9. Lorcan
LORCAN
By the time I reached the iron gates of Lasair Manor, my skin felt too tight for my bones. Rain clung to me in cold rivulets, soaking through my collar and into the seams of my shirt.
The iron gates groaned shut behind me. Lasair Manor loomed at the end of the gravel driveway, its windows lit gold in the wet dusk, its black slate roof slick with rain. From a distance, a house. Up close, what it had always been. A monster’s lair.
I dragged a breath in through the cold and held it.
If I didn’t keep up the pretense of everything being normal, Alistair would smell blood. One wrong move, one slip, and he’d follow it straight back to her.
Alistair had taught me how to be cold. How to contain my emotions.
How to swallow everything that mattered and keep my face quiet over the top of it.
Every weakness he’d ever caned out of me, every flinch he’d ever shamed me into burying, every soft thing he’d ever made me cut from my own chest, all of it had been training.
I hadn’t known what for then. I knew now.
If I was going to beat him, I had to use every piece of it.
The only way to survive a monster’s den is to become one.
I crossed the gravel and went up the stone steps.
Inside, the manor was quiet in the way a predator holds still before striking.
I shrugged the worst of the rain off my coat in the foyer and left it on the hook. Water beaded down the back of my neck. My boots left wet prints across the marble like wounded prey already bleeding.
Upstairs, Wagner drifted from down the hall. As I neared, so did cigar smoke and the medicinal sweetness of absinthe under it.
He was in his study.
Good. Get it over with.
I paused outside the study door, squared my shoulders, and let the coldness frost over me.
I knocked once.
“Enter.”
I walked in and closed the door behind me, the soft click sounding too final.
He didn’t look up from where he stood at the side table, his back half-turned to me.
He’d tried to kill her.
He had stood in front of a locked cell with my woman inside it and poured accelerant. Then he’d set it alight.
My hand twitched toward the silver-handled cane propped against the side of the bookcase, the snarling dog’s head catching the lamplight.
Three steps and I could have it in my hand. Snap it across my knee, the lacquer splintering. Drive the broken end up under his jaw and through.
I gripped my hands into fists at my sides. I focused on my breathing.
Three breaths.
Four.
Not yet. I would fucking kill him. But not yet.
“Father,” I ground out.
He poured absinthe with slow precision onto a sugar cube held in a slotted spoon, the green louche blooming through the glass. His cigar languished in the ashtray, a thin line of smoke rising. “Welcome back.”
I forced my fingers to relax at my sides. “Thank you.”
“How was”—he let the pause stretch, tasting the word—“Switzerland?”
I forced my shoulders loose and shifted my weight to one leg, like a man standing casually rather than an opponent calculating how many punches he could get in. “Cold. Good snow.”
He let out a faint hum. “Your plans changed so quickly. I thought you said you’d spend the break here. Catching up on your studies.”
My jaw clenched. “Yes, well, it was a last-minute invitation.”
He moved closer, the sharp medicinal scent of absinthe filling my head. “And without saying goodbye to your dear old father.” His smile was a thin blade. “Quite rude.”
The silence behind the word vibrated, an accusation, a threat, a question he wasn’t asking directly.
“Won’t happen again,” I said.
Another hum. Then his head tilted, sharklike. “Tell me, did… your sister go with you?”
Sister. He meant the imposter. He meant the one I wasn’t supposed to know about.
My blood iced over. He was testing me.
“God no,” I said with a scoff. “It was a boys’ trip.”
“I see.” He took a slow sip and began to walk a slow circle around me, the absinthe glass held loose at his side.
I turned to keep him in my sightline. Two chess players taught from the same playbook, both experts in giving nothing away. He might not be able to read my face. But it also meant I had no idea what he was hiding either.
He stopped half a step closer to me. “Do you know where she ended up over the break?”
He was speaking about the daughter he “killed” as if she were a rich girl gone wayward, sulking off somewhere on a friend’s yacht among the Greek islands.
Fuck. He was colder than I ever imagined.
I see. He was telling me a story. The one he’d build over the coming weeks. One that he expected me to uphold. My daughter took herself off after term ended. Went somewhere. Didn’t come back. We’re very worried.
That’s how he’d explain Rua’s disappearance.
