12. Liath
LIATH
Sometime in the night, I felt someone sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with the weight of a body. A thumb brushed my cheek. A voice whispered my name, low, coaxing.
Lorcan?
A figure leaned over me, breath warm on my cold lips, close enough that I felt the shape of a mouth near mine.
My body locked in terror. And something else, something shameful and hot.
I forced myself awake with a gasp, heart slamming, the dream clinging to my skin like wet sheets.
The taste of lake water clung to the back of my throat, metallic and dirty and wrong. My nightgown was damp with sweat, clinging to my skin.
For a moment I didn’t know where I was, my heart thundering against my sternum until the wood rafters of the Ravenwood tower room came into focus above me, moonlight spilling in from the window.
The faintest waver of a single cello note moved through the air.
My breath stopped.
No. The word landed in my chest without my permission. It can’t be.
I held still, listening.
But the cello did not come back. If it were even there at all.
Just my grief playing tricks on me again.
A shadow slid through the light.
Someone was in my room.
My heart lurched into my mouth. I pushed upright, clutching the blanket in my fists and staring at the silhouette looming up in front of me.
Then the shape… fluttered.
Fluttered?
I forced myself to follow the long, shaking silhouette back to its source, tracing it across the wall and up to the window.
A gray moth perched on the glass, wings trembling, backlit by a milk-white moonbeam. Its body was tiny, but its long shadow across the curved walls looked too large, too human for a heartbeat.
It was only a moth. My shoulders sagged with relief, the breath I’d been holding shuddering out of me.
The moth twitched once, then lifted from the glass and drifted across the room. It circled lazily before dropping down to land on the sheet over my thighs, close enough to touch. Close enough that I could see the powdery texture of its wings.
The air around the moth seemed to thicken.
Lavender and a tinkle melody, scent-song I’d half forgotten vibrated at the edge of my hearing.
For a second I wasn’t in the tower at all; I was small again, pressed to a warm chest, breathing in those same notes.
My birth mother’s skin had smelled like lavender.
Her voice, soft, warm, and impossibly distant, rose in my memory. “My little gray moth.”
A shiver skated down my spine, lifting the hairs at the back of my neck.
“No,” I whispered, the word scraping out raw. “It’s not real. I’m imagining this.” I pressed my lips together, as if I could keep the past from seeping out.
The moth took off again, flying across the room in a slow, purposeful arc, and flittered out the door that was ajar. Not wide, but enough that the darkness of the stairwell showed in a thin crack.
I knew that it had been shut last night. Lorcan always checked the lock. Always.
Something tugged low and certain in my gut, the same pull I’d felt at the lake, at the asylum, every time the past reached for me. Like a thread being reeled in.
I glanced down at Lorcan, asleep next to me, one hand curled near his chest, his breath slow and heavy, his lashes a dark shadow on his cheek. I itched to shake him and beg him to come with me. But my fingers hovered inches from his shoulder.
Maybe this was what going mad felt like, one small decision at a time. Following whispers and faded lullabies. Following shadows. Following a moth because the alternative was admitting that the hole my mother left still hurt.
I slipped out of bed, lifting the blanket carefully so I wouldn’t jostle Lorcan, and slipped away from his warmth, away from safety. Barefoot, I padded across the cold stone and followed the moth through the open door.
The stairwell was cold and silent, full of old drafts and older ghosts. I shivered as the chill bit into my damp skin, wishing I’d thought to grab a wrap or one of Lorcan’s sweaters to pull around my shoulders.
The moth drifted upward, its wings catching the moonlight that spilled in from the arched windows.
I followed it up the spiral staircase, my hand skimming the rough stone wall, my skin prickling with anticipation and dread in equal measure. The stone steps were icy through my bare feet, each one a little shock that kept me moving.
It led me toward the landing upstairs, to the very top of the tower where the air felt thinner, sharper.
Perhaps I should have known it would lead me back here.
I stopped short, my toes curling against the cold stone as if I could root myself in place, my pulse thudding against my ribs like it wanted out.
“This is stupid.” My voice came out thin. My hand still rose toward the door handle, shaking, like it belonged to someone else.
A hand suddenly clamped around my arm, fingers strong and hot against my skin.
My pulse detonated. I screamed before I could think, the sound tearing out of my chest, sharp and high, scraping against the stone.
His hand came over my mouth, cutting the sound off. My back hit the cold wall as he pinned me in place, his body covering mine like a shield and a trap at once.
