15. Liath
LIATH
Ihated being in the tower without Lorcan. The tower felt too cold without him, too quiet, too thick with shadows.
I kept telling myself the tower was safe. That nothing could touch me here because nobody knew I was here. But over the past few days, nothing had felt right.
While Lorcan was in class and I was forced to pace the same strip of floorboards or trying to lose myself in a book, I kept feeling… watched.
I kept feeling like the air shifted behind me. Like breath brushed the back of my neck. Like the shadows were trying to reach out and touch me.
Then a ribbon went missing from my dressing table. At first I thought I’d misplaced it. But then my black violet perfume oil vanished from my nightstand. I never lost things. Not like that. Not twice.
Yesterday afternoon, a floorboard above me creaked.
I froze mid-step and waited. But I heard nothing else. When I grabbed the poker and climbed the stairs to check, I found the top floor empty. But I knew that had been a footstep.
I kept smelling a faint trace of cloves and pepper, brushing against my senses like fingertips down my spine, elusive and slipping away so quickly that I couldn’t tell whether it was real or imagined.
I tried to rationalize it all away, trauma, grief, lack of sleep. But each strange thing piled onto the last until the weight of it pressed hard enough that I couldn’t breathe.
Something was happening inside this tower.
Something was happening to me.
I couldn’t tell Lorcan, not yet. Not until I had proof. Not until I understood whether I was losing my mind… or whether someone really was watching me.
I would set a trap.
If someone took the bait, then I’d unmask my stalker.
If no one came… then I could finally admit it was all in my head. That the fire had broken something in me and this tower was pressing on the bruise.
I wasn’t sure which answer I feared more.
That night, I sat on the bed, heart unsteady, and opened the bottle of ADHD medication I’d stolen from Ravenwood’s pharmacy. I swallowed down one pill, feeling it scrape all the way down, a guarantee that I’d stay awake.
This was reckless. Stupid. Exactly the sort of thing Lorcan would forbid.
But he wasn’t here.
And the stalker was.
Maybe.
I turned off the bedside lamp. Moonlight washed the room in soft silver, catching on the edges of the old stone walls. I slid beneath the covers, arranging my body like someone drifting into sleep, loose limbs, steady breaths, eyelashes lowered.
Under the blankets, my heart thudded against my ribs.
I stayed still and silent, intensely listening.
Minutes dragged. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. Long enough that I began to doubt myself.
And then I heard a soft footfall on the stairs.
Every muscle locked. But I forced my breath to stay slow and even as if I were asleep.
The footsteps crept up the spiral steps, slow, careful, and measured. Exactly the way someone walked when they didn’t want to be heard.
There was a soft metal scraping. Someone was picking my door lock.
The latch gave a tiny, betraying click.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
The door eased open a few inches, its hinges groaning in a low, wounded sound.
For a long moment, my stalker didn’t step inside. He just stood there, his presence pressing into the room.
I couldn’t see him through my closed lashes, but I felt him. My heart beat so violently I feared he would hear it.
Then his soft footsteps padded across the floorboards, managing to avoid the one near the dresser that always creaked. He’d learned the layout. He’d been here before.
The presence moved closer, hesitating at the edge of my bed, hovering over me like he was afraid to touch me, his breath hitching, a quiet, desperate sound.
My hand curled around the heavy metal candleholder I’d hidden beneath my pillow.
His fingertip brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, so careful and heartbreakingly familiar.
My heartbeat detonated.
That was not a dream. Not a memory. Not a hallucination.
Someone was leaning over my bed in the dark, someone who’d slipped past all the locks, someone inches from my throat, every instinct screaming danger.
I snapped my eyes open, sucking in a sharp breath as adrenaline and terror ripped through me.
Deargán stood over me.
Deargán.
He was alive.
I gasped, the shock ripping out of me like something physical, a jagged force that punched straight through my lungs.
For a moment all I could do was stare at him, drinking in the impossible sight of his broad shoulders looming over me, his dark hair longer now, uncut and wild around his face, the familiar flare of cello notes rising in my head.
“You’re alive?” I whispered, too afraid to blink in case he disappeared, my voice cracking on the last word, a sound caught between a plea and an accusation. “You’re alive. Deargán—”
His breath stuttered at the sound of his name, the smallest involuntary sound.
Relief hit, an overwhelming and disorienting rush that stole my breath.
He was alive.
He was real.
He was here.
He wouldn’t look at me. His jaw tightened as he angled his face away, the shadows hiding his beautiful features from me.
“You weren’t supposed to see me.” His voice was thick and frayed at the edges. “Not yet.”
Not an apology, not an explanation, almost a reprimand, like my shock was an inconvenience.
Like I had done something wrong by catching him.
My relief collapsed in on itself, hollowing out my chest as anger detonated beneath it, fierce and blinding, a wildfire that roared up my throat and made my hands shake with all the grief and pain he’d forced me to feel.
“Why did you let me think you were dead?” I yelled, my voice unleashing with rage and hurt, scraping raw against my throat. “Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
I threw the blankets off me and leaped to my feet, my hands in fists by my side.
Deargán slipped farther back into the shadows.
My voice cracked into something rawer. “I mourned you. I thought I was going crazy with grief. And all that time, you were still breathing.”
The realization cut through the rage. The whisper of cellos. The shifted shadows. The ribbon. The perfume oil.
“You were here.” My voice scraped low. “You watched me grieve. You watched me. Watched us.”
Deargán flinched, but he still didn’t answer. His breath hitched, shallow and ragged, and his fingers twitched at his sides, as if he wanted to touch me but forced himself not to, the restraint in him vibrating like a held scream.
All the while he refused to meet my eyes, refusing to acknowledge any part of what I was feeling. Like he refused to see my grief. Refused to acknowledge me.
That avoidance snapped something sharp inside me and tore through my restraint.
“Look at me, damn you.” I grabbed his chin and forced his face toward mine.
That’s when I saw his mask.
It was an angle-cut pale porcelain piece covering half his face with a raw, cracked surface. It made him look cruel and brutal, and with his uncut hair wild about his face, he looked like something that might have been torn from a nightmare.
A phantom.
I froze.
His whole body went rigid and a low warning sound vibrated in his chest. He yanked his chin out of my hand, recoiling into himself, his voice cracking as he lifted his gloved hand to shield his face. “D-don’t look at me.”
My stomach dropped, heat and ice clashing beneath my ribs. Something terrible had happened to him in that fire, something that had carved itself into his skin.