like I was wearing someone else’s skin.
I flexed my fingers and they lagged behind my intention, a half beat too slow, as if my hands had to be convinced. As if they didn’t belong to me anymore.
“Rua. Wait.”
Deargán’s voice brushed the back of my neck.
The buzzing spiked at his voice, sharp and bright. Heat flared low in my belly, chased immediately by a cold swipe of rejection that had me swallowing hard.
I started running.
Not because I had a plan. I didn’t know where I was going. I ran because standing still meant he’d catch up. I was afraid if he caught me, he’d slide right into the gap in my skull and take up residence.
Lightning cracked outside. Sharp long shadows flared across the corridor, but they didn’t retreat when the lightning faded. They extended, bleeding into the walls until I was surrounded by dark paneling, my toes digging into plush crimson carpet.
Candlelight flickered where there should’ve been electric glare, warm and wavering, throwing gold onto polished wood and the stare of portraits.
This hallway wasn’t random. It felt like somewhere I’d crept down before, waiting for someone to step out from behind their door.
That heavy wooden door halfway down the hall.
A violin threaded through the air as if it was beckoning me.
I neared the door slowly, my steps light, as if I might scare the music away. As if any sudden movements might make the door dissolve.
I reached for the handle and slowly pushed it open until there was a gap just wide enough for me to see in.
The violin vibrated from inside the room, emanating from a source I couldn’t see, the music intense and raw, making my chest ache.
That was a real song. A song I recognized. Not a random collection of notes the way my synesthesia usually was.
I heard a muffled groan. And the soft, rhythmic sound of flesh on flesh.
I could barely breathe as I pressed my eye to the crack.
Lorcan sat at the edge of the bed, shirtless, wearing just a pair of grey sweats low on his hips, dark hair fallen half across his face.
I could barely make out the room beyond him, but what I saw looked like a bedroom, wood-paneled walls and dark navy.
The low light catching the sculpted lines of his chest, his stomach, the dark lines of ink across his chest and arms.
His head was bowed, his breath rough, lost in his own pleasure as he stroked his hand along the length of his cock, rhythmic and urgent.
God, he was beautiful.
My nipples tightened and my skin flushed as his pleasure crashed through my body like lightning. It felt like he was moving inside me, splitting me open, spearing me onto his cock.
My mirror touch was reacting to a fucking hallucination.
Or was he?
This isn’t real. It can’t be real.
But every stroke of his fist echoed inside me, splitting me open. Every breath he gasped dragged pleasure through my skin as if it were mine. As if I was the one unraveling with need.
I clutched the doorframe as my hips jerked against the air, desperate for friction as shame scorched through me, blistering beneath my skin.
Oh, beautiful madness. Had I finally cracked? Was this what it looked like when your mind split clean down the center? When delusion and reality tore each other into undistinguishable pieces?
If losing my mind meant I got to have him, perhaps I’d choose to go insane.
I came. Hard. My pussy clenching around the shadow of him. Around air.
A sob escaped me as my body shuddered from the force of my release. My knees buckled under the weight of it, my nails biting into the wood as I fought to hold myself up.
Shame burned through my veins like acid even as my body trembled with aftershocks, pulses of unwanted pleasure rolling through me in waves.
His head snapped up.
His eyes flared open with shock. Then they narrowed. With rage. With something darker.
He stood, storming toward me, his cock still hard. His eyes burned into mine. “You like watching, don't you, Rua?”
I scrambled back. But I moved too slowly. I braced myself for his tackle.
Reality slammed into me instead. I staggered, the floor tilting under me, the violins breaking apart into rain and the echo of thunder.
I was alone.
Standing in the asylum hallway.
For a moment I stood there, breathing heavily, staring at the closed door.
There was no crack. No bedroom.
No Lorcan.
I reached out and tested the handle. It was locked. It had always been locked.
What the fuck had I seen?
My gaze caught on my wrist.
On Rua’s bracelet around my wrist.
The charms jangled together as I lifted it in front of my face, my breath catching in my throat.
I hadn’t put this on. When the fuck had I put this on?
The pressure in my head climbed, tight and electric, like a storm trapped beneath my skull.
I turned and ran.
