5. Liath
LIATH
Rua’s memories had given me fragments of Alistair Lasair, the shape of him in a doorway, the sound of his voice carrying through walls. But borrowed memory did nothing to prepare me for the real thing at close range.
He was immaculate. Silver at his temples, suit pressed to a knife-edge, hands that looked like they’d never done anything as undignified as labor.
He sat at the head of the table like a king.
Everything about him was controlled, the set of his shoulders, the placement of his hands, the way his eyes moved around the room and landed on things rather than people.
He was also, I was certain, the most dangerous person I had ever sat down to dinner with.
The cold moved down my spine and I pulled Rua around me like a coat, squared my shoulders, and smiled at nothing in particular.
Alistair lifted his glass. “To family reunions.”
I lifted my own glass and drank, the wine souring in my mouth.
We were no family.
We were monster. Heir. Imposter.
We were players in a lethal chess game, and I had just taken my seat at the board.
Every answer from here on had to do two things at once. Survive the moment. Keep the cover intact.
“So.” Alistair set his glass down with a soft click that carried in the silence. “Tell me about the therapy regimen they used on you at Magdalene.”
My fork paused midair, lamb juice dripping back onto the plate.
This wasn’t just fatherly interest. This was a test. He expected to know what had been done to his daughter.
Magdalene was a place that reported to him, that answered to him, that would have given him chapter and verse on anything done under its roof.
If I said the wrong thing, I was done for.
“Ah,” I said. “Experimental.”
He blinked once. “That’s vague.”
“CBT.” I set my fork down carefully, pulling therapies from my Darkmoor studies. “With layered hypnotherapy.” Each syllable measured, each word placed. Like I was crossing a bridge I wasn’t sure would hold.
His brow furrowed. “I don’t recall signing off on any such plan for you.” He picked up his knife. “Who administered it?”
My throat went dry. Christ. What had I walked into?
“Um. Doctor…”
Deargán had been clear. Don’t use his name. But my mind was scrambling through the handful of names I’d absorbed from Rua’s memories, trying to find one that would hold under pressure, that wouldn’t unravel the second Alistair made a phone call.
“Doctor who?” He cut into the lamb, his knife sliding through the pink flesh with unhurried precision. The signet ring on his right hand caught the candlelight as he moved.
I stared at it.
The ring was old heavy gold, an S engraved in the center, encircled with a C.
Michael Byrne wore a ring like that. Had worn it my whole life, on the same hand. His had been different, a snake curled into the shape of an S, but the weight of it, the statement of it was the same.
These weren’t coincidental. These were connected. I just didn’t know how yet.
The cold that moved through me wasn’t Rua’s fear. It was mine.
“Rua?” Alistair’s hand reached across and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
The touch was terribly gentle, fingers that touched me with practiced ease as if they had every right.
I recoiled, the flinch starting at my spine and moving outward. I caught it just barely, converting it into a slight shift of my shoulders, a tilt of my head as if I were simply adjusting.
Across the table, Lorcan had gone very still.
“Fenton,” I blurted.
I knew immediately, from the particular quality of Alistair’s pause, that it had landed wrong.
I could feel Lorcan’s eyes on me, cataloging every micro-expression, filing it away for later examination. He’d seen the flinch. He’d seen me clock the ring. And I had no idea what he was going to do with any of it.
“There’s no Dr. Fenton at Magdalene,” Alistair said pleasantly.
The panic rose fast, hot behind my sternum. I pressed it down flat.
“Maybe he was a consultant,” I said, keeping my voice level by main force. “I don’t… my memories of that time are hazy.”
“Convenient,” Lorcan said, his tone mild as water, not looking up from where he was cutting his lamb. Dark juice ran from the slice, spreading slowly across the white plate.
Alistair reached across and patted my hand. His fingers were cold as they settled there. “Well, I for one am very glad you’re home, my unlucky girl.”
Every instinct I had screamed at me to pull away.
I didn’t manage it cleanly. My hand moved before I’d decided to move it, pulling back under the guise of reaching for more lamb I didn’t want and couldn’t have eaten if my life depended on it.
I put the serving tongs down and kept my eyes on my plate.
His signet ring caught the light again as he withdrew his hand.
What the hell was this house?
Footsteps sounded in the hallway and Mervyn appeared in the doorway. “Sire. I’m sorry to interrupt. You have a phone call. A buyer from Moscow.”
