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LORCAN

The Magdalene grounds blurred past me as my boots slammed into the wet grass. Up ahead, the carriage house was a black shape through the trunks, acrid smoke pouring out of it into the gray sky, pulling sideways in the wind.

Sirens rang out in the distance.

I ran harder. Underneath my panic, something inside me had started to come apart.

Oh God, I’m too late.

A small running figure broke through the trees ahead.

A girl.

I aimed for her, legs hammering.

Please be her. Please be her. Please be her.

I closed the distance in seconds and my hand was already coming up to grab her shoulder, to stop her, to see her face⁠—

Not Liath.

Rua was alive. But I didn’t have time to process that now.

Something broke open across her tear-streaked face, raw and naked and aimed at me.

“Lorcan,” she breathed.

“Where’s Liath?”

Then I was already looking past her, toward the trees she’d come out of, toward the burning shape of the carriage house beyond them.

Her face changed in my peripheral.

I didn’t have time to stop. I pushed past her shoulder and ran.

The clearing opened up around the carriage house like a wound, the air thick with heat and smoke.

Fuck. The whole building was burning, flames coming up through holes in the roof.

What had Alistair done?

A crash came from somewhere inside. Something massive going down.

She’s in there.

My knees almost gave out. Something cracked through my chest. A pressure I had never felt before, splitting under my sternum.

I lost her.

And it’s my fault.

The pain ripping me apart was nothing like I’d ever felt before. Pain like my soul was being cleaved in two.

A figure broke through the smoke up ahead. Someone running.

Liath?

Hope felt like it punched a hole out of my chest and I stumbled forward, sprinting toward them.