7. Liath
LIATH
Abruise had bloomed overnight, dark fingerprints circling my wrist where Mervyn had grabbed me.
Great. Now I had to hide the cut on my neck and this bruise.
I shoved Rua’s simple black top back into the wardrobe and pulled out the first long-sleeved, high-necked blouse I could find, a Victorian-esque lace bodice with long flowy sleeves.
This house, these monsters, were marking me already. How many scars would I have once they were done with me?
I tugged the top over my head and stared at myself in the mirror, feeling too much like I’d stepped out from the wrong century. Feeling too exposed at how tightly this bodice hugged my body.
Fuck. It would have to do.
I tugged the sleeve lower anyway and brushed up the ruffle collar as I walked into Lasair Manor’s huge, lavish dining room.
Lorcan was already seated there. An empty plate sat in front of him, pushed aside, while he nursed a black coffee.
The room felt far too large around us, all polished silver, heavy curtains, gold and cream wallpaper, and morning light pouring across the long table, but none of it softened the threat of him sitting there waiting.
His gaze dragged over me with slow, deliberate ownership, from the black pants clinging too closely to my thighs to the way I strained against the lace top in all the wrong places. Heat rushed through me at once, sharp and humiliating.
Rua’s clothes sat differently on my body. The fabric pressed over curves she’d never had, and that difference sat between us like a live wire.
I chose a seat as far from him as possible and tried to reassure myself the distance would keep me safe.
I felt his eyes on me as I placed a single piece of toast on my plate. I wanted a second one, but Rua apparently hadn’t liked food nearly as much as I did.
He picked up his coffee cup and walked to my side, dragging out the chair beside me with a loud scrape, before he sat right next to me. Uncomfortably close.
My whole body tightened at his nearness. His scent-song of violins and smoke reached me before I could brace for it, sending a shiver through my spine. My chest pulled tight making me suck in a breath. I prayed he didn’t notice.
He held his coffee cup in one hand and said nothing.
I tried to pretend I didn’t care, my hand pausing over the breakfast spread because every choice now felt like a test.
I wanted the fried eggs. But would Rua pick them?
No, she’d choose the poached egg, the no oil option.
I kept my portion small on purpose. One poached egg. One piece of toast. Another performance choice. Another thing I hoped he’d read as right.
The tiny success of picking the correct breakfast steadied me for all of half a second. Then I glanced over at him and caught his eye, and my relief vanished.
I cleared my throat and looked toward the door. “Where’s Alistair?”
He lifted a brow. “Don’t you mean… daddy?”
Christ. That’s right. Rua called him daddy. My skin crawled.
“Right. Where’s…” I forced myself to say it. “Daddy?”
“Business trip. Late-night flight.”
Relief moved through me. I killed it before it could touch my face. He would pounce on any visible reaction.
Before I realized what I was doing, I had splashed Tabasco all over my yolk. I froze with my hand midair.
His gaze dropped to the streak of red bleeding over the egg. “I thought, and I quote, ‘spice made things unpalatable.’”
My grip tightened around the bottle before I set it down, trying to act like I hadn’t just fucked up.
Denial would make me look guiltier. Backtracking would be worse. My only option was to go with it.
I lifted my eyes to his and let my voice cool. “Maybe I developed a tolerance for unpleasant things.”
His gaze dropped a fraction, staying on my mouth for a moment too long. The look was assessing, intrusive, and interested in a way that made my pulse give a hard, traitorous kick. Heat moved low through me, unwelcome and immediate. I hated that he could do that to me with nothing but a look.
I reached for my coffee because I needed something to do with my hands. I threw in three cubes of sugar before I realized this was also wrong. I was rattled and fucking up. I stirred my cup and took a big gulp, trying to steady my hands, hoping he’d not notice.
“Sugar as well,” he said.
Fuck.
I smiled sweetly at him and pushed the cup his way as if this was always my plan. “This isn’t for me. You need to balance out the bitterness coming off you.”
The cup sat on the white linen between us like a dare.
Lorcan set his cup down and lifted my offering, turning it slightly and inspecting it before he drank. Then he took a slow sip while holding my gaze over the rim.
He raised the cup to my eye level, to the gloss smudge my mouth had left there.
“You forgot your lipstick.”
Shit. An icy wave washed over me. I’d hated the dark lipsticks Rua usually wore underneath her gloss and just put on the gloss instead, never thinking he’d notice something that small.
That was my mistake. Lorcan noticed everything. He noticed whatever could be filed away, turned over, and used later. He remembered tiny things because tiny things were how he mapped people, how he sorted them, how he kept them where he wanted them.
And he was intent on doing this with me.
He set the cup down between us with maddening care. “You should wear that lipstick shade that I actually liked. What was the name again?”
For one ugly second, all I could do was scramble.
I clawed through my memory of rummaging through Rua’s makeup bag earlier. Her lipsticks had names like Black Dahlia. Widow’s Kiss. Funeral Rose.
But which one had been his favorite? Which one had she worn for him? Rua would have known.
My mouth went dry. This wasn’t in my memories.
Lorcan just watched me, a sparkle of victory in his eyes. The silence did exactly what he wanted it to do. It gave me enough space to hang myself with the wrong answer.
If I guessed wrong, I was caught. If I claimed not to remember, I was caught differently.
He wasn’t asking because he cared about lipstick. He was asking because this was the perfect trap.
The only way I’d get out of it was by not playing.
I rolled my eyes as I turned back to my breakfast. “News flash, I don’t wear lipstick anymore. And more importantly, even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be picking out a shade just because it was your favorite.”
“Really? Gosh, it’s like—” he leaned in and pinned me with a look—“you’re not even the same person.”
There it was. His suspicion laid out between us. He knew I wasn’t Rua.
But as of right now, he had no real proof. Not unless I cracked and gave it to him.
I would not let him break me.
I leaned in, close enough that I could see the flecks of gray, almost silver, in his irises. “Maybe Magdalene changed me. Maybe I walked in one girl and walked out another.”
The words came out confident. But under the table, every muscle in my body had gone tight.
“And you”—I gave him my most dismissive look—“are just raging because the new me is no longer obsessed with you.”
For the first time that morning, something shifted in his face. It wasn’t much. Just the faintest press of his mouth. Then it was gone, smoothed back under that cold, maddening stillness. Something hardened in his eyes, a flare of challenge.
My stomach dropped. I thought my pushing would make him back off. I feared it had only made him more intent on breaking me open.
A throat cleared softly, and the sound cracked through the tension. Lorcan leaned back by a fraction. I jerked upright in my chair, heat rushing into my face.
Mervyn stood in the doorway, straight-backed in his dark coattails, his expression as blank and polished as the silver laid out across the table.
“The town car is ready,” he announced.
He dipped his head once and withdrew, leaving the door open behind him like an offered escape.
Relief rushed through me too quickly, thin and stupid and dangerous. I went to stand.
Lorcan tipped my chair sideways toward him with smooth control.
My balance shifted and I was forced back into the seat, my hands shooting out and landing against his firm chest. My face ended up inches from his, his warm breath brushing my lips.
A sharp, unwanted heat rippled under my skin, and my breath caught hard. My fingers pressed deeper into his chest as if that might steady me, but the traitorous pull low in my belly only tightened, and shame climbed hot up my throat right behind it.
His gaze dropped to my throat.
To the thin cut barely hidden beneath the high lace collar.
The cut he had put there.
He brought his mouth close enough to turn the air between us into something intimate and threatening all at once.
“You look so pretty when you lie.”