39. Liath
LIATH
Ipushed through Dervla’s door without knocking.
“Bish, you won’t believe what—”
The words died in my throat.
Dervla was not here.
Her bed was made, the sheets pulled so tight the indent where she slept had vanished, the blanket folded with a military kind of neatness that didn’t belong to her.
Her stuff was gone.
The bottle of black hair dye and eyeliner that always sat on her bathroom counter. Her leather cuffs and silver toe rings littered across her dresser. Along with her collection of what she called “perfect fall leaves.”
The well-worn copy of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment she kept on her bedside.
All gone.
Her wardrobe door hung open, the empty hangers inside swinging slowly, tapping together with a soft plastic clack, as if someone had emptied them in a hurry and the air was still catching up.
Like someone had erased her.
My stomach dropped into my shoes. They wouldn’t just move her without telling anyone. Right?
I backed out of her room and hurried toward breakfast, my steps too fast, my chest too tight, like if I moved quickly enough, I could outrun whatever this meant.
The dining room blared noise and smell and heat, but the instant I walked in, it felt like the din started to thin.
Whispers followed me through the tables. Eyes seem to follow me as I passed.
Even the nurses and orderlies looked up as I passed, their eyes sticking to me in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Rua.”
Another voice hissed.
“Traitor.”
My stomach turned over. What happened?
I hurried to our usual table, my stomach dropping the moment I realized it was only Fiona and Bláthnaid sitting there.
They stopped talking the second I reached them, Fiona’s eyes going wide.
“Have you seen Derv?” I asked, glancing between them. “Her room’s empty.”
Fiona made a small, strangled sound that turned heads.
Bláthnaid’s mouth twisted, and she leaned in, hissing, “Are you feckin’ joking?”
“What?” I said, my voice thin. “What’s going on?”
The worrying sensation spread under my ribs, cold and creeping. Something was very wrong.
Fiona’s face had gone pale, almost gray. “She’s been taken to the Spe—” Her lips parted and then pressed together again, like she couldn’t bear to even say the words.
My head spun. “The Special Ward? Why?”
Bláthnaid let out a sharp, shaky laugh that held no humor in it. “Christ.” She leaned back from me as though distance itself might save her. “Are you really going to stand there and act like ye didn’t do it?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Fiona still would not fully meet my eyes. Her fingers worried the edge of her spoon, scraping metal against metal in small, frantic strokes. “People are saying…” She swallowed. “That Dervla trusted you, and now she’s gone. They’re saying you dobbed her into Deargán.”
My pulse stumbled.
“Don’t deny it, Rua,” Bláthnaid said, leaning in, her voice low and vicious, but her eyes were too bright, too wide. Fright sat under every word. “Everyone knows.”
“No.” My voice came out thin. “No, I didn’t.”
Fiona finally looked at me then, and the hurt in her face landed just as hard as the accusation. “She told you things. Private things. And then he took her.”
“I never said anything to him.”
“Really?” Bláthnaid gave a sharp, breathless laugh. “Funny how it’s always the girls closest to you, though, isn’t it?”
I stared at her.
“Maeve trusted you,” she pushed on. “Maeve vanished. Dervla trusted you. Now Dervla’s gone too.”
My stomach dropped.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Fiona said, finally looking at me, her eyes glossy and strained. “But it’s too much of a coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Bláthnaid hissed. “It’s her.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said, but the words sounded desperate even to me.
Bláthnaid shook her head. “It means girls who get too close to you end up taken.”
My hand closed around the edge of the table so tightly my knuckles hurt.
A girl at the next table snorted. “Teacher’s pet.”
Another voice hissed, “Doctor’s little spy.”
Heat rushed up my neck.
“N-no,” I said, and my mouth couldn’t even shape the sentence properly. “I didn’t do this.”
For one second, Fiona looked uncertain. Like she wanted to believe me. Like she was searching my face for something solid enough to stand on.
Then her gaze flicked to the girls listening in, to the nurses moving at the edges of the room, to the walls that always seemed to hear more than they should.
Fear closed her up.
“Seat’s taken.” Fiona pushed her tray toward the place where I used to sit. She crossed her arms and refused to look at me again.
I stood there, frozen, my hands useless at my sides.
Bláthnaid rolled her eyes, but she leaned away from me at the same time, her chair scraping back. “Oh my God, you loser, that means go away.” Her voice rose, loud enough for the others to hear. “Before one of us ends up next.”
It didn’t matter what I said, how much I insisted on innocence. They wouldn’t believe me. Or maybe they didn’t dare.
The fragile, desperate sisterhood we had built shattered into dust.
I was entirely, utterly alone.
I stumbled back from the table, nausea rising in me, and the whispering grew louder, the pointing more confident, everything suddenly echoing in my ears.
I didn’t do this.
Did I? Had I said something wrong yesterday? Had Deargán taken something I’d told him and twisted it? Had I handed him the weapon without realizing?
My breath caught.
“I’ll fix it,” I heard myself say, too loud, too desperate. “I’ll get her back.”
I turned and ran, muttering sorry as I tripped over chair legs and bumped against shoulders.
Tears burned the back of my eyes, hot and blurring everything as my feet pounded against the floor. Breath tore in and out of my lungs, sharp and uneven, my arms pumping harder, faster, like I could outrun their accusations.
The corridors blurred around me as I careened around corners, following the path down the stairs that I learned when they took Maeve.
Down here, the hallways were dimmer, the chill in the air causing my skin to prickle.
