2. Liath
LIATH
Lorcan climbed the spiral stairs of the abandoned Ravenwood tower ahead of me, broad shoulders tense beneath his soaked coat, boots thudding against the worn steps. Rain battered the tower, wind whining through cracks in the ancient stone sounding almost human.
I followed numbly, dragging my fingers along the rough wall to steady myself. The stone bit cold against my palm.
The curling tower stairs were slick with damp and shadowed by weak wall sconces that smelled of old lamp oil and mildew, the scent ringing through my skull in sharp silver chimes.
We passed a cracked door on one of the lower landings, a sagging couch and a leather punching bag swaying in the draft visible through the gap, the stale smoke coming from inside catching against the soot still in my lungs.
Neither of us spoke.
Finally, Lorcan stopped at one of the landings near the top of the tower, the stairwell continuing above us, vanishing upward into darkness.
I tilted my head up. “What’s up there?”
Lorcan glanced toward the upper stairs before answering. “The girl who lived in the upstairs room drowned herself in the lake. The dorm’s been empty since.”
Lightning flashed through one of the windows and painted Lorcan’s profile white for a second before plunging him back into shadow.
I peered up the spiraling staircase, at the dark swallowing the upper floors whole. Old tower. Old ghosts.
Lorcan unlocked the door with a heavy iron key, the lock groaning loudly enough to echo.
He pushed the door open, then stepped aside, his voice scraping out low and exhausted. “After you.”
I slipped past him.
The old dorm room had stone walls, dark timber beams, and faded crimson drapery. A four-poster bed sat against the far wall with fresh sheets neatly turned down. No dust coated the furniture. No cobwebs hung from the ceiling corners.
Lorcan had prepared this room.
He shut the door behind us and tested the lock automatically, once, twice. Then he set my bag, filled with women’s clothes he’d “borrowed” from Finn’s boathouse, beside the wardrobe.
I slowly turned in place. “What is this place?”
Lorcan started a fire in the hearth without looking at me. “Sometimes I sleep here.”
The fire crackled as it flared to life, cedar smoke curling through the room.
He stared into the fire and said quieter, “When it gets too much.”
The words settled heavily between us.
Lorcan hid in this abandoned tower from his own father. A bolt-hole. Somewhere to breathe when the walls of Lasair Manor started closing around him.
The sympathy scraped against the back of my ribs before I could stop it.
I crushed it down hard. He doesn’t deserve it.
Rain hammered hard against the windows as I drifted toward it, the warped panes trembling faintly beneath the wind.
Ravenwood shimmered below us through the rain.
Lamplight blurred gold across flooded pathways and slick stone courtyards. Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the trees, throwing the campus into sharp relief for half a second at a time. The lecture halls. The building spires. The courtyards.
The life I’d been pretending to belong to.
Another flash lit the lake beyond the campus. Black water churned violently beneath the storm, waves crashing hard against the shoreline rocks.
Magdalene crouched on the opposite shoreline like a wound carved into the landscape. Cold stone walls. Narrow windows. The asylum where Bridgit was still trapped. Where Dervla still waited for freedom.
Lasair Manor rose through the trees to the north, enormous and dark against the lightning, its lit windows glowing faintly through the rain.
Alistair’s lair, the monster sitting at the center of all of this.
Lightning flashed again. For one sick second everything connected in a single frame. Lasair Manor. Magdalene. Ravenwood. The tower. Every road in this town curved back toward him somehow. Even Lorcan’s hiding place still sat inside his father’s shadow.
My chest pulled painfully tight. Blackwood wasn’t just a town. It was a cage.
An alarm rang out, the sound startling me.
I blinked down at my pocket in confusion before fumbling the cracked phone free, surprised it survived.
Nuala’s name glowed across the broken screen.
Relief hit hard as I answered it.
“Liath?” Nuala’s voice came through breathless and thin with panic. “Where are—?”
The phone vanished from my hand.
Lorcan dropped it onto the wooden floorboards and stomped down hard, shattering glass cracking through the room.
I stared at the ruined phone as rain battered the tower windows. As the fire popped sharply.
I glared up at Lorcan. “What the fuck?”
“Any contact risks everything.” His voice had gone cold and controlled again. “We can’t trust anyone.”
