50. Liath
LIATH
The cold black eye of the gun stared right at me. Alistair’s shadow loomed down over us all, the crawling smile stretching across his face making me shiver.
For a moment, all I could do was blink at him, praying that this was a nightmare I would wake from.
Oh God. How did he find us?
My cover. My mission. The months I’d spent burying Liath so I could infiltrate his world as Rua. All of it. Gone.
Dervla. Bridgit. The girls in the ward.
I’d failed. I’d never free them. I’d die alongside them.
Grief slammed up under my ribs hard enough to fold me forward an inch. My fingers went numb around the scalpel and the breath I had been holding broke loose.
Behind me, glass shattered against the floor. Rua’s beaker.
Alistair smirked as he locked eyes with Deargán. “Hello, old friend. Lorcan told me I’d find you here. Didn’t expect to find so much more.”
Lorcan told him. No. He wouldn’t have.
He could have. Lorcan followed me here. Lorcan knew about this place.
He betrayed me.
The thought hit like a blade sliding between my ribs and pain tore up through my chest with a sharpness that robbed me of air. My legs threatened to go out from under me and something in my chest started to come apart.
I clamped it shut. Not now. Not in front of him. Keep your head together long enough to survive.
Alistair tsked, shaking his head at Deargán. “Twenty years of losing to me and you’ve still not learned.”
A cry ripped out of Deargán as he snatched a bottle off the shelf, smashing the end of it against the side.
“Deargán, no!” It tore out of me as he charged the stairs.
Alistair pivoted the gun. To me.
Deargán froze mid-stride, the broken bottle still raised.
Alistair glanced between Deargán and me, his smile widening further.
“Toss it aside,” he said to Deargán, stabbing the air at me with his gun, “or I put a hole in her.”
Deargán scowled but he tossed the jagged bottle aside, smashing it against the wall.
“Now back up,” Alistair said to Deargán, the gun still trained on me.
Deargán’s cheek pulsed with suppressed anger as he slowly moved backward, deeper into the basement.
Alistair’s eyes went to Rua. Then back to me. Then between us again, his head tilting.
“Twins,” he said, then quietly added, almost to himself, “What a clever girl.”
He came down the stairs, his eyes on Rua. “What are you doing here, pet?”
“He locked me up.” She pointed at Deargán, her hand shaking, the words coming out of her in a single breath. “He tried to get me to turn on you. But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
“I see,” Alistair said as he walked toward Powell’s surveillance wall. He scanned the photos, his gun still trained on me, then he reached out with his free hand and picked up the empty vial from the desk.
“Goodness.” He held it up to the light, turning it slowly in his fingers. “You managed to get this from under my nose.”
The respect in his voice made my stomach turn.
He started walking toward me. “Drop it, please.”
The scalpel was still in my hand, my fingers locked around the handle, knuckles white, the small useless blade pointed at the floor now because my arm had given up the height somewhere in the last minute.
I hesitated.
Drop it and you have nothing.
Don’t drop it and he shoots.
I forced open my hand and the scalpel clanked against the concrete.
Alistair’s foot came out and kicked it backward across the floor, somewhere behind him. Gone.
He stepped closer, his sharp stench of wormwood and green anise crawled up into the back of my throat, the organ note pushing against my sternum until it was hard to breathe.
From down the room, a growl loosened from Deargán.
Alistair didn’t even turn his head.
“Such a shame,” he said, his voice almost soft as he bought up the gun to my face, touching the cold muzzle to my cheekbone. “I could have enjoyed a daughter like you.”
I swallowed back the bile that rose up in my throat as he traced the muzzle along the side of my jaw and lifted my chin with it, forcing me to look right at him.
“Work alongside me,” he said. “I’ll let you be Lorcan’s. You can even keep Rua’s name, if you’d like.”
A pained whimper came from Rua.
I wanted to spit in his face. Wanted to scream at him as I lashed out at him.
But his gun kept me in line. If I did anything stupid, I’d be dead. And so would Deargán for reacting.
“I’d rather die,” I bit out.
His smile dissolved. “You’ll get your wish.”
He stepped back from me, the gun still on me, and called out without turning his head. “Rua. Pat them down. Him first.”
Across the room, she flinched and for a second she didn’t move.
Hope flared so suddenly it hurt. My sister. She was going to choose me.
But the hope wavered almost as fast as it had come as Deargán’s voice slithered back through my head. She’s been shaped by Alistair her whole life.
Was he right? Was she Alistair’s pet?