His broken daughter was missing. His poor troubled daughter who just got released from Magdalene. The girl who couldn’t cope. The girl who finally cracked.
A version no one would question, because everyone in Blackwood had been told the same thing since she was twelve.
He was laying the bricks for his cover-up. I was watching him lay them.
Fucking bastard.
“No idea,” I said with a shrug. “Didn’t really keep tabs.”
“No?” His gaze sharpened, slicing through every lie. “Curious. I was under the impression the two of you had grown quite…” His mouth twisted. “…close last term.”
I let a small, dry sound out, the closest thing I could manage to a laugh. “You know me, Father. I get bored easily.”
He studied me for a moment. Then his mouth curled into something that wasn’t a smile. “You do. Quick to alight, quicker to extinguish. It’s one of the few traits of mine you inherited.” He swirled his glass. “Be careful with that. A man set alight makes himself stupid for the wrong woman.”
“Sir.”
“Women.” His voice flattened, the bitterness coming through. “They look soft and stupid. And then you turn around and find they’ve been poisoning you for months. Every one of them. Poison underneath. Your mother was no different.”
“You are poisoning him.” Alistair’s voice echoed inside my head.
But I had no time to dwell on it.
“Rua has always been timid,” he said with a dismissive flick of his hand. “Sweet, but simple. But the girl who returned from Magdalene? She was sharper. Bolder. Louder.”
His eyes gleamed, knife-bright. “Almost like she’d been replaced.”
He was testing me. Seeing if I’d flinch. If I’d give away that I knew she had been an imposter.
I kept my expression blank even though my heart crashed about in my rib cage. I shrugged. “I guess her new meds were working.”
He stepped closer, studying me, his medicinal smell clogging up my throat. Then he let out a quiet, dangerous chuckle. “Perhaps.”
I squared up to him, almost toe to toe. If I showed any fear, any weakness, he’d strike. “And that problem at Ravenwood we discussed last term?” The problem being Deargán. I let a slip of accusation bleed out into my tone. “I heard there’d been a fire.”
He tilted his head a fraction. “Such an unfortunate accident. How lucky that I won’t have to trouble the Garda after all.”
He would admit nothing. Not even to his own son.
I held his eyes.
He held mine.
Neither of us said anything else.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’m pleased you’re feeling… refreshed.”
“Yes, sir.”
A long pause stretched out.
Finally, he lifted his glass. “Don’t embarrass me this term.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good.” He flicked his fingers toward the hall. “You may go.”
I crossed to the door and my hand slid onto the cold brass handle.
“Oh, almost forgot,” Alistair called out. “There’s something upstairs for you. Call it a Christmas present.”
I half turned. “Sir?”
He flicked his fingers without looking up.
A car. Some watch. Likely something his assistant picked out. I dipped my chin in acknowledgement and turned the handle.
The study door clicked shut behind me.
The corridor swallowed me whole.
I made it three steps before the tension drained out of my shoulders in one long bleed. My breath came back, shaky around the edges. I’d slipped his snare by a fraction.
Christ. Too close. Too fucking close.
My hand closed around the handle of my bedroom door and a tired pulse of relief moved through me. Behind me, Wagner still drifted faintly through the corridor and I could still feel the pressure of my father’s attention lingering over the house like smoke.
But in this room I could relax. To drop my guard for one blessed moment. Thank God.
I pushed the door open and froze.
Fuck, no. Rua was here, sitting on my fucking bed.
Her knees were pulled tightly against her chest while she clutched one of my pillows against herself hard enough to wrinkle the fabric. Mascara streaked black down both cheeks. The bedside lamp beside her flickered weakly against the darkened room, throwing trembling shadows across her pale skin.
Her wet eyes lifted toward me, her voice cracking. “Lorcan…”
“Rua.” My fingers tightened slowly around the door handle. “What are you doing here?”
Rua stayed curled around the pillow for another second before lifting it toward her face and inhaling deeply against the fabric. “I just needed something that smelled like you.”
I stepped inside my room and closed my door. “Jesus Christ, Rua,” I hissed, “he tried to kill you. Why would you come back?”
Rua flinched as if the truth physically hurt her. “Because he’s my daddy. Where else was I supposed to go?”
Pity flickered in me. God, she was so broken.
But if she was here…
Then Alistair knew more than he was admitting.