Every instinct in my body screamed that I was not supposed to be here.
But I would not turn back. Not without Dervla.
I halted at the next corner, the Special Ward waiting at the end of the short corridor, the door sealed shut, taunting me with its metal face and iron lock.
How the hell was I going to get inside it?
Perhaps it was luck. Or perhaps it was planned that way, but the door opened.
This was my chance. For a second, my legs didn’t move.
A scream tore out from inside, high-pitched and raw.
Dervla.
Her voice broke at the end of the cry.
I sprinted, focused on the gap between me and that door, leaning forward as I neared, ready to barge past whoever stepped out.
It was Deargán.
I lunged, trying to slip past him.
His arm hooked around my waist and he picked me up like I weighed nothing, my feet leaving the ground.
He tsked. “So predictable.”
I kicked and twisted, nails scratching at his arm, but his grip barely tightened as he held me to one side, like he didn’t need to try.
The door hissed shut behind him as if it was designed never to stay open.
My gaze snagged on the key as he locked it with his free hand, the metal glinting when it disappeared into his pocket.
“No,” I screamed, fighting harder, my throat burning. “Please. Let Dervla out. She didn’t do anything.”
Deargán’s face didn’t change. “Calm down, Rua,” he said, as if I was embarrassing myself.
A crackle sounded as he pressed an intercom beside the door.
“Code red.” His voice clipped into it. “Entrance to Special Ward.”
Several footsteps pounded down the corridor.
My stomach dropped.
Nurses and orderlies rounded the corner. One of them brandished a syringe in his hand.
“No!” I screamed, fighting harder. “Let me go.”
But it was no use.
Deargán wrapped both arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides, like a hug from a python.
The needle jabbed my arm with a sting.
Cold liquid flooded my vein.
My muscles seized.
My fingers clawed at Deargán’s sleeves, useless and frantic, and then my hands started to fail me.
My body stopped obeying.
Everything went fuzzy at the edges, the corridor tilting, the lights smearing.
Deargán lifted me into his arms like I was a child and everything jolted as he walked down the corridor.
His mouth lowered to my ear.
“I warned you.” His lips brushed my ear. “I told you not to go to anyone else. You only come to me.”
His words slid through me like a blade.
He did this.
He took Dervla.
He turned all my friends against me.
To punish me.
That key became the only thing that mattered.
I wanted it.
I needed into that ward.
I needed Dervla back.
I had one last clear thought before everything went dark.
If I wanted that key, I had to go through Deargán.
I woke with my tongue thick and my limbs heavy, as if someone had poured wet sand into my veins.
I blinked as the room came into focus, the black poster bed rising over me like a shadowed frame. The iron chandelier hung above it, its dark arms curled like claws around dim bulbs, and carmine wallpaper creeping across the walls in heavy, suffocating patterns.
My breath caught. This wasn’t Liath’s room at Magdalene.
This was Rua’s room.
I sat up, my head spinning as the two identities twisted inside me, neither willing to settle.
Then memory snapped back into place with a sting.
This was the room Deargán had built for Rua.
A shadow shifted, and a distant cello started up in my mind, the notes crawling along the back of my skull.
It was him.
He was sitting in the chair across the room like he’d been there the entire time I’d been unconscious. Waiting. Watching me.
He stood, took a step toward me, then stopped. “I thought you’d feel safer if you woke up here instead.”
My mouth tasted of chemicals. “How long have I been out?”
“Only a few hours.”
I nodded like that meant nothing, but my eyes moved on instinct to his pants. They were the same pair. The key would still be there in his pocket.
Dervla’s face slammed into my mind. I imagined the way she would have fought when they dragged her into the Special Ward, her voice hoarse from screaming while he locked the door behind him. Heat surged up my throat, sharp and sudden, my jaw tightening.
No. I couldn’t attack him. That would drive him away. I had to get closer to him if I wanted that key.
He liked Rua. He relaxed when I played her.
I had to be Rua if I wanted him to drop his guard.
Which meant I had to soften. I had to give up any fight.
I forced down my anger, swallowed it up the way being a woman had taught me to.
I tucked up my legs and wrapped my arms around them, letting my lashes lower and my voice turn small. “I don’t understand why they took Dervla.”
Deargán stepped nearer, then paused beside the bed like he was deciding how close he was allowed to be.
“Is it alright if I sit?” he asked, his voice careful and professional.
It was working. I nodded into my knees.
He sat.
“I know you don’t believe this,” he said, his voice a soothing cadence, “but Dervla is better off. And so are you.”
My throat tightened, and I let it. I let the tears sting hot behind my eyes because the lie worked better when it was fed by something real.
“But I’m all alone now,” I murmured. I shifted closer, the mattress dipping as I leaned into his side.
Deargán went still.
For a moment, dread rose sharp. What if he’d already clocked my act?
Then his arm settled around my shoulders.
“You have me.”
The words made my stupid stomach flip.
I kept my face tucked against him and stared down at his pants pocket, slightly agape, right there, right in front of me, even as I let a quiet sniffle catch in my throat.
The key.
So close.
Ravenwood flashed in my head, his mouth on mine, the heat of him, the way my hand had slipped toward the cuff key and his fingers had closed around my wrist like a trap.
He saw everything.
He caught everything.
Reaching for it would be the stupidest thing I could do. I couldn’t simply grab it.
I needed a distraction. Something big. Something that would occupy him completely.
My pulse raced as an idea began to form.
A terrible, wicked, sinful idea.