45. Liath
LIATH
Iwalked slowly to the window and peered out. Searchlights swept across a different part of the grounds now. The asylum loomed in the darkness, black and vast and waiting. Behind those walls…
Dervla.
Maeve.
The forgotten girls.
My reflection stared back at me in the glass.
She looked like a stranger.
Not Rua. Not the broken thing he had tried to make of me.
But not quite Liath either.
Something leaner. Meaner. Desperate enough to bite back.
I slowly turned back to Deargán.
“If I do this…” My voice almost failed me, but I forced it steady. “We free Dervla. Maeve. All those girls.”
“Yes.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t just say ‘yes’ like it’s easy. You don’t get to say ‘yes’ and move on.” I took a step toward him, fury burning through the fear now. “I want more than your word.”
His gaze didn’t leave mine. “Name it.”
“No more lies.” The answer came too fast, like it had been clawing at my throat for weeks.
“No more trying to break my mind to make me easier to use. No more deciding what I can and cannot know.” My chest rose too fast, breath turning sharp.
“If I do this, I do it knowing exactly what game I’m stepping into. ”
Deargán held my stare. “Agreed.”
I laughed once, broken and bitter. “You say that like I should believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. You only have to decide whether your chances are better with me or with them.”
Rage flashed hot behind my ribs. “Don’t stand there and talk to me like this is some even choice.”
“It isn’t.” The bluntness of his honesty landed like a slap. “This is a knife at your throat. I’m simply the hand offering you one of your own.”
My stomach twisted.
I hated that he was right.
I looked back out the window. Somewhere beyond the asylum walls sat the Special Ward. Dervla. Maeve. Girls with no one coming for them.
My nails bit into my palms. “And when this is over?”
“When it’s over, the institute burns.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Silence stretched out between us.
I turned back to him. “When it’s over, I walk away.”
His expression shifted almost too fast to catch, something dark tightening beneath the mask.
“You don’t get to save me and keep me,” I said, each word sharper now.
“You don’t get to pull me out of one prison and call the next one freedom.
You don’t get to touch me, order me, or own me because I helped you.
” I stepped closer, forcing him to hear every word.
“You want Rua? Fine. I’ll play the part.
But this body, this mind, this life is mine. Say it.”
His jaw muscles flexed.
“Say it,” I repeated.
A long moment passed before he finally said, “Your life is your own.”
It didn’t sound like agreement. It sounded squeezed out of him like blood from a stone.
“And if I’m caught?” I asked. “If your plan goes wrong?”
“It won’t.”
I bared my teeth at him. “If. I’m. Caught?”
His eyes hardened. “Then I get you out.”
“Even if it ruins your plan?”
His gaze flicked once to the wall, then back to me. “Even then.”
“And the girls?”
“The girls come out, too.”
I searched his face for the lie, for the trap, for the seam where this whole thing would split open and reveal itself for what it was.
It was still there. Of course it was.
But so was the asylum. So was the ward. So were the girls still trapped inside it.
When I spoke again, my voice came out low and raw. “I won’t be handled. I won’t be managed. And the second I think you’re playing me again, I will ruin whatever this is before you get your revenge.”
A flicker moved through his eyes. Not fear. Approval.
“Understood,” he said.
Silence swelled between us, thick with everything I still didn’t trust, everything I still wanted to scream.
For a moment the weight of it all pressed down on me so hard I could barely stand.
Rua. Her name echoed through my head again, heavier now. Not just a lie he had forced onto me in that asylum room, but my sister, the sister I now had to wear. The dead twin I had to become.
The thought hollowed me out.
Everything he had done to me—the drugs, the lies, the implanted memories—had already started the transformation. He had been carving Rua into my soul piece by piece while I fought him every step of the way.
And now the only way out was to finish the job myself.
A bitter laugh almost climbed out of my throat.
He hadn’t just trapped me.
He’d made sure that this was my only escape.
I sucked in a breath that hurt all the way down.
“Okay,” I said, and the word came out jagged enough to draw blood. “I’ll be Rua.”
“No,” he said, “You’ll be better.”
Something dangerous flashed across Deargán’s face. Triumph, yes, but it looked corrupt, hungry, as if he’d just been handed the one thing he’d wanted and still didn’t trust himself not to break it.
He took two steps toward me.
“Don’t,” I warned, my voice quiet and lethal.
He stopped, but only just.
“You heard my terms,” I said.
“I heard them.”
“Then remember them.” My pulse was battering the inside of my throat, but the fear had changed shape now. It no longer felt helpless. It was sharp. Weaponized. “This is an alliance. Not permission.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted again, heavy enough to make heat crawl over my skin despite every reason I had to hate it.
“Liath,” he said, and my name in his mouth was too intimate after everything. “You have no idea what it costs me not to touch you.”
Revulsion twisted with something hotter and more treacherous.
“Then keep paying the cost,” I shot back.
His nostrils flared.
For a second, I thought he might actually listen.
Then he moved.
I barely had time to register it before his arm closed around my waist and yanked me toward him.
The sudden contact stole the air from my lungs. The crush of his firm muscled heat had my head spinning. His gaze burned onto mine, his pupils blown wide, making my pulse jump. Admiration burned there, sharp and unmistakable, tangled with a possessive hunger that made my skin prickle.
He crushed his mouth onto mine.
