8. Liath
LIATH
Isat crushed up by the window in the back of the town car.
Lorcan sat beside me, stretching his legs out and draping one arm along the back of the seat, taking up most of the space. His smell of smoke, wood and violins filled the cabin, pressing in around me.
His stare burned into my profile and heat gathered low in my belly, slow and bewildering, until I had to lock my knees together and force my spine straight against the leather seat.
This reaction was wrong. It had to stop. But my body didn’t listen.
I fixed on the passing view, looking anywhere but at him.
Trees lined the road out of Lasair Manor, thick and dark, then the car rolled across the limestone bridge over Blackwood Lake where the water flashed cold and silver beneath the gray morning light.
Beyond it, the town opened into a curved cobblestone plaza with a copper-capped clock at its center, quaint enough to pass for harmless if I did not already know what kind of monsters called this town home.
Grand Victorian homes with sandstone walls and casement windows slipped past, all historic charm and old money, before the trees thickened again and swallowed the road.
The familiar gates of Ravenwood appeared ahead, black and severe against the green. The car turned into the long drive and pulled up in front of the main building.
I lunged for the door handle. I needed distance. Clean air.
The door held fast.
Lorcan slid across in one smooth movement, caging me against the door. His thigh pressed along the length of mine. One arm braced behind my head while he reached past me with the other, his arm dragging over mine with deliberate slowness.
A fever moved through me at once, low and sickeningly eager, and shame followed so fast it made my grip tighten uselessly on the handle.
I twisted toward him, more flustered than I wanted him to see. “What the hell are you doing?”
For a moment he just stared at me.
The lock clicked open beneath his fingers.
His mouth tipped at one corner, a mean smirk. He might as well have laughed in my face.
Heat flooded my cheeks. I shoved the door open, grabbing my things from my feet, and climbed out, almost catching my foot on the curb in my rush to get away from him.
Lorcan climbed out after me, somehow making the movement seem graceful despite his size.
Eyes turned toward us from across the front lawn, widening first at the sight of Lorcan like he was something worth admiring, then sharpening on me with a hostility that felt almost eager.
Lorcan barged past me, his shoulder slamming into mine hard enough to knock me sideways.
My bag slipped off my arm. Books spilled. The clasp gaped open and half of Rua’s life scattered across the pavement. A pair of black lace underwear landed near someone’s shoe. A bottle of antidepressants skidded across the stone. Tampons rolled out at all angles, one falling into a drain.
Low laughter broke out somewhere nearby. I couldn’t tell whether it was aimed at me or whether my own nerves were tricking me. My cheeks flared hot anyway.
Lorcan, the bastard, didn’t even bother looking back. No apology. No acknowledgement of the humiliation he’d engineered. He just walked away like I meant nothing.
I held back a scream and started gathering Rua’s things as quickly as I could, shoving the underwear, the pill bottle, and the tampons back into the bag with hands that suddenly felt thick and clumsy.
One of the boys from a nearby group broke away and came toward me.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, although not as broad or as tall as Lorcan, and I hated myself instantly for the comparison.
His floppy flaxen hair had probably taken effort to make look careless. He wore expensive trainers, designer clothes, and a smug little grin. He did not so much walk as swagger to me.
Elias Montgomery.
Rua’s memories handed him to me at once, but so did my own mind. He was one of the students who had broken into Magdalene.
I tried to separate the reactions, to sort hers from mine, but the unease had already blurred into one response.
He bent, picked up a paintbrush had rolled farther than the rest, and straightened without offering it back. He held it up and waggled it, making me go to him.
I felt the weight of his friends staring at me while other students slowed down as they passed so they, too, could watch.
I reached out for the paintbrush but he held it out of my reach.
His gaze crawled over my body without shame, lingering where Rua’s clothes fit differently. “Damn, Rua. Bulgaria was good to you.”
He dragged the end of the paintbrush along the curve of my waist as if he had every right to touch what had changed.
I stepped back from the paintbrush before he could touch me with it again.
“Romania,” I snapped.
“Whatever.” He kept the paintbrush dangling between us. His grin widened. “So, whatcha doing later?”
I snatched the paintbrush from his fingers hard enough that the bristles bent, jammed it back into the bag with the rest of Rua’s things, and held my books against my chest like armor.