“Gray,” Lorcan whispered, his breath hot against my ear, “it’s me, it’s me.”
My muscles shook under his hands, adrenaline buzzing beneath my skin. I sagged against his bare chest, his gray sleep pants low on his hips, letting his warmth sink in.
His chest rose and fell too fast against mine, his heart hammering against my ribs as he leaned his forehead against mine, his hands gripping my back and jaw like he thought I might disappear.
“Jesus,” I rasped when he lowered his palm, dragging air into my lungs. “You scared me.”
“I woke up and you were gone,” he said, jaw tight, voice rough with something too close to fear. “Fuck, I thought—” He cut himself off, swallowing hard. “What are you doing up here?”
The words tumbled out before I could shape them, frantic and tangled. “The moth… I saw a gray moth and she used to call me that and it… it came up here and landed on her name and I think she’s trying to tell me something—”
Lorcan frowned down at me, eyes dark. “What?”
The single word was sharp, but there was no mockery in it. Just worry.
I hesitated, my mouth drying. “I… I never told you about my mother.”
“About Mrs. Byrne?” he asked quietly, confusion cutting through some of the tension in his shoulders.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not her. My real mother.”
Lorcan’s grip on my arm eased, but he didn’t let go. “Tell me,” he said, his voice soft and patient.
Somehow I did. Standing in the dim corridor outside her door, I managed to get the story out. How I’d found out I’d been adopted. How she’d left only two initials at the bottom of the adoption paper. How my mother didn’t want me.
How she returned to Ravenwood so she could keep being the party girl. Until they found out. And they tore her apart for it. Until she broke.
She was the girl who drowned herself in the lake.
My voice cracked more than once, but he didn’t interrupt.
“She used to call me her gray moth. So you see,” I finished, my voice a hoarse whisper, “she… the moth led me here. I think…” I paused, my chest tight, bracing for him to call me unhinged. “I think she wants me to go inside again.”
“Gray.” Lorcan’s eyes were fierce in the half-dark. “What do you want?”
My breath caught on the question. “I want to go inside.” The confession wavered, shaking. “No.” I swallowed. “I need to go in.”
His jaw flexed, that familiar flicker of protectiveness tightening his features. For a second I thought he’d drag me back downstairs, lock the door, tell me ghosts and moths weren’t enough reason to risk everything. I braced for it.
His expression softened in a way that cracked me open from the inside. “Then I’m going with you,” he said, like a promise. “Whatever you find out, we find out. Together.”
Lorcan laced his fingers through mine, his grip steady, warm, anchoring me to him. Then he tugged me in front of the door to my dead mother’s dorm room.
For a long moment I just stood there. God, what did I hope to find? What would I find? Could I handle the truth, even if the truth just confirmed every last thing they said about her?
Lorcan didn’t push, he just squeezed my hand and rubbed the back of my palm with his thumb, letting me know that he would stand here next to me all night if that’s what I needed.
I blinked back tears, let out a shaky breath, then reached out again.
The metal of the door handle was cold in my palm as I turned it and pushed the door open.
We stepped inside together.
Nothing had changed since I’d last been here. The same low ceiling. The same dust hanging in the lamplight. The same paintings crowded on every wall. The same row of framed photographs on the dressing table.
The same room of a woman who’d had no children.
The same woman who’d abandoned me with two scrawled initials.
“Where do I start?” I murmured, more to myself than to Lorcan.
Lorcan stayed at my shoulder, his hand light against the small of my back. “Wherever you need to.”
I went to the dressing table first.
The drawers stuck. I worked them free one at a time. Tortoiseshell combs. Hairpins furred with rust. A glass bottle of something that had once smelled of lavender and was now only the ghost of it.
I moved to the desk. There were notebooks of essays, lecture notes in a careful slanted hand, a book of poetry by Byron with a blue lotus flower pressed inside the cover.
I went to the wardrobe next, my fingers tracing over dresses my mother had been too young to grow out of, a threadbare coat, a pair of dance shoes worn almost through at the toe. I pushed the dresses aside and felt along the back panel. Nothing behind them. Nothing tucked under the lining.
The bedside table. The trunk at the foot of the bed. The shelves above the desk. I went through it all, slower than I needed to, because somewhere underneath the searching, I was waiting to find the thing that would disprove the story I’d carried for twenty-two years.