9. Liath
LIATH
Istepped into my first lecture, dread pooling in my stomach.
Neurobiology. I had tried studying Rua’s notes last night, but concepts swam in my head like a foreign language.
Come on. I’d studied psychology. Surely there were similar concepts in both. I could do this. I could pass as a second-year medical student, right?
The lecture hall opened around me in a steep, dark sweep of wood paneling and tiered desks, the curved rows rising one above the next, the collection of perfumes and chalk dust creating a clash of notes in my head that just tightened my chest further.
I froze for a moment at the front, feeling like I was already on trial.
I wanted to sit at the back, to blend into the shadows and survive this ordeal with my cover intact.
But Lorcan had already claimed the back row with his three friends sprawled around him and a cluster of pretty girls gathered close, all polished hair and brittle laughter. They looked less like students and more like a court, and he sat at the center of it.
Lorcan locked eyes with me across the room, his mouth curving in a sneer that felt like a blade drawn across my skin.
His expression invited me and mocked me in the same breath, daring me to approach, daring me to turn away, proving I knew exactly how little I belonged in his circle of beautiful predators.
He didn’t look away. Didn’t blink. He sat back deeper in his seat, one arm slung over the row behind him like a king settling onto his throne, while the fingers of his other hand tapped against the desk in a slow, deliberate rhythm that carried through the room and lodged under my skin.
Each measured tap felt directed at me, like he had already started counting down to whatever cruel thing he meant to do next.
I took a seat near the wall. Distance was the only defense I had left. Invisibility was the closest thing to safety in a place like Ravenwood.
A familiar girl stared at me from across the hall, her freckled face framed by frizzy red hair.
Rua’s memories handed me her name at once. Emer. A previous project partner.
I smiled and lifted a hand in a reflexive wave that belonged to me, not to Rua.
Emer recoiled. Her chair scraped backward against the floor, the sound sharp as breaking glass, and her fingers twitched toward her throat.
Then the rest of Rua’s memory flared like a match struck in darkness.
A public screaming match. Rua chanting Latin at her in front of a crowd. Threats of a hex spoken with enough conviction to make Emer go white and back away.
Christ. Don’t wave at her. I dropped my hand too late, the damage already done. I sank into my seat, forcing my shoulders in and my chin down.
Please God let me survive this hour without drawing any more attention to myself than I already had.
“Alright, settle.”
The professor, Dr. O’Sullivan, stood at the front. He had the clipped precision of a man who liked rules more than people, all neat posture, narrowed eyes, and permanent disappointment.
His gaze swept the room before settling on me.
“Back with us, Miss Lasair. Lucky us.” His tone dripped with restrained contempt, like he’d hoped I wouldn’t return, like my presence was a burden he’d been forced to accept.
A few students chuckled, the sound cruel and sharp. One cough rang out too harsh to be real. The air grew dense with anticipation, thick enough to choke on.
By now everyone in the lecture hall was staring at me, including Lorcan and all his friends, their attention pressing against my skin like hands I couldn’t escape.
I sank farther into my seat. So much for keeping my head down.
O’Sullivan turned to the board and wrote in neat, precise letters, the white chalk clicking against the blackboard with brisk authority.
“The Physiology and Subjectivity of Pain.”
The title of his lecture sat there like a private joke aimed straight at me.
He launched into the lecture with clinical detachment, talking about nociceptors, nerve fibers, and the altered thresholds of trauma survivors as if pain became less human once reduced to terminology and diagrams. The colder his voice became, the more my skin prickled.
I copied down every word I could catch, my pen moving too fast, my notes turning into a panicked blur of half-understood terms and arrows I prayed would make sense later.
The harder I tried to keep up, the more the lecture slid sideways out of reach, and the pressure in my chest built with each passing minute.
He flashed up a slide with a diagram of pain receptors overlaid on a naked back, the image stark and clinical in the dim light.
“Pain, when repeated,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of scientific fact, “rewires the brain.”
My gaze snagged on the image and for a moment it morphed into Lorcan’s back without permission, not as it was in the slide, but hidden under his shirt, marked by his own father.
The thought went darker before I could stop it. I pictured bruises laid over older bruises, welts crossing scars, fresh damage painted over whatever had not yet faded, mottled like fall leaves. The image turned my stomach and tugged at something softer and more dangerous at the same time.
A pulse of empathy hit hard enough to override sense for one stupid second, and I looked over to him before I could stop myself.
Lorcan was already looking at me, his shoulders tense, his hand sitting knotted into a fist against his thigh. His face gave away almost nothing, but something about the stillness of it felt wrong, too intent, too fixed, as if he had read the direction of my thoughts and was irritated by my pity.
He brought his thumb up and rubbed it across his bottom lip.
A featherlight drag answered on my own mouth.
I jolted in my seat, my fingers flying up to my lips.
No. No, not him.
The mirror-touch part of my synesthesia was supposed to be an anomaly. A freak event. Triggered only by Deargán. It was supposed to be his. Only his.
Not Lorcan’s, too. No, he can’t be another trigger.
Across the room, Lorcan’s brows pulled together, his gaze dropping to my fingers still pressed against my lip. His thumb stilled on his mouth. His head tilted a fraction.
Shit. Drop your hand.
I forced my fingers down into my lap.
But Lorcan kept watching me, his brows still drawn, his face still working through whatever he had just seen.
I held his stare too long, and the mistake registered everywhere at once. Heat climbed under my skin. My pulse kicked harder. The space between my thighs tightened with a hot, humiliating awareness.
“Miss Lasair.” O’Sullivan’s voice cut through my thoughts like a blade. “Perhaps, rather than making gooey eyes across the lecture hall, you’d care to explain why central sensitization affects women more than men?”
I dragged my gaze off Lorcan and sat up too fast. Warmth flooded my face and burned there, thick and humiliating, while every inch of me screamed that half the room now believed they had just caught me staring at my own stepbrother.
Giggles broke out around me. One of the girls near Lorcan leaned toward another and whispered something that made the whole cluster laugh. Their delight carried a history I did not need explained. Ravenwood had not only noticed Rua’s fixation on Lorcan. They had fed on it.
“We haven’t got all day, Miss Lasair.”
O’Sullivan was still waiting for an answer.
My mind skidded uselessly through pages of neurobiology notes that refused to settle into anything I could actually say out loud. Terms blurred. Definitions slipped. The answer stayed just out of reach while the silence around me thickened.
“Because pain…” The word caught. I forced myself to keep going. “Because pain is sexist?”
Snickers rippled through the room. One boy let out an ugly, nasal snort. Emer turned her head with her mouth pinched tight, as if even looking at me now embarrassed her by association.
Failure burned hot under my skin. My fingers tightened around my pen, and my whole body turned restless with the need to get out of that seat, out of that room, out of everyone’s line of sight.
“You were top of the class in neurobiology last term.” O’Sullivan peered at me over the rim of his glasses. “This is very disappointing.”
Great. Rua would’ve recited passages from the textbook by heart.
He moved on, but Lorcan didn’t. His gaze locked on mine with a flicker of triumph. Like he’d caught me out.
Like he could see the cracks forming in the Rua mask I’d barely managed to keep on and was quietly deciding whether to peel the disguise off slowly or smash straight through it in front of everyone.