3. Liath
LIATH
Islipped inside Rua’s bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me. I stayed there with my spine pressed to the wood as if the lock could keep the rest of the house from swallowing me whole.
For one stolen second, I let the mask loosen and dragged in a breath of dust and wood, but my pulse still wouldn’t settle.
First Lorcan.
Then Alistair.
My body was still catching up, skin too tight, pulse still tripping in the wake of one too-close threat after another.
At least I was safe here for a moment in this room. Right?
Rua’s room looked just like it did in my memories.
Her memories that Deargán had forced into me.
The black poster bed loomed against the wall like a dark altar dressed for mourning, its sheets stealing what little light the room allowed.
Above it, an iron chandelier spread its curled arms across the ceiling while the red wallpaper crawled around the room in heavy damask patterns that made the room feel swollen and overripe.
Gold-framed paintings crowded the walls.
Dark floorboards groaned under my step as I walked around the room.
Her room in the asylum had been a sterile copy. But this version still held the shape of her.
A long black jacket had been tossed over the desk chair and left there, rumpled and paint-smudged.
Paint tubes and charcoal sticks spilled across the table by the window.
A jar of cloudy water sat beside them with brushes splayed inside like dead flowers.
An unfinished canvas rested on the easel, abandoned halfway through as if Rua had only stepped out for a moment and meant to come back to it.
Any minute I expected her to barge in, door crashing as it slammed open, furious at me for trying to steal her life.
The bed smelled wrong the moment I went near it. Sweet almonds and paint rose first, familiar enough to tighten my throat, and with it came that thin, haunted music-box melody I already knew belonged to Rua.
Then something bitter slipped underneath it, herbal and faintly medicinal, and the melody warped against a clash of organ notes, fighting each other inside my skull.
I recoiled from it.
The walls were crowded with canvases, and unlike the blurred versions in the room Deargán had built for me, these had no softness to hide behind. Every line had been painted with brutal clarity.
She had painted and sketched him over and over until the room felt crowded with him.
Lorcan with a cigarette between his fingers and smoke curling past his mouth.
Lorcan asleep, his face stripped loose and unguarded.
Lorcan scowling, all sharp lines and contempt.
Lorcan half-turned, mid-laugh, mid-sneer, mid-thought.
Her need for him lived within these walls.
Every brushstroke felt too intimate, too hungry, as if painting his face over and over had been the only way Rua knew to keep him, punish herself with him, or survive wanting him.
She had not decorated this room with him. She had trapped herself inside him.
Christ, it was a fucking shrine to him.
A sour twist of jealousy moved through me before I could stop it, which was absurd and vile. It did not make it any less real. I had only just met him, and already another girl’s obsession with him was getting under my skin.
I was going to have to sleep in here with his face staring at me from every wall, as if even in Rua’s room he still got to crowd me.
I repressed a shiver.
One smaller canvas near the corner stopped me cold. A woman’s body beneath dark lake water, pale limbs blurred under the surface while the water closed over her like a mouth. A chill skated down my arms before I could remind myself it was only paint.
A blocked vent high up on the wall caught my eye. Recognition hit with the sick certainty of my borrowed memory.
The vent opened into Lorcan’s room.
Rua had stood on that desk in the dark with her breath held, peering through the ornate iron grate while Lorcan stripped off his shirt on the other side, every line of his body revealed in stolen fragments through metal and shadow.
The heat of her fixation bloomed so sharply in me that my stomach turned.
I went to the desk looking for proof of what the vent had already told me, my pulse kicking harder with every drawer I pulled open.
In the bottom drawer, under a stack of loose charcoal sketches and dried paint-stiff cloths, I found a vintage video recorder. The sight of it hit like a jolt.
Rua hadn’t just been watching him through that vent, she’d been recording him.
The cut on my throat throbbed.
A shift in the air prickled the back of my neck.
Then the scent of whiskey and smoke and that low dark orchestra of strings rose up around me.
I spun on my heel.
Lorcan leaned against the wall beside the door, arms folded, gaze fixed on me with that same hard, watchful intensity that made the room feel smaller.
I had locked the door. I knew I had. And yet he was here anyway, already inside, already watching me rifle through Rua’s things.
A cold shiver slid down my spine. How long had he been standing there?
Long enough, apparently.
“Did you enjoy your time in Romania, Rua?” he asked.
The question hit wrong enough to make me still.
Romania. Right. That was the lie they’d been feeding the outside world while Rua was really locked inside Magdalene’s.
I looked at him over the half-open drawer and forced my face into bored irritation. “You and I both know I’ve been at Magdalene.”
