Page 180 of Twisting Beauty

My cover. My mission. The months I’d spent burying Liath so I could infiltrate his world as Rua. All of it. Gone.

Dervla. Bridgit. The girls in the ward.

I’d failed. I’d never free them. I’d die alongside them.

Grief slammed up under my ribs hard enough to fold me forward an inch. My fingers went numb around the scalpel and the breath I had been holding broke loose.

Behind me, glass shattered against the floor. Rua’s beaker.

Alistair smirked as he locked eyes with Deargán. “Hello, old friend. Lorcan told me I’d find you here. Didn’t expect to find so much more.”

Lorcan told him. No. He wouldn’t have.

He could have. Lorcan followed me here. Lorcan knew about this place.

He betrayed me.

The thought hit like a blade sliding between my ribs and pain tore up through my chest with a sharpness that robbed me of air. My legs threatened to go out from under me and something in my chest started to come apart.

I clamped it shut. Not now. Not in front of him. Keep your head together long enough to survive.

Alistair tsked, shaking his head at Deargán. “Twenty years of losing to me and you’ve still not learned.”

A cry ripped out of Deargán as he snatched a bottle off the shelf, smashing the end of it against the side.

“Deargán, no!” It tore out of me as he charged the stairs.

Alistair pivoted the gun. To me.

Deargán froze mid-stride, the broken bottle still raised.

Alistair glanced between Deargán and me, his smile widening further.

“Toss it aside,” he said to Deargán, stabbing the air at me with his gun, “or I put a hole in her.”

Deargán scowled but he tossed the jagged bottle aside, smashing it against the wall.

“Now back up,” Alistair said to Deargán, the gun still trained on me.

Deargán’s cheek pulsed with suppressed anger as he slowly moved backward, deeper into the basement.

Alistair’s eyes went to Rua. Then back to me. Then between us again, his head tilting.

“Twins,” he said, then quietly added, almost to himself, “What a clever girl.”

He came down the stairs, his eyes on Rua. “What are you doing here, pet?”

“He locked me up.” She pointed at Deargán, her hand shaking, the words coming out of her in a single breath. “He tried to get me to turn on you. But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”

“I see,” Alistair said as he walked toward Powell’s surveillance wall. He scanned the photos, his gun still trained on me, then he reached out with his free hand and picked up the empty vial from the desk.

“Goodness.” He held it up to the light, turning it slowly in his fingers. “You managed to get this from under my nose.”

The respect in his voice made my stomach turn.

He started walking toward me. “Drop it, please.”

The scalpel was still in my hand, my fingers locked around the handle, knuckles white, the small useless blade pointed at the floor now because my arm had given up the height somewhere in the last minute.