Page 64 of Crown of Thorns

"Where is he?" I ask.

"That's not your concern."

My hands are gripping the book. I force them to relax. "If he's dead—"

"Then he made the choice that led to death." Lorcan's eyes are empty. Finished. This is a conversation he's not interested in continuing, which means it will continue anyway because I'm not done.

"You executed someone without telling me. Without asking—"

"I'm not required to ask your permission to run my family."

"But I'm part of this family. You keep saying I'm part of it. You keep asking me to understand, to see, to accept. But you still make decisions and keep me in the dark and then present me with the consequences."

"Yes," he says flatly. "That's how this works. I make decisions. You adapt to them."

The words land like a slap.

I stand. I need to move, to walk, to do anything except sit here and feel the enormity of what's just happened. What's always happening. The constant, terrifying momentum of this world that's slowly drowning me while I pretend I'm learning to swim.

"I need to know," I tell him. "I need to know if he's alive or if he's dead. I need to know what 'punishment' means."

"No, you don't." Lorcan remains sitting. Completely still. "You need to understand that you can't know everything. You need to accept that some decisions are made by me alone, and you don't get access to the information."

"Like you didn't get access to information about your father?"

The words come out before I can stop them. Before I can filter them. Before I can remember that Orla warned me not to ask questions about Padraig.

Lorcan's jaw clenches. That's all. Just a small tightening at the hinges of his face. But it's enough to tell me I've hit something true.

"Don't," he says quietly.

"Orla said—"

"Orla doesn't know what she's talking about."

"She confirmed what I already suspected — that you've known the truth about how my father died since before I found those letters. She said—"

"I don't care what Orla said." He stands now, and something in his posture has changed. The carefully maintained distance has become a wall. "What happened to my father is closed. It's not relevant. And you don't get to use it as leverage in an argument about Séan O'Donnell."

"I'm not using it as leverage." My voice is rising. I hate that my voice is rising. "I'm asking you to help me understand the world I'm living in. I'm asking for basic information about the man I married. I'm asking—"

"You're asking me to compromise operational security to satisfy your emotional needs. That's not happening."

The words are cut from ice.

I stand very still. The book is still in my hands. The study is still warm. The rest of the house is still silent. And something inside me has just fractured—not broken, but fractured, like a stress line in a diamond that's been cut wrong.

"I went to a church on St Cillian's," I tell him. "Did you know that? I started going after the first time I saw what your hands were capable of. I sat in the back row and lit candles for the people hurt in that pub. For Séan O'Donnell, if he's dead. For everyone I'm implicitly complicit in harming through the simple act of staying married to you."

"Don't do that anymore," Lorcan says.

"Don't do what? Pray? Feel guilty? Try to maintain some connection to the woman I was before—"

"Don't go to that church. Don't light candles. Don't create a record of your presence somewhere that's not secured. Don't be reckless with your own security because you're having an existential crisis."

He's not angry. That's the worst part. He's not angry. He's concerned. He's thinking like an operational mind. He's already calculated the risk I've created and is assessing containment.

"I hate that you're always thinking like this," I tell him. "I hate that you can't just be a person. You're always the machine. Always calculating. Always making decisions that affect my life and expecting me to accept them because you're smarter than I am about violence."