His jaw tightened. Then he pushed off the wall and started toward me, slow and deliberate, his eyes locked on mine with a new, sharpened certainty. “How did you escape?”
I shoved the drawer shut and straightened, pulse beating hard under the cut on my throat.
“I was discharged, asshole.” I kept my chin high, but he did not stop coming.
“Discharged, huh?”
I gave ground without meaning to, one step and then another, backing deeper into the room because there was nowhere else to go.
“That’s right.”
My back hit the wall, stopping me cold.
He closed the last of the distance and planted himself in front of me, taking up every inch of space I might have used to slip around him.
“They just let you out,” he said, “unsupervised.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and hated that it only pushed the black lace tighter across my body. “They said I had just enough brain function to deal with you.”
A smirk flashed across his face and died just as fast. Then his eyes sharpened. “You’re quick for someone who used to fumble through sentences.”
“You’re very curious for someone who supposedly doesn’t give a shite.”
I could feel him measuring every word, every look, every breath. Rua had never spoken to him like this. We both knew it.
“You seem different.”
A sharp inhale escaped me before I could stop it. I smoothed it out fast and clung to the first lie that sounded plausible. “They did some experimental therapy, okay? Side effects. Memory lapses. They said I might act different.”
I tried to slip out around him.
He planted one hand against the wall beside my head, crowding me in, his heat boxing me up against the wall, his scent turning the air thick and maddening, while his gaze dragged over my face.
My pulse slammed hard as he leaned in until his mouth hovered close enough to turn the threat of a kiss into its own kind of weapon.
“I liked you better when you didn’t speak, Rua.”
A second later he edged his knee between my legs and held it there, pressing into me, claiming the space without asking. Heat shot through me so fast it made me furious.
I kept my face still. “And I liked you better when I thought you were a bad hallucination, Lorcan.”
He studied me, looking for a crack. Looking for the old Rua, maybe. The one he expected to melt for him.
Fuck him.
I shoved him, hard enough to win myself a sliver of space. “Back off, brother.”
The word landed between us like a slap.
His expression changed. The heat in his eyes went vicious. He stepped in again, but a throat clearing from the doorway cut through.
Over his shoulder, Mervyn stood there in black tails, silver-haired and straight-backed, carrying a gleaming tray at chest height.
Lorcan leaned close one last time. “This isn’t over.”
Then he turned and walked out.
Relief moved through me, sharp and shaky, because at least for now Lorcan was gone.
I forced every muscle in my face to go smooth, rolled my shoulders back, and pulled Rua’s coldness over myself like armor. “Mervyn.”
“Welcome home, Miss Rua. I brought coffee.” Mervyn set the tray on a side table near me, nudging a canvas aside with practiced ease.
Mervyn straightened, his flat, colorless stare analyzing me.
“Coffee. Fantastic,” I said, reaching for the cup with more confidence than I felt. The dark smell hit me hard enough to make me hesitate. “No sugar?”
Mervyn frowned. “You never take it with sugar.”
The correction landed with the soft precision of a knife laid against skin.
Ah fuck. Rua took her coffee with a splash of milk, no sugar.
“Right,” I said, and let out a small laugh that sounded wrong the moment it left my mouth. I poured in a careful splash of milk, aware of his gaze on every movement, aware that one too many or one too little might matter in this house more than it should.
The first sip coated my tongue in bitter heat and every muscle in my face tried to betray me. I swallowed it anyway, then shaped my mouth into something cool and distant. “Just as I like it, Mervyn.”
The second his back turned, I tipped the coffee into the potted violets on the bedside table, watching the dark liquid disappear into the soil around its dark-purple blooms as if I were burying evidence.
He turned back, and I had to pretend I was drinking the coffee again.
Mervyn watched me closely, his gaze sharp. “Master Lasair will be relieved his daughter is stronger this term.”
The words came out polished and proper, but they carried weight. He was not only welcoming me home. He was measuring whether the version of me standing in front of him matched the one this house had sent away.
I forced a bigger smile, then remembered that Rua wouldn’t smile so much at the staff. She’d been withdrawn, distant, lost in her own world.
I cleared my throat and let ice creep into my voice. “That is all, Mervyn.”
I watched him leave, all straight-backed and moving like an automaton. I understood with a fresh wave of unease that Mervyn might serve me coffee, but he still ultimately served Alistair.
I could not afford to let my guard down around him or anyone else in this house. Every room watched. Every object seemed to remember. Every person might already know more than they should.
I had walked into Rua’s life thinking the danger lived in Alistair and Lorcan.
But the truth was, the whole house was a threat.