Page 156 of Twisting Beauty

I had spent months working for him. I had taken his orders and worn my sister’s face into the home of the family he had tried to wipe off the earth, believing his rage was the rage of a wronged man. Believing I was helping him serve an old debt.

What if I had been helping him finish what he had started twenty years ago?

I held on to one last thread.

Magdalene was rotten. That much was true.

And he had protected me in the asylum. He sat with me through nights I could not have lived through alone.

Before I judged him, I needed to confront Deargán. I needed to make him tell me the truth, even if it destroyed me.

I didn’t have much time until Lorcan figured out I was gone.

When Lorcan found me missing from the manor, he would come fast and he would come furious. I had to get to Deargán first.

I climbed the overgrown ivy on the east wall, exactly where Nuala had said it would be, and dropped down onto the asylum grounds.

I kept to the line of the trees as I crept past the main building, my body running off wired exhaustion. Every crack of a twig became an orderly ready to spring out and grab me. Every lit window was an eye. Every shadow was an arm waiting to come down on my shoulder. If they caught me here, I’d be back inside before morning. Stripped. Sedated. Filed away. Forgotten.

Finally, the carriage house came up out of the trees ahead of me, its old slate roof black against the gray sky. One light was on at the side window, smoke drifting out from the chimney.

I slowed.

A woman’s voice was singing, somewhere on the wind, soft and sweet.

The lullaby sounded… familiar. Not just familiar from the night in the tunnels. But I couldn’t figure out from where.

It had to be synesthesia. A trick of my mind. A hallucination born from returning to this place.

Or a ghost.

My gaze fell on the broken stub of the carriage house tower lying on the ground beside the building. One upper window in what was left of the front face sat darker than the rest.

I tore my eyes away and the lullaby trailed off into nothing. If it was ever there at all.

I stopped at the door with my fist raised.

If I knocked, I couldn’t pretend I’d never been here. Whatever happened on the other side of this door, I’d walked to it on my own.

I banged my fist on the wood.

A moment later, the door opened.

Deargán stood in the gap, his shirtsleeves pushed to his elbows, his hair pushed back like he’d run his hands through it more than once tonight. The cello started up, slow across thick strings, vibrating through my ribs.

“Liath.” He didn’t look surprised to see me.

“Why did you put a camera in my bedroom?” I shoved past him and stepped into his living room.

It looked just like it had all those months ago for the brief moment that this place had been safe. On the side table next to an empty glass, stained amber, sat an ashtray with three cigarettes ground down in it. The smell of clove and pepper rolled off him, fresh smoke underneath.

I spun to face him as he closed the door.

He held my eyes for a moment, then he turned to the counter where the kettle was. “Tea?”

He turned on the kettle, set out two cups, and began to measure out tea leaves.

A slow, ugly cold went through me at the sight of his hands moving in ritual. I flinched as my vision flickered for a second, time dragging sideways, the ghost of that sinking pull in my limbs and a vibration of need going through my body.