44. Liath
LIATH
Backstage, we all huddled together in a shivering group in our towering heels like frightened deer. Dervla stood pressed against me, the heat of her a small comfort against the icy air, our fingers twisted together, my wrists heavy from the gold chain.
“I’m scared, Liath,” she whispered, her forehead pressing against mine.
“Me, too.” I squeezed her hand. “We’ll get through this. Together.”
Her fingers squeezed mine back, and for a moment her shoulders softened just a little.
In my periphery I saw Rua, standing slightly apart from anyone else, her shoulders caved in, her arms wrapped around herself as best she could with the chains around her wrists. Standing there alone.
My chest pinched painfully. There was a version of me that could have stood exactly where she was standing. The difference was that people had chosen me when they didn’t have to, and kept choosing, until I’d stopped being surprised by it and started to understand that I was someone worth choosing.
Ava, Lisa, and Aisling back in Darkmoor.
Dervla, Maeve, and Nuala here in Blackwood.
And Lorcan.
Rua never had that.
Maybe Rua just needed someone to choose her for once.
“Rua,” I whispered, causing her to look up. “It’s warmer here with us.” I angled my body, leaving an opening between me and Dervla for her to step into.
She frowned, suspicion clear in the press of her brows.
I held her gaze, letting a small smile tip the corners of my mouth up, willing her to have the courage to step forward and take what I was offering.
I never found out what she might have chosen to do.
The doors to the stage opened with a heavy creak. Bright lights and an expectant murmur of a crowd rolling in.
We were tugged forward, peeling into a line one by one, and I was forced to let Dervla go as she was yanked forward in front of me, Rua following directly behind me.
The hall broke over me all at once. Heat and torchlight and the clash of expensive cologne, triggering too many sounds, scraping against each other.
The glare dimmed to reveal a crowd of masked faces all turned in our direction. All that attention landed against my bare skin, raising every hair on my arms.
Panic clawed beneath my ribs and I fought the urge to cover my breasts with my arms the way some of the girls had.
I’d been kidnapped, made up, forced into this scrap of lace, chained and paraded out in front of these assholes to be sold. All my choices had been taken from me.
Something cracked inside me.
I was done making myself small. I was done deescalating and holding my breath and pretending everything was fine. I would not cower for them.
If I was going to die tonight, I was going to die fighting. Even if I fought alone.
I forced my chin up, glaring back at anyone who dared meet my eye.
“Here they are.” Alistair stood on the left side of the stage, his arm waving toward us like we were contestants in a pageant. “Aren’t they lovely, gentlemen? And any one of them could be yours.”
His gaze swept the buyers, then across us girls as we passed him. For one moment his gaze landed on me. Then on Rua behind me.
Nothing in his expression changed. No regret. No guilt for locking up his daughters and selling them for profit. Not a trace of humanity left in him.
Whatever decent part of him that had loved my mother was gone. Crushed under the weight of the choices he’d made.
Behind me, Rua made a broken sound like a swallowed sob.
“You won’t get away with this,” I hissed at him as I passed.
Alistair held my stare, a bemused look tugging at his thin lips. “Oh, my unlucky girl. But I have.”
I was yanked down the stairs before I could answer. His words followed me anyway, haunting me.
He was right. He had. For years and years, in rooms like this, he had, because the world was built to allow him to. The system was built for men like him.
Why would tonight be any different?
I was pulled along the red carpet until all of us girls were lined up across the large stone hall, me as the centerpiece of this human gold necklace.
“They are ready for closer inspection, gentlemen,” Alistair said, his voice echoing across the hall. “If you have any questions, either about our stock or perhaps our payment options, don’t hesitate to ask me directly.”
The buyers closed in around us, their masks concealing their faces but not the hunger behind them. Somewhere down the line one the girls let out a cry. Another sobbed.
Every muscle in my body pulled tight, fear’s icy fingers clawing all over my too-exposed skin, my fingers gripping at my chains until they ached, fighting the instinct to lash out and fight back.
Not now. Not yet.
Someone brushed their hand down my arm as though testing fabric, making my skin crawl. I snatched my arm away.
Someone else circled behind me, making a low appreciative noise, their eyes like spiders down my spine. I turned to glare at him until he took a step back.
A buyer dared to grab my chin and tilt my face toward the light.
I pulled my chin free. “Don’t touch me.”
A disapproving murmur moved through the buyers as they made a small berth around me.
Alistair appeared at my shoulder. His voice came low enough that only I could hear it. “Behave yourself. Otherwise, I’ll decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.” His gaze moved to the nearest guard, a black rifle held in his arms, his threat clear.
Fuck. Only then did I notice the masked guards spaced out around the hall. Every one of them armed.
If we fought back, it would be a massacre. Not unless I had something that made them hesitate before they pulled the trigger.
My gaze locked on Alistair, now standing by a broad-shouldered buyer wearing a silver mask.
Alistair would make the perfect hostage.
I pressed my lips together and forced them into a smile. Smile and obey. Sir would have been so proud.
Alistair bent his head toward the buyer who was pointing between Rua and me. “As a set, of course,” Alistair said. “That’s the arrangement.”
Alistair was close enough. I might not get another chance. I gripped my chains in my fists and stepped forward, my gaze on Alistair.
Cellos hit low in my chest as a buyer stepped between us, his dark eyes piercing me from behind his white porcelain half-mask.
Deargán.
What was he doing here? I glanced over his shoulder, cursing internally as Alistair moved aside. Shit. He was too far now.