“Avoiding you,” I said, then turned before he could answer.
“You wound me, Ru,” he called after me in mock hurt as his friends’ laughter tittered across the front lawn.
He didn’t follow me, but the unease clung to me.
As I climbed the steps to the main door, my nerves stretched so tight they almost hummed. Every footstep slapped too loud against the stone. Sweat gathered between my shoulder blades beneath Rua’s clothes, and my grip kept slipping on the books from how damp my palms had become.
The manor had been one kind of stage. Ravenwood was another—bigger, louder, and so more public. Every single student or teacher was a threat to my deception.
It would be even harder to survive here. I’d have to be even more on my guard.
My reflection caught in the glass of the door, pale and wrong beneath the dark spill of Rua’s clothes.
Shite. The collar had shifted. The cut on my throat showed in a thin, red line above the lace.
I yanked the fabric back into place, but the movement came too late. A girl standing a few feet away had already gone still, her gaze fixed on the place I’d covered. She leaned into her friend and began to whisper, her eyes still on me.
Feckin’ great.
I pushed through the giant gothic doors with the bag digging into my shoulder and Rua’s books clutched to my chest and let the building engulf me.
Inside, the entrance hall rose up in a sweep of dark stone, vaulted ceilings, and carved beams blackened with age, the split staircase curving up like claws to a second mezzanine level.
Footsteps cracked against the flagstones and voices echoed. The air smelled of old paper, chalk dust, and furniture polish, adding to the jangle of noise in my head.
Portraits of old deans and important donors lined the walls in heavy gilt frames, all stern mouths and hawkish stares that seemed to follow me as I passed them.
My shoulder blades tightened with each step.
At any moment it felt as if a hand would clamp down on my shoulder and a voice would cut through the hall, Imposter!
“Miss Lasair.”
A stern male voice called out before he stepped across my path, causing me to halt.
Silver threaded his dark hair at the temples, and his sharp features were softly weathered with age. Everything about him was polished and restrained, from his immaculate tailoring to the measured way he held himself.
I bowed my head in respect as his name fell off my tongue. “Dean Bewley.”
He adjusted one cuff, a signet ring flashing on his hand. “We weren’t advised of your return.”
Justifications rushed up too fast, something about Romania, travel, timing spilling out my mouth.
Bewley just strode away, leaving me speaking into empty space, a blunt dismissal.
I gathered myself, set my shoulders, and kept walking, Rua’s instincts tugging me along.
Conversation thinned around me in strange little pockets as I moved deeper into the hallway. A pair of girls glanced over at me and said something too low to catch. A boy by the lockers grinned at me for too long. Another student looked away too fast the second I met his eyes.
My next step faltered.
Up ahead, Lorcan stood around a set of lockers with three boys, their voices low and loose with private amusement until I came level with them. The whole group fell silent as one. Four heads turned. Four sets of eyes dragged over me.
Lorcan said nothing, but his stare hit hardest, sharp and openly hostile, like he resented the fact that I was there at all.
I kept my head down and hurried past, too busy trying not to look at him to take in anything else before it was too late.
A shoulder clipped mine hard enough to jolt the books against my chest.
I stumbled one step and tightened my grip before any of them could hit the floor again. The humiliation from the front lawn was still too fresh. Another spill here would finish me.
The student kept walking.
The casualness of it unsettled me more than open hostility would have.
Laughter broke out behind me, sharp and bright and impossible to place. It could have been about anything. It still sank under my skin like it was aimed at me.
By the time I reached my locker, every glance landed with weight. Every whisper sounded aimed. Every laugh carried cruelty whether it had meant to or not.
Christ, if the hallway alone had me wound this tight, my first class was going to be a bloody disaster.
I grabbed the books I needed and slammed my locker shut. I turned and froze.
A familiar girl moved through the crowd like something half-feral, wild white-blond hair spilling over delicate shoulders that her hairband couldn’t contain, moon-pale skin, and a mouth too sensual to suit the intensity of her stare.
Recognition landed hard enough to make my next step catch.
Nuala.
The girl I’d helped escape the asylum during that student prank.
Her eyes landed on me and held, the stare sharpening into something that made my nerves jump.