I looked at the dead black screen. At the glittering shards spread across the boards like teeth.
He’d destroyed my only lifeline.
“I hate you.” The words came out empty, too exhausted to even sound angry anymore.
The bastard just stood there watching me, his face unreadable.
Something inside me finally gave way.
I dropped, my knees hitting the floor hard enough to sting. I curled inward against the old boards as grief punched violently through everything anger had been holding upright.
Deargán’s face flashed in my mind, ash streaked across his skin and smoke swallowing the look in his eyes right before the carriage house came down.
Get vengeance for me.
A broken sound tore out of my throat.
Then Bridgit, screaming as she was dragged away. Help me. Now locked in a cell somewhere inside Magdalene because I had failed to get her out.
Maeve lying cold and cut open on a cadaver table, her dead eyes open.
Dervla still trapped in that ward, rubbing her matching scar like I could answer her prayers, waiting for someone who never came back for her.
Every promise I had made them.
Every single one broken.
It all hit all at once, broken sobs tearing from me as my chest folded inward.
I heard his boots against the floorboards coming toward me, saw him crouching beside me in my periphery, his hand reaching toward me.
“Don’t touch me!” The raw scream ripped out of me.
He froze, hand midair.
I shoved myself backward across the floor, breathing hard and uneven, until my back hit the wall.
“I trusted you.” My voice broke as I pulled my knees up and hugged them, hot tears spilling from my stinging eyes. “I trusted her. And he died because of it.”
Lorcan recoiled like I’d struck him across the face. For a second his mouth opened, then closed. Slowly, he lowered himself onto the floor opposite me, not close enough to touch. But not far enough away.
The fire crackled between us and the storm raged on.
Alistair was still alive.
Deargán was dead. The mission was dead with him.
“I can’t do this alone.” My voice cracked harder. “How am I supposed to do this alone?”
I sobbed into my hands, my soul feeling like it was tearing apart.
I couldn’t do this without Deargán.
I would fail.
And Alistair would win.
Warmth brushed slowly across my left forearm. Then back up, more solid now.
I looked down even as the tears kept coming.
Nothing touched my skin.
Another slow stroke followed, heat moving up my arm beneath the torn fabric of my sweater.
My head snapped up.
Lorcan sat across from me, watching quietly while his hand moved along his own forearm with slow, careful strokes.
And I felt every movement on myself.
He knew. The realization slid through me slowly, opening a whole new wound underneath the others. He knew about my synesthesia. About my mirror-touch.
Now he was using it to comfort me even though I hadn’t asked for it.
“Stop it.” My voice came out dull.
Lorcan’s hand kept moving, his fingers sliding over the line of his own jaw and cheek.
Heat ghosted across my face, sending a warm ache through me. “Lorcan. Stop.”
He ignored me, wrapping his hands around himself.
I felt his arms around me as if they were really there, warm and firm, holding me together as I fell apart. And perhaps it was just my imagination, but there was the faint thudding of his heart against mine.
Soon my breathing loosened, the sharp tearing feeling in my chest easing against my will.
I hated that it worked. Hated that my body responded to him automatically. Hated that he was the only person alive who could touch me without touching me at all.
The room filled with cedar smoke and the low hiss of burning logs.
Lorcan’s fingers moved through his own hair now in slow steady strokes and I felt them across my scalp. I leaned into his ghost-touch, holding back a sigh.
“Does your synesthesia trigger any other way?” he asked, his voice curious.
I was too exhausted to lie. “You smell like violins.”
Lorcan’s hand paused, just for a second, then resumed moving again.
He had known about this the entire time. He could have weaponized it. He could have used it against me whenever he wanted. But he never had.
Why didn’t you ever use it against me?
“You know… you’re not alone.” His voice came rougher now. “I’m—”
“You’re nothing,” I snapped.
Lorcan beautiful features twisted, the ghost-touch against my skin faltering for half a second before resuming.
Stupidly, I wished I could take it back. Because he looked like I’d cut him open.
I almost reached for him. I locked my hands together in my lap instead.
“I don’t trust you,” I said quieter this time.
Not nothing.
Not quite.
The line of his throat moved.
The storm rolled around the tower in a low violent growl.
“What do I need to do to make you trust me?” His eyes stayed fixed on me from across the room. “Anything, Gray.” His voice dropped lower. Rawer. “Name it.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because I didn’t know.
