52. Lorcan
LORCAN
The Magdalene grounds blurred past me as my boots slammed into the wet grass. Up ahead, the carriage house was a black shape through the trunks, acrid smoke pouring out of it into the gray sky, pulling sideways in the wind.
Sirens rang out in the distance.
I ran harder. Underneath my panic, something inside me had started to come apart.
Oh God, I’m too late.
A small running figure broke through the trees ahead.
A girl.
I aimed for her, legs hammering.
Please be her. Please be her. Please be her.
I closed the distance in seconds and my hand was already coming up to grab her shoulder, to stop her, to see her face—
Not Liath.
Rua was alive. But I didn’t have time to process that now.
Something broke open across her tear-streaked face, raw and naked and aimed at me.
“Lorcan,” she breathed.
“Where’s Liath?”
Then I was already looking past her, toward the trees she’d come out of, toward the burning shape of the carriage house beyond them.
Her face changed in my peripheral.
I didn’t have time to stop. I pushed past her shoulder and ran.
The clearing opened up around the carriage house like a wound, the air thick with heat and smoke.
Fuck. The whole building was burning, flames coming up through holes in the roof.
What had Alistair done?
A crash came from somewhere inside. Something massive going down.
She’s in there.
My knees almost gave out. Something cracked through my chest. A pressure I had never felt before, splitting under my sternum.
I lost her.
And it’s my fault.
The pain ripping me apart was nothing like I’d ever felt before. Pain like my soul was being cleaved in two.
A figure broke through the smoke up ahead. Someone running.
Liath?
Hope felt like it punched a hole out of my chest and I stumbled forward, sprinting toward them.
Please be her. Please.
The smoke shifted and I saw her.
Liath.
Ash across one side of her face, hair half-singed at the ends, blood across her belly.
But alive.
Thank God. Relief hit so hard it almost took my knees out.
Until I saw where she was going.
She was sprinting back toward the building.
What the fuck is she doing?
She’ll die.
She’ll die and I’ll die.
I broke into a dead sprint.
I caught her ten feet from the door, hooked an arm around her chest, and dragged her back with my own momentum carrying us both backward across the grass. “Get back.”
“Let go.” She fought me, elbows in my ribs, heels in my shin. “He’s still in there!”
He.
Deargán.
Something raw punched open inside me.
She fought me, her body twisting in my arms like a wild animal. But I didn’t let go. I’d rather she hated me alive, then her be dead.
I threw her over my shoulder and carried her away from the building.
She hit my back with both fists. “Let go. He’s still in there. No. No. I have to save him—”
I didn’t let her down until we were far enough away, driving her backward until her shoulder blades hit the trunk of the tree behind her.
My hand came up to her throat. To hold her there. To force her to look at me. To anchor her to something that wasn’t the burning building.
“Gray. There’s nothing you could have done except get yourself killed.”
Her chest was heaving against me. Her eyes locked on mine.
The building exploded.
The whole skeleton of it came down at once, two stories folding in on themselves with a sound that punched through the air and rocked the ground under our feet.
Heat slammed across us. Burning slate spat outward in a wide arc, spearing the grass around us. I pressed my body in front of hers, hand still on her throat, shielding her from the blast.
When I opened my eyes, the carriage house wasn’t there anymore. Just a pile of burning wreckage where it had stood.
She screamed into my chest. A sound torn out of her that hit the front of my coat and cut through to my ribs.
Fuck. No one could have survived that. He was dead.
Her hands came up and she shoved me off her.
“Get away from me,” she hissed.
I gave way, my hand sliding off her. “Gray?”
“You did this.” She shoved a finger into my face, her eyes wild, rage twisting her features. “You sent your father here. You killed him.”
I reached for her, her name dying in my throat.
She cared about him and I got him killed.
She’s never going to forgive me.
My hand fell.
I’ve lost her.
Read the gripping and devastating finale in Book 3, Claiming Beauty.