42. Liath
LIATH
The corridor of the ward stretched out before me, endless and suffocating, like a throat ready to devour me whole. Dim wall sconces flickered along the bare stone walls, their weak light barely cutting through the gloom. The arched ceiling loomed high above, swallowed in shadow.
For a moment a strange crawling sensation crept up my spine, the sense that someone might be listening out for me.
Deargán’s voice drifted through my memory.
Careful, Rua.
The warning slid under my skin as if he were standing somewhere in the dark corridor behind me, close enough that his breath might stir the hair at the back of my neck.
As I crept forward, the dark floor stretched slick beneath my feet, layers of polish over old stone, buffed to a shine that couldn’t quite hide the black scuff marks.
Some were thin long scuffs from a deadweight being dragged.
Others looked random, messy, as if they’d fought as they’d been hauled down the corridor.
The scent-song inside me flared, too many notes clashing together at once. Floor polish and bleach hit first, sharp enough to sting, but beneath that sat the sour, human smell of fear-sweat. The sharp warning note of metallic blood threaded through it all.
Every sense was hijacked, my body vibrating with a wrongness that made my skin prickle. Every nerve in my body screamed to turn back.
But I couldn’t. Not now.
Each step sounded too loud in the suffocating quiet and my breath came out sharper than I wanted. The darkness didn’t feel empty. It pressed close, patient and watchful.
Corridors yawned open on either side of the hall, narrow passages disappearing into deeper darkness.
Each one looked identical at first glance, but the closer I looked, the worse they became.
One had scratch marks gouged into the stone, as if nails had raked down the wall.
Another wall held dents and chips like something blunt had struck against it repeatedly.
Yet another had darker flecks staining the stone in a spray pattern.
If I turned down the wrong one, I might never find my way back out. So I stayed in the main corridor.
A narrow doorway was open along the corridor, a weak yellow light glowing inside.
I hesitated, then slipped through.
It was a staff break room, leather couches clustered around low tables, the air thick with the smell of burned coffee and lemon disinfectant. Staff lockers lined one wall, all locked except for one sitting slightly ajar in the corner.
My fingers hovered over the metal handle. Every instinct screamed not to touch anything.
But I needed answers more than I feared leaving fingerprints.
The metal creaked softly as I pulled the door open.
Inside sat a stained mug that read Keep Calm and Reframe the Narrative in cheerful lettering that made bile rise in my throat.
A lip balm rolled against a crushed granola bar.
Normal things. Ordinary things.
A half-drunk mug sat on the microwave, its lip stained with coral gloss.
Helena’s shade.
The sheer casualness of it, that people could clock in, drink coffee, and reapply their makeup while girls were suffering down the hall, twisted something cold and ugly in my stomach.
I stopped at the whiteboard hanging above the sink, dry red marker scrawled across the surface.
The edges of the writing had been wiped and rewritten so many times the ghost of older words still bled through the plastic.
Special Ward Directives:
No facial bruising.
No permanent markings. Ever.
Ensure absolute compliance before transport.
My stomach clenched. There was no mention of care. No mention of therapy or healing. It was like a checklist for handling livestock.
Heat surged up my throat, followed immediately by a wave of cold, sickening bile. Whatever they were doing to the girls who disappeared, they were making sure the damage couldn’t be seen.
A sound echoed from somewhere in the ward. A strange, muffled rhythm.
I had to hurry. I had to find Dervla and Maeve and get us all the fuck out of here.
I backed away from the board, my pulse hammering now, and slipped back into the hallway.
The corridor narrowed as I moved farther in, the stone walls closing in tight. Now heavy doors lined the passage, each one reinforced with thick iron hinges and narrow slits of wired glass. Every door was shut.
Under the silence, almost too faint to catch at first, a murmur moved through the walls. Voices speaking in unison, muffled by stone until the words blurred into a chant.
I slowed, my breath catching as the chanting sound drifted louder from the corridor ahead. I crept closer, listening, head tilted toward it.
That was when I noticed the rectangle of dull light spilled across the floor up ahead.
The sound was coming from there.
I moved closer, each step careful against the polished surface, the murmur slowly sharpening.
Dozens of voices repeating the same rhythm over and over, the sound dull and dutiful in a way that made the hairs along my arms lift.
A large observation window had been cut into the stone wall, light blaring out from behind the glass.
I crept to the edge and leaned carefully around the corner.
Inside the room, rows of girls sat at identical wooden desks bolted in straight lines across the floor.
They all wore white frocks, brushed hair parted down the middle, their hands folded neatly on the desk surface.
Every back was straight, every chin level, every pair of black shoes lined square beneath the chair in exactly the same position.
Every body perfectly still.
A woman stood at the front of the room with a stick of chalk in her hand.
“Girls,” she said calmly.
“Yes, Miss,” the class replied in perfect unison.
“How do we behave?”
“Quietly. Obediently. Sweetly,” they replied together.
“And when a man corrects us?”
“We listen.”
“And if a man desires something from us?”
“We give it gladly.”
“And if we feel afraid?”
“We smile and obey.”
The woman nodded once.
“Good girls. Copy this down.”
She turned and wrote across the blackboard in careful loops.
Obey and be sweet.
Horror clutched at my throat, making it hard to breathe. This wasn’t a treatment ward. It was a prison built to erase girls down and write over them.
My gaze swept the rows as the girls picked up their pens and began to write.
I swallowed a gasp.
Maeve sat three desks from the end of the second row, her shoulders too stiff, her posture held like something forced into place. Her pen moved slowly across the page.
Two desks behind her sat Dervla.
The same white frock.