Trusting him felt like standing at the edge of another collapse.
Lorcan watched me in silence for another moment before speaking again. “If I was on his side…” His brows tightened. “Why wouldn’t I have just brought you to him? Why isn’t he storming this room right now? Why haven’t I pushed you from this tower?”
I went still and my gaze moved to the fire.
He could have. He had multiple chances already. Outside the burning carriage house. As we made our way off the grounds. Skirting the lake in Finn’s stolen boat toward Ravenwood. Even now.
Instead, he’d done nothing except protect me. Hide me. Keep me safe.
A familiar dread rolled through me. Deargán had protected me too. And Deargán still died.
“The deed.” Lorcan tensed suddenly, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “I’ll walk into Magdalene and take ownership of the place. I’ll unlock every fucking door myself if I have to.”
For one dangerous second I wanted to let him. Wanted to believe brute force could fix this. Wanted to hand the whole nightmare to somebody bigger and stronger and let them carry it for me.
But it wouldn’t work.
“Lorcan—”
“I’ll do it for you right now.” He sprang to his feet and turn toward the door.
“No.”
Lorcan halted, his hand reaching for the handle. The firelight flickered across his face as he turned back toward me. “Why not?”
“Because Alistair will fight you.” I wiped at my wet face, anger turning my voice bitter. “And by the time you get your hands on Magdalene, those girls will be gone.”
Lorcan’s jaw set hard. “What do you mean gone?”
“The asylum isn’t the whole operation. His network is bigger than that.”
Outside, thunder cracked hard enough to shake the glass.
Lorcan went still. “Bigger…” he said slowly. “How?”
My pulse thudded unevenly again.
This was the crossroads Deargán had hit over and over with me.
Protect them by keeping them ignorant.
Or trust them enough to let them carry the truth.
Deargán’s secrets had left me blind right until the end. If I kept doing the same thing now, I became part of the cycle that destroyed him.
My fingers curled tighter against my sleeves.
Trust Lorcan and risk betrayal again.
Don’t trust him and fight alone.
Lorcan waited without pushing this time.
The fire snapped loudly between us.
I dragged in a shaky breath. “There’s a network.” My voice came out quiet as I squeezed the words out of my tightened throat. “They called themselves the Sons.”
Bridgit screaming as they dragged her away, as their Mis drug poisoned her bloodstream. The Sons will silence the daughters.
Dervla’s name printed across the top of a legal document stripping her inheritance away as outstanding medical fees.
Maeve at Alistair’s drinks evening, her glassy eyes wide on mine as they took her away. Bewley’s letter that damned her. As a true Son, I invoke the Mis protocol.
The drugged smiles of the girls draped across men’s laps. Fresh stock? Entertainment, enjoy. The hand up my skirt and Lorcan’s knife. Is he a son? Not yet.
I forced myself to continue, bitterness clear in my voice. “You shut down Magdalene and they’ll just reopen somewhere else. Different building. Different name. Same men.” My voice cracked. “More girls disappear. More girls die.”
Lorcan slowly lowered himself back onto the floor opposite me. The anger banked behind his eyes, his face settling into his usual cold flat mask.
“The Sons,” he repeated carefully.
I nodded once.
“We have to destroy all of it.” My gaze dropped to the space between us. “Not just Magdalene.”
For Maeve.
For Bridgit.
For Dervla.
And for Deargán too. But I kept this vow to myself. Lorcan couldn’t know I was determined to get vengeance for him.
For a long moment neither of us spoke. The room felt smaller around us, the air thinner.
Then Lorcan leaned forward slightly, forearms braced against his knees. “What do we do?”
What do we do.
I studied him through the firelight. He was still dangerous. Still Alistair’s son. Still capable of destroying me if I was wrong.
But he was here.
And for now, he’d chosen my side.
“You stay at the manor,” I said slowly. “You keep playing the dutiful son.”
Lorcan’s mouth went hard, but he nodded once.
“I stay hidden here,” I continued. “We keep him believing I died in the fire.”
Lorcan leaned in, his fingers twitching toward mine. But he didn’t take them.
I didn’t reach out either.
“And while he thinks he’s won,” I said quietly, “we tear everything apart from the inside.”