I shoved against his chest on instinct, fury exploding through me so fast it almost blinded me. My hands slammed into him, trying to force space between us, trying to make my body remember all the reasons this should have felt like poison.
He didn’t let go.
His grip locked firmly around the back of my neck, and the violence of it sent a traitorous shiver through me. He kissed me harder, like he meant to suck the argument out of my mouth by force.
Rage tore through me.
So did want. Need.
God, I hated that. Hated the way my body already knew him. Hated the way heat sparked low in my belly against every screaming thought in my head. Hated the way he felt less like my enemy and more like someone I’d been losing ground to for far too long.
I pulled back enough to drag in air.
“This changes nothing,” I bit out against his mouth.
Deargán’s hand tightened in my hair until my scalp stung. “I know.”
His words sent another jagged pulse through me. He wasn’t pretending this meant more. Wasn’t dressing it up as tenderness. Wasn’t lying anymore.
This was still war.
Just war with my body caught in the middle.
I should have pushed him away again. I should have clawed his face and taken back every inch of ground. I should have remembered Maggie on the wall and Dervla in that ward and every shattered piece of myself he had helped design.
But I was so tired. Tired right down to the marrow. Tired of fighting every second, every thought, every reaction he drew out of me. Tired of being afraid of what he could do. Tired of being afraid of what I wanted.
And wasn’t that the ugliest truth of all?
In that vicious, breathless second, I made a choice.
If Deargán thought this moment belonged to him, he was mistaken.
I leaned into the kiss deliberately, meeting his mouth with equal force, letting all the anger and grief inside me burn hot enough to pass for hunger.
Let him think he had pushed me here.
Let him believe I’d given in.
Deargán exhaled against my mouth, a rough growl that sounded like victory. His hand fisted in my hair, twisting until my scalp stung.
“Good girl,” he said, so close I tasted the words more than heard them.
My stomach knotted hard, fury and heat tangling so tightly I couldn’t separate one from the other.
I slid my hand down between us, unzipping him and wrapping my fingers around his hard cock.
The reaction was immediate, a sharp intake of breath against my mouth, then a groan that rumbled from the back of his throat.
I wasn’t gentle. I gripped him with a rough, needy friction, a silent promise that if we were playing his game, I was going to make him bleed for it.
I stroked him fast and rough, making sure he understood exactly what this was.
If Deargán thought he was the only one capable of turning desire into a weapon, he was about to learn otherwise.
He lifted me by my thighs and surged forward, pinning me to the peeling wallpaper while the photographs on the wall trembled with the force. The hunger in his kiss told me this wasn’t about affection. It was a need to consume and devour.
He raked his free hand down my side, thumb digging into the softness above my hip, his mouth never leaving mine.
I bit him, hard enough for the copper tang of blood to seep into the space between our teeth.
He merely groaned, the sound vibrating through both our bodies.
“More,” I demanded.
He shoved my dress up with a rough, practiced urgency and slipped his hand between my thighs, his fingers rubbing at the front of my soaked panties.
He pressed his mouth to my ear, his smile brushing against my lobe. “My perfect performer,” he murmured as he worked my clit.
My breath caught, a ragged little gasp that should have humiliated me, but heat and slickness pooled, my nerves electric, every muscle straining toward the contact I still wanted to deny.
His thumb rubbed against my clit through the thin, soaked fabric, and he hummed in satisfaction.
I could feel myself dripping onto his hand, my insides clenching around the anticipation of what he might do next, of how deep he’d plunge inside, and how much I’d beg for it.
God, I was humiliated and desperate, and more aroused than I’d ever been in my life.
I wanted him to hurt me, to split me open, to leave me ruined and raw and new. I wanted to see what he would do when I gave in. I wanted to see if surrender could be a kind of victory.
He tore my panties away like they were nothing, the elastic biting my thighs before giving way.
My hands, greedy and shaking, went for the buttons of his shirt, popping them open one after another.
His shirt gaped wide, exposing the black ink of a gothic magpie, wings outstretched, open beak stained with blood.
His belt clattered to the floor. I barely had time to admire the hard, angry line of his cock before he pressed me harder against the wall, pulling my legs around his waist. He slid his blunt head once against my aching slit, watching my face.
Then he thrust all the way in, tearing a scream from me.
His cock filled me perfectly, the pain and hunger all coiled together. My nails scraped down his back as he pulled out almost all the way before spearing in again, deeper, harder.
The sound of our bodies colliding was animal, wet and obscene, and I wanted every second of it.
He fucked me hard, his breathing ragged, his restraint gone, the wall rattling, photos and diary entries falling, one after another, fluttering to the floor, trampled and crushed.
I clawed at his hair and bit at his throat, taking his mouth and then gasping for air, grinding myself onto him to take him deeper. He coated my nerves with fire and desperation, every thrust making my spine arch and my mouth fill with filthy curses.
The pleasure built sharp and frantic, a pressure I could not contain, and when it hit, it broke me clean through, my hips jerking, mouth open in a scream. I shattered around him, nails digging deep, vision blacking at the edges.
I stayed suspended there, waves of my climax washing over me and pulling me under.
Through my haze, he pulled out and came with a shudder that racked his whole body against mine, stifling his groan in my hair, the warmth of his release splashing against the front of my dress.
For a few blissful moments the pleasure obliterated everything that had come before it. The asylum. The lies. The Faustian bargain I’d just made with my devil.
For a brief moment, I had a reprieve from everything that would come next.