26. Liath
LIATH
Maggie’s confession broke apart.
I did it became:
he kIlleD them. I was frameD
i wIll geT vengeance
My skin prickled as a chill shuddered up my spine.
This wasn’t a confession. It was a warning. A message Maggie had left behind for someone clever enough to see it.
All this time they said Maggie killed her family. The crazed murderess, look at her madness, look at her confession!
But Maggie hadn’t been confessing. She’d been screaming the truth. And no one had listened.
My grip tightened around the mirror.
If Maggie was telling the truth, then someone got away with murder.
And they were still here.
My gaze drifted back to the books stacked beside her bed.
Girls silenced. Girls called insane. Girls locked away where no one would believe them.
A cold understanding settled into my bones.
Maggie hadn’t been the only one they’d tried to bury in this place. She had only been the first.
I walked my usual route past Deargán’s office for weeks, the door closed every time.
Except today it wasn’t.
It sat ajar, just three inches of space.
I slowed as I neared it.
His spicy cologne drifted out, and a low pull of a cello note punched through my chest, hard enough to make my vision stutter.
He was back.
After he’d left without a word.
After the lake.
After his hands were on me, careful and gentle.
After he’d stayed long enough for me to settle into sleep, then vanished long enough for his absence to turn into a punishment.
Heat flashed up my spine, sharp and furious.
He didn’t get to walk back in here as if nothing happened.
I pushed the door open without knocking.
A wall of dry, heated air met me immediately. The curtains were drawn halfway, filtering the light into something muted, almost intimate.
He was already seated, as if he’d never left.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, his gaze moved over me slowly, assessing, expectant. Like he was bracing for a reaction.
My spine locked, my words coming out flat. “You’re back.”
Inside, my pulse hammered with a rage I refused to show. I wanted an explanation. Deserved an explanation.
“Come in,” he said.
Just like that. No apologies. No explanation.
After everything.
My jaw tightened until it ached.
He rose and moved toward the tea tray on the sideboard, where everything was already laid out with that neat, unnerving precision of his.
Including two cups.
He had expected me.
My anger sharpened into something colder. He had disappeared, and he’d still set the room for me as if I were nothing more than an appointment he could pause and resume.
It felt like a slap.
I wanted to knock the whole tray to the floor, to hear porcelain shatter and force him to look at the mess.
Instead, I stood still, my fist tucked into the folds of my dress as I watched him.
He measured tea leaves into the pot, hands steady, movements efficient. Then he paused and studied me.
“How are you feeling, Rua?”
That name sliced clean through me.
My first instinct was to correct him, to spit my real name at him and force him to use it.
But Dervla’s grip flashed in my mind, the sting of the scissor blade against my skin, the slick warmth where our blood met.
Two can play the lying game, you bastard.
I stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind me. “I’m grand, Doctor.”
Not Deargán. But Doctor.
Like I wasn’t anything more than his patient.
His hand paused over the teapot, his jaw tightening, almost imperceptibly.
Oh. He didn’t expect that.
Power sparked low in my belly, dark and sharp. But I kept my face neutral as I crossed to the chair and sat, eyes respectfully downcast and hands folded in my lap just like Rua would.
He left the teapot where it sat, not filling the cups, and returned to his seat. He studied my posture, my breathing, the set of my shoulders. He leaned back slightly, changing the angle between us. Like he was unsure what was different about me.
He opened his notebook. “Any more disturbances since the last one?”
Disturbances.
You gaslighting bastard.
You scramble my brains, steal a month of my life, and then sit there asking about my symptoms like it’s my fault?
My throat tightened and I forced a slow inhale through my nose. I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me crack.
“No,” I said evenly. “It’s been quiet since then.”
My gaze slid to his hands, to those long fingers.
Did you do it? Did you carve ink into me? Cut off my hair?
My skin crawled. Heat followed close behind it, unwanted and furious, like my nerves were traitors.
“Do you”—he tilted his head—“remember our last session?”
My throat tightened, brief and sharp as the lake flashed behind my eyes.
His hips pinning me down into the mud. His hands around my wrists.
The way I practically asked him to fuck me.
And the way he climbed off me like I burned him.
Shame burned hot in my chest.
But I kept my voice steady and answered the way Rua would, gentle and placid. “I remember… my panic. The storm. You calmed me down.”
I trailed a finger down my chest as if absentmindedly, a reminder of how I’d claimed my own orgasm in the mud. A test.
His gaze caught on the movement and darkened with something closer to hunger. He swallowed hard.
“After that, it’s all a bit blurred,” I added, my voice casual, letting my hand come to rest innocently on my lap.
For the longest moment he just stared at me, and I got the distinct impression he wanted to peel apart my brain to look inside.
“Do you”—he cleared his throat—“remember asking me to stay?”
I remembered the weight of him shifting the mattress. The steadiness of his presence as I drifted off. The ghost of his fingertips brushing aside hair from my forehead.
My silly heart kicked hard once.
“I remember…” I started, keeping my voice even, “…feeling overwhelmed. Exhausted.”
Silence stretched between us.
He closed the notebook and shifted forward in his chair, not close enough to touch, yet close enough that the air changed.
For a heartbeat, I thought he might reach for me.
I didn’t move, refusing to lean back. If he touched me now, it would be a choice.
He cleared his throat and sat back. “Very good, Rua.”
Like I’d performed correctly.
Something ugly twisted in my stomach.
“That’ll be all for today.”
I stepped back into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind me, my stomach tight.
I’d checked the clock on my way out. The session had lasted only thirty minutes.
No missing time. No blackouts. No hallucinations.
I waited for the buzzing in my skull.
But it didn’t come.
A dangerous realization settled into my bones.
He didn’t erase me if I cooperated.
He didn’t steal my memories if I behaved.
If I played Rua.
Rua was obedient.
He wanted me obedient.
I was learning how to play him back. I liked winning that exchange. Liked watching him adjust. Liked knowing I unsettled him too.
All I had to do was trade my defiance, my anger.
And my name.