Deargán’s fingers brushed against my wrist. “Stay quiet,” he murmured so softly only I could hear. “I’ll purchase you.”
Then he moved down the line to the next girl, just another prospective buyer.
My world narrowed to his words. Stay quiet.
I’d survive. I could walk out beside him.
But that would mean leaving the others behind. Leaving Dervla behind. And Rua.
If we fought, if we revolted, some of them would die. I glanced at the girls on either side of me. God, they all looked so fragile in their tiny lace underthings.
I couldn’t leave them behind. But I couldn’t lead them to their deaths.
Stay quiet. Or stand up.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to do.
My gaze caught on a familiar pair of eyes across the room. Pale blue like ice.
Lorcan.
Lorcan.
He was alive.
My knees almost went out from under me.
Four days.
Four days of not letting myself consider what had happened to him. Of counting bricks in solitary and breathing and refusing to follow the conclusion my mind kept reaching in the dark.
Four days of fearing I’d lost him but unable to let myself accept it.
He was alive. Somehow, he’d gotten free.
And he was here.
A warmth punched through my sternum, yearning and relief, surging up from my lungs in a half sob.
I clung to the pieces of Lorcan that I could recognize behind that gold mask.
His strong build, the confidence as he moved through the room toward me, the way the crowd parted for him, the intense focus with which he held my stare.
Like I was the only girl in the world.
I breathed slowly and deliberate through the rush of emotion threatening to undo me. I had a part to play. I couldn’t give the game away. We were all still in so much danger.
Somehow, knowing Lorcan was here filled my chest with resolve, despite the shake in my hands.
I looked down at the chain on my wrists, then to Dervla ahead of me and Rua behind.
I wasn’t staying quiet. I wasn’t leaving without them.
The silver-masked buyer stepped past me to get to Rua. Alistair was too far away. But Silver Mask was close enough. He’d have to do.
He stood near Rua, his back turned to me like he didn’t consider me any danger.
I’ll show you how dangerous I can be, you bastard.
I grabbed my chains, throwing them around his throat from behind. I planted my feet and dragged him backward against my body, pulling with everything I had.
“Now!” I screamed.
For one heartbeat nothing happened. No one moved. No one screamed. No one fought. The room froze. All I heard was the choking sound of the buyer I held against my body.
Fuck. Had they chosen fear? Had they sided with Rua?
Then everything exploded, the revolt spreading through the line like a lit fuse. Dervla swung her chain into the nearest buyer’s face. Another girl shoved a guard hard enough to send him sprawling. Someone screamed, not in fear but fury.
“Ladies.” Alistair’s voice cut cleanly through the noise, smooth and patient, as though correcting poor manners at a dinner party. “Control yourselves.”
No one listened.
For the first time, no one listened.
The room fractured around me as chains became weapons, bodies collided, buyers stumbled on overturned cocktail tables, and masks shattered across the stone floor.
The careful order of the auction dissolved into pushing, screaming, tripping bodies while I tightened the chain around my hostage’s throat, daring the guards near me to shoot.
The illusion of control shattered. Some stumbled backward in panic.
Some fled for the exits. Others froze where they stood.
Men who had always believed violence happened at a comfortable distance suddenly discovered what it looked like when it reached them.
Not all of them ran, though. Several fought back.
Deargán stood across the room, his cloak swirling around his shoulders at he attacked men with a jagged shard of ceramic, his broken phantom mask, in each gloved hand like shivs, his scars catching the torchlight as he roared. A monster fighting monsters.
Lorcan drove through the Sons with his fists, his golden mask gone from his face, his jaw set, knocking one man aside after another as he fought his way toward me.
Gunshots cracked through the hall.
A girl cried out before folding to the floor, blood spreading rapidly across the stone beneath her.
Oh, fuck. I started this. I couldn’t stop it. People were going to die.
Rua dropped beside a fallen guard, snatched a ring of keys from his belt, and unlocked the chain around her own wrist.
For a moment, our eyes locked.
“Rua.”
She threw the keys toward me and ran, the metal jangling as they fell to the floor near my bare feet.
“Rua!”
But she didn’t look back. She hadn’t stood with us. But she’d made sure we had a chance anyway. That was the most she could offer.
I looked down at the keys on the floor and the hostage trapped against me.
I couldn’t keep both.
Another gunshot exploded in the hall, echoing off the walls, making me flinch. Someone screamed.
I had to get the girls free.
I unwound the chain and shoved Silver Mask away.
He stumbled free and bolted for the nearest exit without looking back.
I dropped to my knees, snatched up the key, and unlocked my cuffs.
I turned toward Dervla. Her eyes were wide with terror as she clung to the back of a struggling buyer trying to buck her off, her chain still wrapped around his throat.
“Dervla!” I stepped forward and drove my knee hard into the buyer’s groin. He buckled forward and dropped, the chain dragging Dervla down beneath his weight.
I shoved the key into her cuffs, my fingers shaking hard, one eye on the buyer. Thankfully, he stayed down, groaning as he cupped himself.
Her cuffs sprang open. Dervla pulled me into a fierce hug, and for one second I let myself have it.
Then I pulled back and shoved the keys into her palm. “Get the rest of them free.”
She nodded once before running to the next girl, unlocking one chain after another as girls began breaking free down the line.
I turned through the chaos, searching for Alistair. Whatever happened, he could not get away.
“Gray!” Lorcan’s voice ripped through the hall. “Behind you!”
I spun.
Alistair stood with a gun aimed at my chest and a snarl on his face. “You little bitch.”