49. Liath
LIATH
Oh God, we’re so fucked.
Deargán completely blocked our only exit at the top of the stairs, his cello pressing in on my skull, fracturing Rua’s soft music box scent-song.
The walls of the basement closed in by half a foot. The ground tilted under me.
Rua’s fingers tightened in the back of my sweater.
“You don’t understand what you’ve just done,” Deargán said, his voice biting out as he started down the stairs.
No. You don’t get to call this my mistake.
I stepped back, Rua moving with me as if she had become part of my spine.
Deargán’s eyes narrowed on her just beyond my shoulder. “Step aside, Liath.”
Rua let out a pained whimpered behind me and her fingers clutched me harder.
I snatched a scalpel from a side desk and brought it up between us, pointing it toward him. “Don’t you dare touch her.”
Fuck. My scalpel felt so tiny and useless against him.
He raised his hands open at his sides and kept coming, slower now, but he didn’t stop. “Put it down. I don’t want to hurt you.”
A stupid part of me knew that he wouldn’t hurt me. But he didn’t need to hurt me to win this.
“Fuck you,” I said, my voice rougher than I’d meant it. “You don’t want to hurt me but that’s all you do.”
For a moment, something raw flashed across his face. “Liath—”
“You told me she was dead.” I stabbed the air with every point. “You let me mourn her. You fucking gaslit me when I heard her singing.”
A faint twitch near his mouth was the only sign my words had affected him.
“All this time,” I hissed, “you had her locked up like a fucking animal. You are the monster.”
At the word monster, he visibly flinched, his cello scent-song going jagged.
His hands lowered an inch, the calm bleeding out of his face. What replaced it was a cold rage.
He stepped off the bottom stair onto the basement floor, his voice cutting low. “Christ, you can’t help but think everyone can be saved.”
I stepped farther back into the basement, Rua moving with me.
“How long did it take until you forgot she’s Alistair’s daughter and were attempting to free her?”
The cell door. The thinness of her wrist. Her face that was my face. I had felt sympathy for her instantly.
Fuck. He was right. She might have my DNA in her cells but Alistair raised her.
I had forgotten.
Am I doing this with him too?
I shoved it down before I could dwell on it.
“Think, Liath.” He kept moving toward me. “You know I wouldn’t have kept her hidden if there wasn’t a good reason.”
The surveillance photos slid into my periphery. Fight back. He’s setting the ground beneath you on fire.
“What about Powell?” I demanded, forcing my voice level. “You drugged him. Sent him insane. Just so you could take his position.”
“Jesus, he’s one of Alistair’s men,” he said, a hardened edge in his tone. “He’s not innocent.”
The cold table. The white sheet. Maeve’s open eyes.
Maeve had been left in Powell’s lab.
Coincidence, maybe.
Maybe.
But Maeve was not a coincidence I was prepared to accept.
The ground under me seemed to shift as I reached the long worktable in the center of the basement, beakers rattling on the top as my hip caught the edge.
“And the doctor before you at Magdalene?” My voice tightened. “The one who vanished?”
Fuck. I didn’t even know her name.
“I didn’t hurt her,” Deargán said in the same insulted register. “I gave her money and she left.”
The doubt crept in and my step faltered.
Rua let out a small whine. “You promised you wouldn’t let him hurt me.”
“Don’t trust her.” Deargán’s gaze shifted past my shoulder and twisted into something like disgust. “I treated her for six months, Liath. You’ve known her six minutes.”
I shifted around the end of the long table as Deargán narrowed the gap between us. Across the table from where Deargán was advancing, a clear path led to the stairs.
I might be able to make it if I ran. But Rua wouldn’t.
Before I could even consider my next move, he backed up around the other end of the table to the position where he could cover both ways past it.
Dammit. He’d read my play.
I registered, too late, that the cell doorway was right behind us. Closer now than the stairs.
“She’s been shaped by Alistair her whole life. This fragile little victim is just the version that gets you to open the door.”
God. What if he’s right?
I rummaged through the last few minutes, looking for evidence one way or the other. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to.
Rua’s grip on my sweater loosened as she took half a step away from me.
Her act is failing.
No, that’s exactly what he wants me to think.
My head spun, unable to trust my own thoughts, my own judgment.
I pivoted my body so that I was side-on to both of them, needing to see her face. My scalpel stayed pointed at Deargán.
The sight of her face, my face, hit me again, clipping my breath.
“Rua?” Her name came out smaller than I wanted.
She stared back at me, her eyes wide and brimming, her mouth opening and closing as she glanced between Deargán and me.
She looked terrified.
Or was it an act?
Deargán’s voice cut in, gentle and reasonable. “Why don’t we put her back in for now. Just until we can sort this out properly.”
Something snapped in her. She seized a beaker off a side table and brought it down hard against the wood, the end breaking off, leaving a jagged stem in her fist, glass scattering bright across the floorboards.
“I will not go back in that fucking cell,” she screamed, her voice breaking, tears running down her face. “I can’t.”
She held the glass out, her hand trembling as she pointed it at Deargán. Then at me. Then at Deargán again.
“See,” Deargán said with a sneer.
I was looking at my sister holding a weapon at me. I was looking at a wounded, scared kitten with claws. Both at once.
Her music box scent-song pitched wrong in my head.
I glanced between her, the jagged glass, then at Deargán.
Deargán caught my eye, his gaze steady. “It’s up to you, Liath.”
Deargán or her.
I couldn’t let her go. She was too volatile. She’d ruin the mission.
But I couldn’t be the one to order her back in that cell.
What the fuck am I going to do?
The moment stretched, my chest winding up so tight I could barely breathe.
“What a delightful reunion.”
I turned my head toward the stairs.
Alistair was standing there, smiling, a gun in his hand.