The same perfect hair.
Her face was blank in the candle-white light, but I caught the bruised half-moons beneath her eyes, the only sign that whatever they were doing in here had not been gentle.
Dervla’s pen moved in the same slow rhythm as the others, words filling her page in careful looping script.
Obey and be sweet.
Oh God. They’d broken her. The fierce, protective fire in Dervla’s eyes had been gutted, replaced by this hollow, terrifying compliance. It was worse than seeing her bruised or bleeding. It was a complete assassination of her soul.
A small cry escaped before I could stop it.
The girl closest to the window lifted her head and her gaze landed on me. She raised her hand and pointed. “Miss?”
Shite.
Every head in the room turned toward me at the exact same moment.
Dervla’s eyes widened as recognition blazed across her face.
She was still in there. Still fighting.
A bell shrieked through the corridor, violent and unrelenting, and red light flooded the hallway, turning the polished floor into a slick ribbon of blood.
Iron shutters slammed down over the observation window in front of me.
Metal clanged against stone in brutal succession as bolts shot into place somewhere inside the walls, the ward sealing itself around me like a closing jaw.
For a moment I froze, stuck between Dervla, Maeve, and the exit. I couldn’t leave them.
“Liath,” Dervla screamed. “Run!”
Even as the words left her mouth, the woman at the front of the classroom turned sharply toward her.
I couldn’t help her if I was trapped in here, too.
My feet slapped against the stone as I sprinted down the corridor, my legs pumping harder and harder. The air tore into my lungs, cold and sharp, each breath scraping like broken glass down my throat.
Boots thundered somewhere behind me. Doors slammed open.
“Don’t damage her,” a voice barked. “They’ll want her intact.”
The alarm kept screaming overhead.
Up ahead was the exit door from the ward. If I could just get there.
A guard stepped into the corridor ahead of me, his arm shooting out and blocking the passage.
I skidded to a halt.
Shit. I was trapped between the guard in front of me and the pounding footsteps racing up behind.
There was nowhere left to run.
The guard in front of me held his palms out as he closed in, his smile spreading slowly. “Easy now…” He looked down to my breast and frowned at my missing name.
Behind me, boots thundered closer, and the alarm screamed overhead until it vibrated through my teeth.
The trap snapped shut around me.
Hands clamped around my arms.
I twisted hard, trying to wrench free, but the grip only tightened, fingers digging into me like I was nothing more than a thing to be carried.
The man laughed in my ear. “Got you.”
A second guard reached for me. And a third brute closed in. I was so fucked.
“Enough.”
A sharp voice cut through the corridor.
The hands on me hesitated and every head turned, including mine.
Deargán stepped into the corridor.
My stomach dropped. Of course he was here.
The key flashed through my mind. His key. The one I’d stolen from his pocket while he thought I was too busy pleasing him to be dangerous.
He knew I’d stolen from him. Humiliated him. Broke whatever twisted rules he’d laid down between us.
And now he’d come to collect.
My pulse hammered against my ribs as the full weight of it settled in.
I wasn’t escaping.
At the sight of him, the guards straightened on instinct, shoulders snapping back.
“Doctor,” one of them said.
Deargán’s gaze swept the scene once and then stopped on the guard’s hand gripping my arm.
Something in his expression shifted so fast it almost didn’t register, a flicker of heat and fury pressed tight under a lid.
Then it was gone, slammed behind his cold mask.
“I’ll take care of her,” he said.
The guards shifted their weight, glancing at each other. No one seemed eager to be the first to speak.
Another guard flicked his eyes from Deargán to me and back again. “But, sir, she triggered the alarm—”
“Hand her to me.” Deargán stepped forward. “Now.”
One of the guards glanced toward the end of the corridor like he was hoping for a superior to appear and overrule Deargán.
No one did.
The man swallowed and loosened his grip on my arm.
Deargán caught my wrist and pulled me free of them with one clean motion.
“Move.”
He hauled me down the corridor.
Behind us, the guards traded uncertain looks, but none of them followed.
Deargán’s grip stayed tight around my wrist, his pace so fast I had to jog to keep up.
As soon as we rounded the corner, instinct kicked in and I tried to wrench free, twisting against him. “Let go.”
He halted so abruptly I nearly crashed into his chest. His fingers tightened once in warning.
“Right now, I’m your safest option,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “Your only option.”
Then he yanked me forward again.
“Goddammit,” he muttered under his breath, his jaw tightening. “You were only supposed to see it. Not to bring the entire ward down on us.”
My mind spun as my feet struggled to keep up.
The alarms kept screaming through the building, red lights flashing across the walls in sick pulses.
Footsteps echoed somewhere deeper in the asylum, voices barking orders, the sound of chaos spreading like fire.
Deargán stopped abruptly at a section of blank wall. He ran his fingers along a section of grout between two stones.
Stone shifted aside with a dull scrape, cold air spilling out from the doorway and the darkness behind it.
Deargán turned to me, his expression hard. “Inside.”
I stared at the waiting mouth. “What the—?”
“Now, Liath.”
My real name out of his mouth hit like a slap.
He had known all along.
Every time he’d called me Rua.
Every time he’d looked at me like I was losing my mind.
All of it deliberate.
The bastard had been gaslighting me from the start.
Another alarm bell rang somewhere behind us. Voices shouted down the corridor.
Deargán shoved me toward the opening. “Move.”
I ducked into the darkness and he slipped in after me.
The panel slammed shut behind us. The alarms faded to a muffled echo somewhere beyond the stone. And darkness swallowed me.
Had I just escaped? Or had my enemy just led me into a bigger trap?