7. Liath
LIATH
Lorcan threw another shirt into his duffel.
I stood nearby, my fingers twisting together in front of me, watching him pace between the wardrobe and the chair where he’d piled the rest of his clothes, my stomach tighter with every item that disappeared into the bag.
The room still smelled of woodsmoke, sex, and violins. We’d spent the last sixteen hours wrapped up in each other, a magical little bubble where only he and I existed. But now we’d run out of time.
Lorcan pulled the thick bundle of cash from inside the bag and zipped the duffel shut.
This time he set it down carefully against the blankets.
His hand slid around the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair before he pulled me toward him, his scent-song flaring.
He pressed his forehead against mine. “I won’t be upset if you decide to go.”
I pulled back and stared at him.
Dusk light filtered through the tower windows behind us, warming the hard lines of his face. He looked exhausted, his eyes carrying bruises shadows, beneath them like he’d barely slept at all.
“I’m not going,” I said quietly. “I’m with you.”
For one second his lungs loosened in a sigh, his shoulders softening, before his arms around me tensed again.
“Stay in the tower. Don’t come to the manor.” His eyes locked on mine hard enough to pin me still. “No matter what happens.”
The breath went out of me. “You don’t think Alistair will believe you.”
Lorcan looked away. “I think he’s dangerous. And he knows he was betrayed…”
If Alistair suspected Lorcan had turned against him…
My stomach twisted violently as panic surged up hard and immediate. Suddenly, my promise to Dervla felt so far removed from the man standing here, flesh, blood, and ink, in front of me. A man I’d gotten dangerously close to getting used to having.
“Then maybe you stay.” I gripped him tighter, my fingers digging into the scars across his back. “We both hide. While we figure out a way to—”
“No.” His voice cracked through the room. “The only way to bring him down is from the inside. You said that.”
Damn him. He was using my own logic against me.
I had been terrified for myself walking into Magdalene as Rua. But I had had the advantage of surprise.
Now, Alistair would be waiting for betrayal. Watching every movement, every hesitation, every lie. Even from his own son. Especially from his own son.
And Lorcan was walking into the lair of someone who had spent his entire life training him how to obey.
He began to turn back to his duffel.
I tugged him back against me, my voice fierce. “No stupid risks. You hear me? If you even get a hint he’s onto you, you get out.”
His gaze held mine. Something tight pulled across his face.
My voice broke softer on the next words. “Come back to me.”
The room went painfully still, the air growing thick enough to choke on.
Lorcan cupped my jaw and he kissed me, so slow it ached.
I pressed into him, my fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
The kiss deepened. His mouth moving against mine, hungry and desperate, while his other hand slid into my hair, anchoring me there like he might never let go.
My hands found the hard lines of his ribs beneath his shirt while his fingers tangled in my hair.
He was kissing me like he was saying goodbye.
Lorcan tore himself away, the loss of his body heat stinging like pins and needles.
He scooped up his duffel bag, his shoulders sitting tight and high around his ears like he was physically forcing himself toward the door.
“Lorcan—”
He walked out before I could finish, the tower door slamming shut behind him.
I stood frozen for half a second before rushing toward the window and flinging it open.
Cold air hit my face as I leaned out over the grounds below.
Lorcan crossed the courtyard quickly beneath the gray afternoon sky, the duffel slung over one shoulder while dead leaves scraped across the stone paths around him, his shoulders still hunched up around his ears.
The lake stretched black beyond the trees where Finn’s boat remained hidden beneath the reeds.
Lorcan reached the edge of the path near the old fountain statue overgrown with ivy.
Then he stopped and looked back over his shoulder toward the tower. Toward me.
My breath caught.
Even across the distance I could see his face. He was trying to put something into the look that he had not put into words upstairs.
My hand tightened against the cold stone windowsill.
Then Lorcan turned away and disappeared beyond the trees.
The tower bedroom emptied around me.
I stepped back from the window slowly, latching it back up.
My arms wrapped tightly around myself automatically while I rubbed warmth back into my skin, trying to chase away the chill that had drifted in around me.
It didn’t help.
The room felt wrong without him in it.
My eyes went to the bed. The blankets were still pulled back from where we had gotten out of them an hour ago. The pillow on his side held the print of his head.
I was alone.
My mind moved to the library, the computer terminals, and my decision to return after he’d gone.
Nuala. She deserved to know the truth.
But Lorcan would be furious if he found out I’d gone behind his back.
I crossed to the hearth and jabbed the poker harder into the fire, sending sparks spiraling up the chimney while guilt turned slow and heavy beneath my ribs.
I’d be going behind his back. The realization sat ugly in my stomach, but it still didn’t change my mind.
But Nuala wasn’t his decision to make for me.
My cursor hovered over the send button glowing at the bottom of my email to Nuala.
Lorcan’s warnings sat in the back of my head. Stay in the tower. Don’t trust anyone. Any contact risked everything.
The library sat silent around me except for the distant hum of old heating pipes and naked branches like fingers tapping against the stained glass windows from the wind.
If Alistair somehow found out…
No. Nuala was my friend. She’d never betray me. Nuala deserved to know.
I clicked send before I could second-guess myself again and the email vanished from the screen.
Too late now.
I leaned back slowly in the chair and looked around the library.
The place felt enormous with the campus emptied. The silence no longer felt academic. It felt like I was sitting inside the belly of a hungry ancient beast.
A shiver crawled across my skin.
I should go back. College started again tomorrow. Someone could come back early. A keen student. A professor. Cleaning staff. No one could see me. I was supposed to be dead.
My gaze drifted toward the top of the tower that I could just see through the window.
The drowned girl.
The one Lorcan had mentioned from the room above mine.
There’s been no mention of her in the archive room records. She must have drowned after the Ravenwood records went digital.
Curiosity tugged hard. Before I could talk myself out of it, I turned back toward the screen and typed the search terms into a research browser.
My eyes caught on the headlines.
Ravenwood Student Drowned in Blackwood Lake.
Several articles appeared.
I clicked the first result.
The date of the article was from eighteen years ago. It described a young female scholarship student discovered drowned near the western bank of the lake.
My eyes skimmed lower, then stopped.
The grainy black-and-white portrait attached to the article stared back at me from the screen. A Ravenwood student in a school portrait, head tilted slightly, the kind of half smile a photographer would have asked for.
My breath snagged in my throat.
The shape of her mouth. Her button nose. The way her eyes sat slightly too far apart.
I knew this face.
I had been looking at it in mirrors for twenty-two years.
My face.