She lifted her chin and walked toward Deargán.
My stupid heart sank. It seemed it had misjudged everyone.
He stood very still as he let her pat him down, his eyes finding mine over her head. I told you so.
I tore my eyes away, my chest aching.
Rua crossed the room to me, stopping so close that I could smell her sweet almonds and the metallic sour of fear underneath. She tugged her bracelet off my wrist and slipped it on hers, a soft sigh falling from her.
Then she lifted her hands to my shoulders and began to pat me down. Her hand passed over my pocket and stopped, her eyes snapping up to mine.
My phone. She had felt it.
Please. I begged her with my eyes. Let me keep it. Please.
She hesitated.
“What’s taking so long?” Alistair growled from across the room.
Rua jerked her hand away from my pocket. “Um. Nothing.”
Then she stepped back from me, unable to look at me.
Her gift sat between us. Nothing.
If Alistair caught wind that she’d lied to him, he’d punish her. She was risking everything. For me.
My chest squeezed. I wanted so badly to say thank you, but I couldn’t.
My sister wasn’t evil. Just terrified and broken.
“Now throw them in the cell,” Alistair said.
Rua turned to Deargán first and shoved him, hard, in the chest with both hands. “Move.”
He walked backward toward the cell, his glare never leaving Alistair’s face.
She turned to me and the hardness went out of her face. Her hand came to the small of my back, almost gentle, and she leaned close enough that her breath touched my ear. “S-sorry.”
I let her walk me into the room that used to be hers.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the bedroom mask of it started peeling back into what it really was.
A cell.
The windowless walls closed in, the ceiling feeling like it was pressing lower. Every step deeper into the room made panic crawl higher up my throat.
Deargán stood just aside of the doorway, fists at his sides.
Alistair came up behind Rua, his gun still pointing. “Where’s the key, pet?”
Rua turned her head to him as she stood in the doorway. “Still in the door.”
Alistair smiled.
Rua stumbled forward, her hands flying out to catch her, and she tumbled into me, almost knocking us both over.
The cell door slammed shut behind her, Alistair’s face in the hatch.
The lock turned, sounding like a gun cocking.
“Daddy?” Rua’s voice came out small. “W-what are you doing?”
Alistair tilted his head. “I’m sorry, my darling. But you’ve become too much of a liability.”
“Please, Daddy, no.” Rua threw herself at the door so hard it rattled in its frame. Her fists slammed against the metal and she tugged at the handle as sobs tore out of her. “You can’t leave me here. I did everything you asked. Please.”
The sound of it hollowed something out inside me.
Alistair’s eyes moved from Rua to me through the hatch. He shook his head. “Such a shame.”
Then he turned and walked away.
Rua made a choking sound as she backed up, her hands going up to her chest. Her legs found the edge of the bed, and she slid down to the floor with her knees pulled up against her body, curled tight as she sobbed.
Not evil. Just broken.
Deargán was across the cell in two strides. He hit the hatch frame with both hands.
“This isn’t the end, Lasair,” he vowed. “I’ll come for you. You’ll wake up one night with your throat cut. Just like your father.”
“No.” Alistair was pouring clear liquid from a glass bottle across the desk, across the papers, across the photos of Powell on the wall. “I don’t think so.”
The smell of it reached me a few moments later. The sharpness of alcohol that made a small shrill scream start up in my head.
I moved to the hatch, pressing my face close to Deargán’s at the opening, the heat off his skin burning into me. His cello scent-song, so familiar, settled into the space between heartbeats.
On the hatch frame, his little finger shifted, brushing mine.
I hesitated for a second before I answered with a press of my own.
Alistair finished pouring and dropped the bottle to the floor with a smash. He turned on the Bunsen burner, then touched the flame to the desk.
The fire took, racing across the table and leaping to the floor where the alcohol had pooled. The basement filled with orange and heat in the space of a breath.
Through the flames, Alistair walked up the stairs, our only exit that he’d now cut us off from.
“Farewell, my pets.”
Through the hatch, the air was already shimmering with heat. Smoke was beginning to gather along the ceiling, drifting toward us.
Behind me, Rua had started to make a small thin whine like a child.
The acrid smell of smoke reached me, a sharp hissing sound coming from somewhere behind my eyes, splitting through the cello notes.
I stepped back from the hatch as Deargán slid it shut with a slam.
But it would not hold off the fire.
Smoke was already starting to curl in from under the door. The smoke would kill us before the fire could get to us.
We were all going to die.