40. Lorcan
LORCAN
Ihad been counting the hours since Alistair locked me in this tower room.
Four days.
Ninety-six hours.
Five thousand, seven hundred, and sixty minutes.
The counting was the only thing that stopped the walls from closing in.
I stood at the narrow window and watched the path that circled around the base of the tower. For the last four days, a guard had passed beneath it every twenty minutes. I knew because I’d counted those too.
This evening, the path remained empty. The patrol had not passed for six hours and twenty-three minutes.
My guess was they’d been pulled for the auction tonight. Alistair would need every available body there.
My pulse kicked harder. This was it. My window to escape. My last chance to get to Liath before she disappeared into whatever nightmare awaited her after the auction.
The problem was getting out. Three locks still sat on the outside of the door. Three locks between me and freedom.
A scraping sound interrupted my thoughts. A tray slid beneath the door. My dinner. A thick steak. Rosemary potatoes. Perfectly steamed beans. Real cutlery. White napkin. Real food in my gilded cage.
The footsteps started away.
“Mervyn, wait,” I called out.
His footsteps stopped and the silence stretched between us.
I stepped to the door. “Let me out for a walk,” I said, keeping my voice calm and reasonable. “Just some air. You can come with me. I’ll go straight back in after.”
For several seconds, there was only silence.
“Master Lorcan.” His voice sounded quieter than usual.
“Half an hour,” I said. “That’s all.”
When he finally spoke again, the words came slowly, like he was choosing each one. “Your mother was a good woman, Lorcan. She did not deserve what was done to her in this house.”
My throat tightened.
“And this,” he said, “isn’t right either. I know that too.”
The wood grain beneath my palm felt suddenly cold.
“But I made an oath to serve your father a long time ago. I cannot break it.” He paused. “I am sorry.”
His footsteps retreated down the tower stairs. Each step grew fainter. Then fainter still. Until there was nothing.
I turned toward the window.
My only way out.
I crossed the room and undid the stiff latch. My fingers rested on the icy glass for a moment before I pushed it open. Cold air hit my face and rain-scented wind followed, the growing smell of a storm that hadn’t broken yet.
I stared into the darkness beyond the sill.
My ma had been pushed from this window. I had avoided thinking about it every time I stood here.
But as I looked down, memory crashed into reality.
My ma, clinging to the ivy on the side of the tower, her legs dangling out over the drop, her face twisted in fear.
The ivy snapping.
Her arms windmilling as she fell. “No!”
The thud hit a second later.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Liath.
I conjured her face into my mind. Her knowing smile. Her sharp gray eyes. The stubborn lift of her chin when she argued with me. I held on to her instead.
Then I opened my eyes, determination steeling my jaw as I climbed onto the sill and swung my legs over the other side.
The stone felt slick beneath my boots as I turned toward the wall and began lowering myself down the tower wall.
The ivy crawled across the tower face in thick dark ropes dotted with green spring buds.
My fingers closed around the vines while my boots searched for footholds between courses of stone.
My right hand ached every time I gripped. Each stretch sent sharp pain through my side. Every breath caught against the healing injuries beneath my shirt.
But I kept going. Another handhold. Another foothold. And another.
My boot slipped. My weight dropped. A violent jolt tore through my shoulder.
For one terrifying second I hung by one hand, my healing finger screaming as I gripped on for dear life, the drop beneath me stretching into darkness.
The same drop that had killed her.
Liath’s face flashed across my mind. I could almost hear her screaming at me. Keep going, Lorcan. Don’t you dare give up.
My fingers clawed desperately against the stone until my other hand found purchase. Then my foot.
Breath rushed back into my lungs. I stayed frozen for a second, clinging to the side of the tower, before I forced myself to continue down, my limbs shaking with every movement.
Finally, I was close enough to the ground to let go.
My boots struck grass, the impact jarring my knees. I dropped into a crouch, my healing bruises protesting.
I stayed there for one breath, then another, rain tapping softly against the ground around me.
The tower rose above me into the dark. The window I had climbed from looked impossibly small. Smaller than it had ever seemed from inside.
This was where she had landed. The same patch of earth. The same stretch of grass.
For a moment I could almost see her lying there. Could see her arm bent in that horrible angle. Could almost see the indent of her body on the ground.
She was gone. But I was still here. Still alive.
And Liath needed me.
Cill na Caoine crouched in the dark like something abandoned by God.
Long wet grass leaned against the crooked headstones, their surfaces black with age and rain. Some of the names had worn away entirely, time grinding them back into blank stone. I moved between them with my hood pulled low and my ribs protesting every step.
The church was the last place I would have chosen to ask for help. And Deargán was the last man I would have chosen to ask it from.
But the auction was tonight.
And as much as I hated him, Deargán was the only other human on this planet who would fight as hard to get her back as I would.
