46. Lorcan
LORCAN
Deargán’s hand was on her fucking knee.
He leaned into her, his mouth at her ear, feeding her God knows what, poisoning her against me.
Her eyes flared wide as they locked on mine, guilt flashing across her face.
I had been winning. I didn’t give a shite now.
Rage tore through my chest. He was taking her from me right in front of me. She was slipping out of my hands by inches and I could not stop it.
A defender came at me from the side.
Fury exploded out of me, a crack carrying up the bleachers, and he went face down in the grass before I knew what I had done.
The ref was already running toward me, whistle blowing, his arm sweeping flat to send me off.
I did not look away from her once.
“Lorc—” Finn was at my shoulder, his hand on my arm. “Christ, mate—”
I shrugged him off, tossed my hurley and helmet aside on the sidelines, and aimed straight for her.
Behind me, someone shouted. Rafe maybe. Then Breezy, louder, that grin in his voice. “Don’t go starting a war over her, Lorc.”
I did not answer.
My vision had narrowed to Liath. She’d come down off the bleachers and was standing at the players’ benches on the sideline.
That bastard was still beside her like a fucking creeper, his hand at the small of her back like he had any right, his smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth like he’d already won.
I grabbed my club jacket up from the bench as I passed.
She saw me coming. Her eyes flicked to Deargán at her side, then back to me and I saw her visibly step forward as if she could get between us.
I dropped the jacket over her shoulders.
The cluster around the benches went quiet. Someone behind me drew a breath before a ripple of whispers started.
A club jacket was sacred. Every Irishman in the ground knew it. You didn’t give a girl your jacket unless you want half the county asking when the wedding is.
It claimed her. It made her mine. I didn’t give a shite what that looked like.
Deargán arched his brows. “Unlucky pass today, Lorcan,” he drawled, poison dripping from his mouth, “almost gave me a concussion.”
Liath nudged me with her hand, a look on her face like, well, go on, apologize.
My smile curved sharp. “If I was trying, I’d have hit you. I never miss.”
His dark pupils flickered.
I pictured my thumbs on his throat. The cartilage giving. The pulse failing under the pressure. The fantasy purred cold in my chest.
I put my arm around Liath’s shoulders and pulled her against my side. “Come on, Gray.” I glared at him as I said it. “Let me take you home.”
She gave him one last look before she let me lead her away.
Driving her home, I gripped the wheel until my knuckles whitened, casual words scraping out, brittle. “What did he want?”
“Nothing. Just… college stuff.” She twisted at her seat belt.
“Looked like he was saying shit to you.”
She stiffened. “Oh, um, yeah, just about… some assignment work.”
The suspicion gnawed, a parasite under my skin. She was lying.
Later, she walked through the manor like she was somewhere else.
She was just tired. Of course she was quiet. Of course she was not herself.
At the top of the stairs, I stopped her with a thumb at her wrist. “You alright?”
“Grand.”
She did not look at me.
I tried again in front of my door. “I downloaded that McQueen documentary you were on about. The one with the bloody runway show. We could put it on. I’ll get the fire going in my room.”
The flicker of her looking at me was so brief I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching for it.
“Maybe later.” She moved past me.
I caught her at her bedroom door, my hand grasping for her waist. I drew her against me and put my mouth on hers.
I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air. I kissed her like I could pull her back to me, my mouth devouring hers, demanding a spark to burn away the cold creeping in.
She stiffened, her body taut as a bowstring, and I feared she’d push me away.
Then she softened, melting into me, her lips yielding. But even as she kissed me back, something was missing. There was a distance that hollowed the kiss. It was like pressing my mouth to a memory of her, and the emptiness bled fear into my veins.
I pulled back and looked at her.
She would not meet my eye.
“Liath—”
“I’m tired, Lorcan.”
She turned her handle and slid through the door.
The wood pressed gently against my shoulder as it closed and the latch clicked with the small definitive finality of a coffin lid.
This was his fault. He was feeding her lies. Poisoning her mind. And I wanted his blood for it.
I needed a monster to take down a monster.
Outside Alistair’s study, I stared at the closed door, eyes dragging over the wood swirls as if my answer was contained within them.
Something in me warned that if I brought this fight to Alistair, I could not take it back. The thought sat heavy, a lead weight in my chest, keeping me rooted to the spot.
Fuck. I turned and walked away, getting only partway down the corridor before I turned on my heel and returned.
This time I got as far as placing my hand on the door handle, the brass cold under my fingers. I did not turn it.
Deargán was dangerous. He’d tried to kill me. He’d killed my grandfather.
What if Liath refused him and he turned on her?
