51. Liath
LIATH
Thin gray threads of smoke came under the door, the heat pressing through the walls of the cell. Behind me Rua was breathing too fast, gasping in short, jagged bursts.
I turned to Deargán and we locked eyes. What the fuck are we going to do?
Tunnels. Deargán built this place. Deargán who concealed everything, who had a key for every door. He had to have built himself an out.
“Is there another way out of here?” I rasped.
He let out a huff. “No. I was meticulous in securing it.”
The smoke was getting thicker. Rua coughed, her gasping turning into hacking, and a second later my own throat caught on it, too, making me cough, the air hurting my lungs.
Fuck, we had to stop the smoke.
I ran into the small cell bathroom, yanked towels off the rack, shoved them under the tap, and twisted it on full, soaking them. Then I was back at the cell door, pressing the wet bundle against the gap at the bottom of the metal.
It might hold back the smoke for now, but it wouldn’t stop the fire from coming. The heat was already coming in, the wall warming up.
My phone.
I yanked it out of my pocket and my thumb was already working before the screen lit up. Lorcan. I hit call and jammed the phone to my ear.
“That’s not going to work,” Deargán said from behind me.
I didn’t turn. “It will. Lorcan will help us.”
“That little bastard is the reason you’re in here.”
The line was dead silence in my ear. I yanked the phone away and stared at the screen.
I tried the emergency number. But that too wouldn’t connect.
“No reception in here,” Deargán muttered. “On purpose.”
Fuck. Meticulous.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and turned in a circle, eyes raking the cell. Think. Think.
The wallpaper above the doorway was starting to curl up at the corner where the smoke was crawling in along the seam.
I looked up.
Shit. Smoke was already pouring in through the floorboards above. Thick brown wisps of it pushing between the planks, gathering along the ceiling.
Upstairs is on fire, too. He set the whole fucking house on fire.
My eyes caught on the only window in the back wall, light filtering in through the smoky haze.
“The window!”
Wide enough, maybe. Too high to reach. I ran to the chair, grabbed the back of it, and pulled.
The chair didn’t move. It was bolted to the floor.
Dammit, Deargán.
I ran under the window and jumped as hard as I could. My fingers didn’t get within a foot of the sill.
Deargán came up beside me, looking up at the window. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Told you. Meticulous.”
I yanked my jacket off and started winding the sleeve around my forearm, padding my elbow. “Hoist me up.”
“What—?”
“I go out first. Then Rua. Then we both pull you out.”
He glanced past me to where Rua was scrambling to her feet, tears still streaking down her face, her eyes wide, her voice a panicked shriek, “Don’t leave me.”
He looked back at me.
I put my hand on his arm. “I promise. We’ll get you out.”
He held my eyes for one second longer. Then he nodded and held his hands out for my waist, lifting me like I was made of paper.
I clutched the sill, fingers scrabbling on stone, finding my balance before driving my padded elbow into the glass.
It shattered. A spray of cold air rushed in over my face and I sucked it down greedily as I knocked out the rest of the jagged edge with my elbow, working my way around the frame, glass falling away into the grass on the outside.
I hauled myself up, the frame catching along my belly, the broken edge of the glass dragging along my skin under my shirt, leaving stinging lines of pain. I clawed forward into the dirt, hands sinking into wet grass, and I was through.
I tumbled out and rolled onto my back, the gray Irish sky above never looking so fucking glorious.
But there was no time to rest.
I shoved off the jacket bunched around my arm and rolled to my knees, turning back to the house. Heat hit my face like an open oven.
Fuck. The whole damn carriage house was on fire.
The walls above me were being swallowed by angry flames, black smoke pouring out of the upper windows.
I crawled back to the basement window and looked down.
“Calm down.” Deargán was holding Rua up to the gap, or at least he was trying to. “For Christ’s sake—”
She was clawing at his face, his neck, his hair, scrambling all over him like a wild animal, her eyes blown out wide, her face wet with spit and tears. “Get me out, get me out, get me out—”
I reached down through the broken window and grabbed at her flailing arms. “Rua, take my hand.”
Shit. She was thrashing too hard to get a grip on her. Her fingers kept slipping out of mine.
Deargán shoved her up harder and I caught one of her wrists and then the other and I pulled.
She came through the window wrong, half on her side, her knee catching the frame, her face going into the dirt. We both tumbled back onto the grass.
I rolled to my knees again. Back to the window.
Almost there.
We were almost all free.
“Rua, we need to—”
But she was already scrambling to her feet behind me, half sobbing, half heaving.
I turned just in time to see her run. “No, Rua! Come back!”
She didn’t stop. She didn’t look back, her small frame disappearing into the dark of the trees in seconds.
Hope sagged out of me. For the sister I’d almost gotten back. For Deargán.
Deargán.
I shoved my head and shoulders back through the window. The heat blasting back was unbearable.
He looked up at me from the basement floor, his arm clamped across his nose and mouth, the smoke so thick around him I could barely make out his face. The flames were eating through the ceiling, climbing the walls.
I reached one arm through and wedged the other against the outside of the wall to brace.
“Grab my hand,” I yelled over the roar of the flames and the menacing crackle of wood above us.
He looked at my hand, then at my face. “It won’t work.”
“Take my hand, goddamn it.” It came out broken, half a scream, half already a sob.
He reached up, his sweaty hand closing around mine.
I locked my grip and pulled.
I pulled with everything in me, with every scrap of strength left. I pulled until I screamed and my arm shook and my eyes burned and I couldn’t feel my hand anymore.
But he didn’t come up.
He was too heavy.
The sobs came out of me before I could stop them, my chest heaving against the window frame.
I couldn’t save him.
Deargán who had saved me.
Deargán who had warned me about Rua. About Lorcan. Deargán who had been right about them.
And now he was going to die because I wouldn’t listen.
Because I had chosen my heart over my head. Because I had trusted Lorcan over him.
Pain ripped up through my chest so violently that my ribs locked, the back of my throat closing around my vocal cords like a fist.
Deargán’s hand squeezed mine softly. It’s okay.
A wooden beam cracked like a gunshot somewhere above his head. Plaster came down between us.
“Listen to me,” he rasped.
I shook my head. I was still pulling. I was still pulling.
“I’m sorry for lying to you.” His voice came out broken, coughing between words. “For keeping Rua from you. I thought I was protecting you.”
A sob tore out of me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
His mouth softened into a sad smile. “Perhaps you already did.”
The ceiling groaned above him, low and animal. His gaze snapped up. “Get back.”
His fingers loosened in mine.
No.
My hand refused to open. My fingers refused.
No, no, no.
My whole body locked around his hand, every muscle screaming at me to keep pulling. Not to let go.
His eyes held mine through the smoke. “Liath, please, I need you alive.”
A sob tore out of me as I forced my fingers to open. One at a time. Letting go of him felt like ripping myself in two.
His hand slipped out of mine.
The far corner of the ceiling crashed down behind him and a blast of heat seared across my face.
“Get vengeance for me,” he yelled through the billow of thick smoke.
I stumbled back from the window as the ceiling collapsed, as heat blasted across my face hard enough to scorch my eyelashes.
As the whole carriage house came down on top of him.