47. Liath
LIATH
Deargán’s tires crunched slowly over the gravel as Magdalene Institute’s iron gates loomed closer.
Beyond them, freedom.
I sat in the passenger seat dressed in Rua’s clothes. The clothes she’d been admitted in. The black lace sleeves scratched at my skin like a ghost trying to claw its way back in, foreign and deeply wrong. The pants pulled tight at my hips, fabric that had never been meant for my body.
I smoothed them down anyway, as if fabric could mask the fear clawing up my spine.
My heart fluttered in my chest like a trapped bird, my leg bouncing so hard the whole seat seemed to thrum with it.
Deargán reached over and squeezed my knee, his fingers tightening until I winced.
“Stop it.”
His voice stayed soft, almost bored, but the pressure of his grip pinned my leg in place.
“Guards notice nervous patients.” His thumb brushed over my knee. “Smile.”
Right. Don’t fuck this up, Liath.
My tongue snagged across dry lips. The corners of my mouth lifted, stiff and unnatural, and I plastered my smile in place.
At the gates, Deargán pulled up as one of the guards stepped forward and held up a hand.
Deargán lowered the window and passed the paperwork out. “Discharge authorization.”
The guard scanned the page and my stomach twisted.
If he looked too closely, if he asked a question Deargán hadn’t prepared for, it was over.
The guard frowned. His eyes lifted from the paperwork and they slid straight to me.
Fuck. My spine locked, my smile frozen in place.
For a long moment he studied my face like he was searching for something.
Deargán spoke, his voice clipped. “Custody of the Lasair family. You don’t want to keep them waiting, do you?”
Recognition flickered across the guard’s face and he looked down again. His finger traced the embossed seal pressed into the paper.
The Lasair crest.
Even from where I sat, the raised mark glinted faintly in the security floodlight.
The guard’s posture shifted immediately. “Immediately, sir.”
He stepped back and nodded to his teammate in the control booth.
After a beat, the gates began to open.
Deargán drove through.
I could barely breathe, barely dare to hope that we’d made it. Even as the gates groaned shut behind us.
The asylum shrank slowly in the rear mirror, its stone towers dissolving into the gray distance.
For a moment, crisp light air filled my lungs. Like I hadn’t been breathing properly for months.
Oh my God. I was free.
But the winding road grew darker, the trees growing thicker the farther we drove.
A cold understanding settled slowly in my stomach.
I wasn’t being released.
I was being delivered to a different cage.
A more dangerous one.
The road curved through a corridor of dark trees before the manor appeared, stone towers rising behind iron gates like something carved from a nightmare.
The sight punched a memory straight through my skull.
That stone wall, those iron gates, the Lasair crest embossed in the center, half-covered in ivy.
A strange familiarity rose up in me even though I’d never been here before.
Lasair Manor.
Deargán pulled up and killed the engine.
Fuck. He was really leaving me here.
“This is madness,” I said, turning fully toward him. “I can’t walk in there and convince them I’m Rua. They grew up with her. They know her.” I gestured toward the manor looming behind the gates. “They’ll see through me in five minutes.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “I’ve given you everything you need.”
I folded my arms. “You’ve told me shite. I know barely anything about Rua.”
“It’s there,” he said calmly, tapping the side of my head. “Memories. Habits. Familiarities. They’ll surface when they’re needed. Like instincts.”
I studied his face. “You sound very sure of that.”
“I am. My implantation method is flawless.”
I held his gaze. “And if I fail?”
Deargán didn’t answer immediately. His eyes drifted back to the manor.
“Don’t fail.”
A cold weight settled in my chest. He didn’t have to say it out loud. If I failed, I was fucked.
“You’re sending me in anyway.”
Deargán’s gaze stayed on the gates. “You’ll be perfect.”
I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “You’re mental.”
I wanted to trust him. After everything, some stupid, battered part of me still wanted him to be right.
But he wasn’t coming with me.
From here on out, I was on my own.
His hand closed around my wrist before I could open my door.
“Listen to me.” His grip tightened just enough to keep me still. “You’re the only person who can do this. A lot of people are counting on you.”
I swallowed hard around the knot tightening in my throat, my shoulders tensing against the weight of his words.
He leaned in, the touch of his mouth landing soft at first against mine, almost tender. His other hand slid to the side of my neck, holding me there while the kiss deepened just enough to leave my heart racing.
He pulled back and for a moment, he pressed his forehead against mine.
“Stay alive,” he said quietly. “For me.”
My breath caught.
His thumb moved along my jaw before he let go.
My head spun, my mouth like cotton, as I stumbled out of the car, the cold wind hitting me and cutting into my bones. Summer was officially over.
For a second I stood beside the car, shivering, arms wrapped around my chest, waiting for him to say something else. Waiting for him to change his mind and take me away with him. Somewhere. Anywhere.
He didn’t.
He drove off and left me alone at the gates.
I stared after the car until the taillights disappeared through the trees, the silence that followed feeling enormous.
Fuck. Here we go. I braced for the worst as I turned to the intercom and pressed the buzzer.
Static crackled, then a man’s voice said, “Yes?”
The polite voice struck something buried deep in my skull.
An image flashed before my eyes. An older man in a dark uniform, short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, pin-straight back, a silver tray balanced in white-gloved hands.
“Mervyn,” I said, his name spilling out like a reflex. “It’s me. Rua.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
The gates unlocked with a heavy metallic click and began to open.
The speaker crackled. “Welcome home, Miss Rua.”
I clung to the one small bit of comfort I had. Deargán had told the truth about that much at least. Rua’s memories would surface when they were triggered.
I only hoped they surfaced in time to save me.
The gates opened, revealing the full grandeur of Lasair Manor at the end of a long gravel driveway, a sprawling gothic mass of blackened stone.
Towering spires clawed at the sky, their edges bristling with ornate gargoyles crouched along the roofline as if ready to spring.
Arched windows stretched up the walls like the ribs of an ancient cathedral, and flying buttresses curved out from the structure in sweeping stone arms before plunging back into the earth.
The whole place looked less like a home and more like a vampire’s lair.
Movement flickered in one of the upper windows. A tall shape stood behind the glass, watching the gate. Watching me.
They stepped back into the shadows before I could be sure it was real.
Somewhere inside that house lived the monsters Deargán wanted destroyed, men who would tear me apart the moment they realized I wasn’t their daughter.
The gravel crunched beneath my shoes as I stepped forward.
And walked straight into their den.