I had to tell Alistair. He was the only one who could get Deargán arrested and sent away again.
I could leak Deargán’s criminal record to the dean, but that would send him away from Ravenwood, not keep him from her.
Alistair was the only one who could get rid of him for good.
Before I could turn the handle, the door opened from the inside.
Alistair stood scowling at me, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a glass in his hand, the faint medicinal sweetness of absinthe rolling out of the room with him. “For God’s sake, son. In or out. I haven’t all night.”
My face went hot as I walked in, the Persian rug swallowing my footsteps. The stuffed animal heads watched me from their rows above the shelving, glass eyes catching the low firelight.
He returned to his chair and sat, sipping his drink.
He waited.
“There’s a new psych professor at Ravenwood,” I said. “Goes by Bron Deargán.”
Alistair’s hand stopped moving, his eyes sharpening. The room got colder by some invisible degree. “Is that so.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
He set his glass aside on the side table, the crystal making a small clean sound on the wood, the green liquid sparkling against the low firelight.
Then he steepled his fingers and looked at me over them.
“Tell me everything.”
I told him that he’d taken over as a substitute professor for Powell. The way he’d arrogantly used his own name like he didn’t care if I knew who he was. The way he’d immediately directed his hatred toward me.
I didn’t tell him how I’d seen him hanging around her at Ravenwood or at the saloon as a buyer. I could not have Alistair link them.
When I was done talking, he was quiet for a long moment.
Then he picked up his glass and took another slow sip. “Bron Deargán has always wanted to destroy our family. He tried to kill your mother. You, in her belly. He killed your grandfather.” He made a cross symbol with his hands. “God rest his soul.”
The fire crackled and spat. The room held still.
“He has come back to finish what he started. You understand that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He will come for what is mine. He will come for you. He’ll even come for your sweet little sister. If we don’t stop him.”
I tried not to flinch at the mention of her. “What do you want me to do?”
He smiled. “I want a name. Who he is working with. I want a location. Where he sleeps. Where he goes when he is not at the school. I want a schedule. When he is alone.”
He paused.
“And I want a weakness. Find me the thing he loves. We will use it against him.”
I made my face still.
He cared about her. But Deargán could never be linked to her.
I could give him something.
“I…” I said, picking out my words carefully, “I might have something.”
Alistair nodded. “Go on.”
No turning back now.
“The carriage house on the Magdalene grounds. That’s where he’s staying.”
Alistair stood. He walked to the cabinet behind his desk and poured himself another inch of absinthe. He did not offer me one. He stood in front of the fire and he looked at me for a long moment, his elbow on the mantle, glass in his hand.
“Perhaps I have been wrong about you, son.”
I went very still.
“Perhaps you do have what it takes to be my heir.”
His voice had softened. The contempt he usually carried in his throat when he spoke to me was just gone. In its place was something I had been hungry for since I was old enough to know what hunger was. Pride. Acceptance. Respect.
But underneath, a cold wrongness slithered down the back of my throat. I feared I had just made an irreversible mistake. That I had just pointed a dangerous and unpredictable weapon and that she might get caught in the crossfire.
Alistair waved at the door, dismissing me.
I paused at the door. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take care of him.” He smiled and it chilled me to the bone. “Once and for all.”
I stood outside her bedroom door.
She had asked for space. I should give it to her. I should walk away.
I did not.
Alistair’s words kept moving in my head. Once and for all.
Alistair did not say once and for all about a man he meant to leave standing. He did not need a location for the Garda. He needed it for an execution.
A dark part of me reveled in the thought of Deargán, gone. The man who had dared to put his hands on her, gone. The threat to her, gone. The promise she made to him, gone.
But a bigger part of me had gone cold.
She would not forgive me.
Whatever Deargán was to her, she would grieve him. She would grieve him in front of me. She would look at me and know I had been the one to send my father to his door.
The thought sat in my chest like a stone.
No, I’d make her forgive me. I would not stop until she did. I would wait. I would grovel. I would do whatever it took.
But first I needed to put my eyes on her. I needed to be near her. To know she was safe behind her door, far from what I had just set in motion. I needed to be the thing standing between her and what was coming.
I knocked. “Gray?”
But there was no answer.
An icy dread wrapped its fingers around my throat.
I knocked again as I opened her door. “Gray?”
The bed was made. Her coat was gone from the back of the chair. The lamp was off.
Her room was empty.
A cold certainty struck me like a physical blow to the chest.
That’s why she was being distant. She needed to get out from under my nose.
She had gone to Deargán.
And I had just told my father where to find him.
I had sent my father’s path straight into hers.