23. Deargán
DEARGáN
Ipoured a single measure of cognac into the tumbler, adding bitters and a heavy block of ice. I stirred it with deliberate, punishing slowness, waiting for the chill to seep through the glass and numb the heat still burning in my palms.
I took a sip, letting the cognac burn down my throat.
Then another.
My muscles didn’t loosen.
My gaze lifted through my window, the silhouette of the asylum sitting black and purple against the Irish dusk like a bruise. The sight of it tightened something in my chest, and the memory came anyway, sharp and unwanted.
I felt the ghost of her hand around my wrist, heard her soft voice.
“Stay.”
My hand flexed without permission.
I replayed the moment and isolated the breach, the moment it had become a problem.
I had not corrected her actions. I had not prevented her from touching herself in the mud. In fact, I had assisted with her orgasm, even if I hadn’t touched her.
I had not reasserted my authority. I had let the doctor-patient line blur.
I had allowed myself to get too close. I had justified staying by her side when I should have left.
I showed her way too much kindness.
That would not happen again.
I turned away, gripping the tumbler hard enough to strain the tendons in my wrist, and froze.
Pie stood across the room, her blue eyes narrowed, already looking at me like she knew exactly where I’d gone wrong.
“Explain yourself,” she said.
I stiffened immediately. “I don’t know what—”
“You carried her.”
I kept my voice even. “She was unstable.”
“There were staff. You dismissed them.”
Silence held between us, thick enough to choke on.
She continued. “You remained in her room for hours.”
I took a sip to ground myself before answering, “She was disoriented.”
“No,” Pie replied, her voice clipped, her blond locks shaking around her face. “You stayed because she asked.”
I went still.
She continued. “That is not identity conditioning. That is… affection.” She said affection like it was a disease.
My blood roared but my expression did not change. I kept my shoulders easy, my breathing level.
“It was risk mitigation,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I must break her down but I can’t shatter her.”
She walked right up to me until she was inches away from my face. “Don’t lie to yourself, Bron. It was personal.”
A grunt forced its way out of me, rough and involuntary. “I don’t need this right now.”
I brushed past her, avoiding her eyes, and the small, stupid part of me resented that I had to. Resented that my own house had become a place where I could be cornered.
She followed me anyway, tight at my heels even as I entered my bedroom, the way she always did when she sensed a crack. “Is she destabilizing you?”
I drank my cognac in one controlled swallow, letting the burn anchor me.
“No,” I said, but my gaze snagged on the photograph pinned in the center of the wall.
She was laughing, head thrown back, hair flaring as she moved through a crowded French nightclub, her friends orbiting her like they belonged with her. That was the only place she ever let the mask slip, with them, in noise and light.
I’d watched her from the edge of that room, unseen, memorizing the way she moved when she thought she was safe.
She never once looked over her shoulder. Never once checked who might be watching. She had no idea how close danger had been.
“Then why are you here instead of there?” Pie demanded, her arm flinging out in the general direction of the asylum. “She is almost ready. Just like we planned. Finish it.”
I did not answer immediately.
She had never been gentle, not when it mattered. She always found the weak seam and pressed until it split.
“I know it’s hard,” she said, and her voice lost some of its sharpness. Her hand closed around my wrist. “But you have to. You promised me.”
Christ. Guilt was her favorite weapon, and she knew exactly how to slide it between my ribs.
I tugged my wrist from hers and flexed my fingers once before tearing my eyes away from the photo on the wall that seemed to accuse me.
“She’s not the variable I planned for,” I said, the words coming out cold and clipped. “I need to recalibrate.”
Pie said nothing for a long moment, and I was grateful for it. Looking at her for too long always had a way of stripping things back to the truths I least wanted touched.
Finally, she stepped in front of me, arms crossed over her chest. Over her shoulder, Liath taunted me from the wall.
“Bron, if she really is as strong-willed as you say she is, then you can’t leave her for too long. She will remember who she is.”