Something lit in Alistair’s eyes. He rose from the table, brushed past my chair, and his hand came down on my shoulder as he passed. “Don’t let the lamb get cold, pet.” His fingers pressed and held for one moment too long before releasing.
My fork hit the plate with a sound like a shot.
He was already moving into the hall, too absorbed to look back, and I sat in the wreckage of my own composure, trying to get my breathing under control.
Across the table, Lorcan’s jaw flexed. His fingers had curled around his knife handle hard enough to whiten the knuckles as he glared between me and the empty doorway where his father had been.
I couldn’t tell whether the fury that burned in him was for his father, for me, or for the fact that his father had touched me like a claim.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Silence settled between us. Just the scrape of cutlery and the draft moving through the old vents. Somewhere deeper in the house a clock ticked.
Dread settled cold beneath my ribs as I thought about the word buyer. About Moscow. About what that might mean to a man like Alistair Lasair.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice light, cutting into my lamb as if the sight of the pink flesh wasn’t making my stomach turn. “A buyer. Didn’t think he wanted to sell Magdalene.”
Lorcan’s eyes flashed. “He doesn’t. Not the building.”
My knife stilled against the plate. “Then what’s he selling?”
“Since when have you cared about the business?”
“Since I was locked up in it,” I said, and the words came out sharper than I’d meant them, more honest than was safe.
His jaw tightened. “Don’t play games, Rua.”
“I’m not.” The words barely made it above the ticking clock. “But you are.”
We both reached for the wine bottle at the same moment.
Our fingers touched. The heat of it ran up my arm, and for one dizzy, stupid moment, I didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
He pulled his hand back first.
I yanked my hand back as well, too fast and not fast enough. My fingertips clipped the bottle, sending it tipping.
He caught it, his hand moving so fast it was a blur. He righted the bottle and shot me a look.
My face burned.
Don’t be stupid, Liath. Deargán’s voice chastised me as if he were here.
Lorcan was his father’s son. Still a Lasair. Still playing whatever twisted game they’d started long before I’d ever set foot in this house.
I tucked my hand into my lap. “You’d sell me, wouldn’t you? If it earned his praise.”
He tilted his head. “Funny. I might have said the same about you.”
Alistair came back into the room with an air of satisfaction, though his eyes gave nothing away about what.
“You look pleased,” I said as casually as I could. “Good news?”
He settled back into his chair and reached for his wine. “This business expansion is going to be a tremendous success. I can feel it.”
Expansion. Buyer. Business. The words clicked together fast enough to turn my stomach.
Whatever Alistair was building extended beyond Magdalene, something darker and more organized than we suspected. And the asylum wasn’t the whole horror. It was just the beginning of it.
“Expansion for what?” I kept my voice featherlight, my expression open and idle.
“Business matters.” He waved a hand in my direction without looking at me. “Nothing for your pretty little ears.”
Lorcan’s fingers stayed loose on the stem of his glass, but something passed over his face so quickly that I couldn’t catch it.
Christ, he was supposed to be simple.
Heir. Enemy. Monster.
Whatever was on his face right now didn’t fit any of those, and I hated him a little for it.
I hated that part of me wanted to believe he wasn’t unredeemable yet. I’d seen too much damage in him already, too many cracks in his mask. Something treacherous in me kept trying to turn those scraps into mercy.
In this house, that kind of wanting felt less like hope and more like the first mistake by letting something with teeth too close to my throat.
I shut Rua’s bedroom door behind me, the sound echoing through the space like a coffin lid closing. It brought only partial relief after that disturbing dinner, Alistair’s predatory gaze still crawling across my skin like insects.
This room, the bedroom of the girl I was pretending to be, was the only place I felt even remotely safe. And even that safety was a lie, tucked inside a house full of predators.
I tumbled into bed, trying to calm my mind. But when I flicked off the lamp, blackness swallowed me whole.
I lay there, wide awake despite my exhaustion, nerves rattling as rain hissed against the windows while the air hung thick with the scent of damp wood and ancient stone.
Lasair Manor seemed to breathe like a slumbering beast, the building settling heavy around me in the dark, the tick and groan of old timber, the draught that moved beneath doors like something looking for a way in.
I lay in Rua’s bed and stared at the ceiling, telling myself that I’d sleep eventually.
Then the violin started.
Low at first, barely there. A single melody, simple and haunting, muffled and echoing.