I ran because standing still was worse. I ran because the walls were leaning closer. Like something was chasing me.
I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I could not stay inside. I needed air. I needed to breathe.
I slammed against the side door, my hand scrambling for the handle.
It burst open as I shoved through. The storm tore at me the second I ran outside, rain soaking my clothes in an instant. Wind slapped my hair into my face and stole the breath straight from my lungs.
The grounds blurred around me, slick grass and mud and the hard black shape of the asylum at my back, but even out here the buzzing followed, threaded through my blood.
“Lorcaaaan,” the wind seemed to whisper.
It thudded up behind my ribs like he was rooted inside me, like he’d been waiting in there this whole time and the storm had finally knocked him loose.
My feet turned toward the lake. For the place where I’d last seen him.
If he was real, then I wasn’t mad.
If he wasn’t, then I was already gone.
I raced to the water’s edge, fighting the reeds and the mud.
The lake looked too dark, too still despite the storm. Rain hammered the surface but the middle seemed to sit heavy and undisturbed.
A shiver ran up my spine. I felt watched.
My gaze caught on something in the water.
I choked on a gasp.
There in the water was a pale body, just beneath the surface, limbs blurred and wavering.
No, it was just a trick of the light against the reeds.
Or a premonition.
For a moment it was me floating there in the icy water, lotus roots tangled around my limbs, my chestnut hair swirling around me.
My breath hitched. My chest tightened. Nausea rolled low and fast, a sick drop that made my mouth flood.
But death wouldn’t be so bad. It was quiet. It would flatten the noise inside my head until there was nothing left but sweet peaceful silence.
My feet slid in the mud as I reached the edge. I swung my arms back and braced my body as I went to dive in.
Arms wrapped around my waist from behind, yanking me back.
My back slammed into a firm chest before we both tipped back. For one disorienting second, the air punched out of me as I landed back on his hard warm body.
He rolled, quick and controlled, flipping our weight so he came down over me.
Deargán.
Cold mud seeped into my clothes instantly, reeds tangling around my ankles. My palms scraped grit as I tried to push up.
“Stop,” he said.
“It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight it, Rua.”
My pulse skidded out of rhythm, hot and erratic, and a high, thin sound filled my ears like I was about to black out.
I fought him, frantic and animal, hands clawing at his coat, slipping on wet fabric and mud. I twisted, trying to break his grip, trying to get away. Trying to get to the safety of the lake. To the peace of the water.
He scooped my wrists up into one large hand and pinned them down. Not roughly but firm enough that he was immovable.
He moved my chin up with the fingers of his other, forcing me to stare right at him. Underneath his cold facade was the first crack of anger.
“You don’t get to give up when it overwhelms you.”
My vision doubled.
Lorcan’s face snapped into place over his, wrong and unmistakable. Brown eyes lightened to an icy blue. The firm line of his mouth twisted into a scowl, like he’d enjoy breaking me slowly.
Thunder split the sky and the sound twisted in my ears, bending into the shriek of a single violin note drawn too hard across the string, sharp enough to make my teeth ache.
An ache flared hard in my body and stole the fight clean out of my limbs, my wrists going slack in his grip.
His weight pinned me to the mud, warm through his clothes, and my stupid body latched on to it like it was safety, like if I stayed pressed under him, I might stop slipping between wrong rooms and wrong names.
My breath came shallow and fast, my throat burning, and I hated myself for the way my hips went still, for the way my chest eased just enough to betray me.
"Is this what you want, Rua?” he growled in my ear. “To be ruined?"
His name lodged in my throat. “Lor—”
The image shattered.
The world snapped sideways again, and I was left with rain and mud and Deargán’s hands.
I was left with that awful buzzing, that frantic tension like a coil tightening in me over and over without end.
The fight drained out of my limbs in a rush, replaced with a heavy exhaustion. Heat turned to a hollow ache that spread slowly and heavily through my chest.
I didn’t have anything left to rage with. Not anger. Not pride. Not even fear. Just stupid, impossible sadness. A homesickness for a man I had never met.
The sound that came out of me wasn’t pretty. It was small, scraped raw.
“Please,” I whispered, not sure who or what I was begging for anymore. “I need it to stop.”