Page 116 of Twisting Beauty

I crossed the distance in four steps and dropped my voice to a hiss. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He didn’t have the decency to look guilty. “What are you doing? We had a plan. Instead, you’re taking stupid risks just to soothe your bleeding heart.”

“Fuck your plan. Fuck revenge. I had a chance to get Maeve out tonight and you blew it.”

“No. You are blowing it.” Something shifted in his voice. “All those girls are still trapped while you lose yourself to him. That boy is your enemy. Not your fucking lover.”

The air between us changed. His jaw set under the mask, and a stillness came over him, his cello scent-song pulsing low in my head like a warning.

Oh.

Oh, that wasn’t only the mission talking.

He was jealous.

He leaned in, his voice dropping into a threat, the cello flaring. “If you don’t take care of him… I will.”

For one sick second, the threat flashed whole in my head. Deargán going after Lorcan. Lorcan getting hurt, or worse, because I had gotten too close.

Deargán was supposed to be the side of this I stood for, the side I understood. The necessary one. The right one.

But Lorcan’s face kept cutting through that certainty. The knife in his hand. His arm around my waist. The way he’d moved to protect me without thinking. The way he just… saw my disguise from the very beginning.

The pull of it turned my stomach. Loyalty on one side. Something far more dangerous on the other.

The violins flared half a second before his voice reached me.

“What are you doing?”

I turned.

Fuck. Lorcan stood at the end of the corridor, glaring at us.

35

LORCAN

With Liath tucked against my side and the knife hidden back under my jacket, I felt steadier than I had all evening. The room was still wrong, still crawling under my skin, but with her close, my chest swelled with purpose.

Then she shattered the moment.

“You don’t get to play protector now, Lorcan.” She put a hand flat against my chest and pushed, hard enough to make a point. “Not after last night. Save it for someone stupid enough to believe you mean it.”

My grasp on her faltered as she turned and walked away.

Something felt like it cracked inside me.

But that strange feeling turned to suspicion when moments later, she slipped out of a servers’ entrance.

I pushed through the crowd after her.

A man stepped back, his shoulder bumping into me. He turned. “My apologies, I⁠—”

His face fell when he saw me.

The gold and red mask covered the top half of his face, but I knew the eyes through the slits. Finn’s eyes.

This was Finn Senior.