Page 177 of Twisting Beauty

Up at the top of the stairs, a figure filled the doorway with his wide frame.

Deargán.

He’d returned.

And he had caught us.

49

LIATH

Oh God, we’re so fucked.

Deargán completely blocked our only exit at the top of the stairs, his cello pressing in on my skull, fracturing Rua’s soft music box scent-song.

The walls of the basement closed in by half a foot. The ground tilted under me.

Rua’s fingers tightened in the back of my sweater.

“You don’t understand what you’ve just done,” Deargán said, his voice biting out as he started down the stairs.

No. You don’t get to call this my mistake.

I stepped back, Rua moving with me as if she had become part of my spine.

Deargán’s eyes narrowed on her just beyond my shoulder. “Step aside, Liath.”

Rua let out a pained whimpered behind me and her fingers clutched me harder.

I snatched a scalpel from a side desk and brought it up between us, pointing it toward him. “Don’t you dare touch her.”

Fuck. My scalpel felt so tiny and useless against him.

He raised his hands open at his sides and kept coming, slower now, but he didn’t stop. “Put it down. I don’t want to hurt you.”

A stupid part of me knew that he wouldn’t hurt me. But he didn’t need to hurt me to win this.

“Fuck you,” I said, my voice rougher than I’d meant it. “You don’t want to hurt me but that’s all you do.”

For a moment, something raw flashed across his face. “Liath⁠—”

“You told me she was dead.” I stabbed the air with every point. “You let me mourn her. You fucking gaslit me when I heard her singing.”

A faint twitch near his mouth was the only sign my words had affected him.

“All this time,” I hissed, “you had her locked up like a fucking animal. You are the monster.”

At the word monster, he visibly flinched, his cello scent-song going jagged.

His hands lowered an inch, the calm bleeding out of his face. What replaced it was a cold rage.

He stepped off the bottom stair onto the basement floor, his voice cutting low. “Christ, you can’t help but think everyone can be saved.”

I stepped farther back into the basement, Rua moving with me.

“How long did it take until you forgot she’s Alistair’s daughter and were attempting to free her?”

The cell door. The thinness of her wrist. Her face that was my face. I had felt sympathy for her instantly.