Rain drummed softly against the slate roof as I pushed through the warped wooden doors, the scent of frankincense and old wax hitting my nose. The church sat in the dim, rows of empty pews stretching toward the altar.
A glow spilled from somewhere above. I followed it toward a wrought-iron staircase winding upward along the far wall. I climbed one tread at a time, keeping my feet light.
By the time I reached the top, sweat dampened the back of my neck despite the cold.
The attic door stood slightly open and light spilled through the gap.
He was on the other side of this door.
I stopped on the landing. For one breath, I simply stood there. Hatred crowded the back of my throat. Anger sat heavier still. Beneath both lurked the memory of my blood leaking from my neck and cold lonely certainty I had been about to die.
And the impossible knowledge that he was my father.
I shoved all of it down.
Liath mattered more than all of it.
I drew a slow breath, pushed the door wider, and stepped inside.
In the attic room, a stained glass clock caught what little light filtered through the storm outside. The colored hands remained frozen at half past three.
Time had stopped here long ago.
Deargán stood in front of a full-length mirror. He wore a black suit tailored close to his body. A half-mask concealed part of his face. Black leather gloves covered his hands as he swung a long black cloak around his shoulders and fixed the silver dragon’s head clasp at his throat.
Those hands had touched her.
I shoved that thought away as I took another step toward him, fists at my sides.
His eyes lifted and found mine in the mirror. He went completely still.
For a moment neither of us moved.
Every instinct in my body rebelled against what I was about to say. I would rather have swallowed broken glass. I would rather have bled out on the side of that tower.
But Liath needed me to say it. She needed me to be the bigger man.
“I need your help,” I forced out. I took another step toward him and willed my fingers to uncurl. “They have Liath.”
Three words. That was all I had. I stood there with scraped palms, aching ribs, and a throat that still throbbed where this man had cut it open.
Then I waited. Waited for Deargán to be the kind of man Liath thought he could be.
Footsteps sounded on the staircase, two at a time. A second later Bas’s voice floated through the doorway. “Okay, Crispy, I got the chips. The lad at the counter says it’s a new—”
He stopped dead in the doorway holding a paper bag in one hand and a takeaway tray in the other. His gaze shifted from Deargán in his cloak to me in a dirt-stained sweater and raw hands. “Ah.”
Deargán started to speak. “This is Bas—”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve met.”
Deargán’s head snapped toward Bas.
Bas looked entirely unrepentant as he backed out. “I’ll just, ah. I’ll leave you two to talk, eh?”
The door clicked shut behind him and silence settled over the room.
Deargán finished clasping his cloak. Then he turned toward me.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
His gaze took me in, pausing at my dirt-stained clothes and then at the raw wound the Sons ring had left on my right hand.
I stared at the man who had nearly killed me. The man Liath still couldn’t quite walk away from. The man standing here dressing to walk into an auction and walk her out again. The man who was still trying to take her from me.
My real father.
My father who didn’t even know that he was. Who hadn’t been around for me because he’d been rotting in a prison cell because his need for revenge had been greater than his need for my ma.
So many words jammed up into the back of my throat. A roar beat at the top of my lungs, trying to get out. The urge to lash out at him, to make him hurt the way he hurt me. The way he hurt my ma.
I swallowed them all. Because right now, it wasn’t about me. It was about Liath.
Deargán cleared his throat. “Where?”
“The auction.”
His eyes closed. He drew in a slow breath, then opened his eyes again. “Of course.”
I moved farther into the room, the wall of screens catching my attention. Mikhailov’s papers. A schematic of Ravenwood. The invitation to the auction. An RSVP confirmation with additional instructions that I couldn’t read from here.
My gaze sharpened and I took another step closer. His outfit made sense now. “You’re already going in.”
Deargán didn’t answer. He simply walked to the desk and clicked the screens dark. He didn’t trust me with his operation. That was fine. I didn’t trust him either.
“I purchase her,” Deargán said. “I take delivery. Bas exposes the Sons afterward.”
My jaw tightened. “She won’t leave without the others. We get into the auction. We make a call to the Garda—”
Deargán let out a short laugh devoid of humor. “Alistair has the local cops on his payroll. They won’t come.”
The reality of that settled heavily in my guts. “Then we do it ourselves.”
“With what numbers?”
I opened my mouth. Fuck. I didn’t have an answer.
Deargán watched me for another second before speaking again. “We are outnumbered, boy. We pick our battles. We save her. We expose them. We come back for the others.”
I stared at him, every instinct in me recoiling from the plan. “She’ll never forgive you.”
His expression didn’t change. “She doesn’t have to forgive me. She just has to live.”
The words settled between us.
I opened my mouth to argue again.
“Enough.” Deargán cut me off. “You are not a Son anymore. You cannot get into that auction. You have no vote in how this unfolds.”
Rage burned through me, hot and useless. Because he was right.
And I hated him for it.