Chapter fifteen
Red in the Devil’s Melody
Siobhán
ThetrapdoorgroansasCillian pushes it up from below, and the first thing I see is the soft spill of light from the garage—warm, golden, familiar. The second thing I see is Rouge leaning over the opening, grinning like this is all a grand joke.
“Took your sweet time,” he says, offering me his hand as if I haven’t just crawled through a century-old tunnel with blood drying on my neck. “Thought maybe the two of ye fell in and died.”
I roll my eyes, but my fingers still curl around his because my legs are shaking just enough for me to pretend it’s the ladder’s fault.
“We’re fine,” I say, climbing up into the old stable-turned-garage. It still smells like cedar shavings and engine grease, the same scent that’s always clung to Cillian since we were teenagers sneaking out after curfew.
Rouge dusts dirt off my shoulder, glancing between the two of us with raised brows. “Aye, well—good enough. You look like shite, both of yous. But alive, so that’s something.”
Cillian climbs up behind me, shutting the trapdoor with his boot. His jaw is clenched, his shirt torn, blood smeared across his forearm—but his eyes are sharp. Alert. Dangerous.
He steps closer, steadying me with a hand at the small of my back. “We need to move,” he tells Rouge. “Now.”
Rouge nods, already turning toward the house. “I’ll get the car ready.”
I take one last look at the trapdoor beneath our feet—the secret that saved us a thousand times before tonight—and exhale. The stable smells like home. But tonight, it isn’t safe.
Cillian’s hand slides into mine, warm and certain. “Come on,a stór,” he murmurs.
We cross the threshold into the house together. We slip through the back door into the stable house, and the second it shuts behind us, Cillian moves.
“Pack a bag,” he says—calm, low, but iron underneath. “Just the essentials. We’re not staying.”
His voice is controlled, but the tension around his eyes tells the truth: he’s calculating, worried, on the edge of snapping someone’s neck.
Rouge tosses the car keys from one hand to the other. “Engine’s warm. Ten minutes tops before they figure out we’re not on the grounds.”
“Five,” Cillian corrects without looking at him.
His gaze is locked on me. Gentle. Sharp. Claimed. I nod, because this is not a moment for questions. I know that tone. He only uses it when the wolf in him is pacing too close to the surface.
I rush to the bedroom—the same one I’ve been sleeping in since this whole circus began—yanking open drawers, grabbing what I can: leggings, sweaters, two performance dresses, toiletries, hair ties, sheet music, chargers. My hands shake only once. Only when I remember the gunshots, the blood, the way he dragged me through the tunnel like losing me wasn’t an option he’d ever allow.
Cillian appears in the doorway just as I zip the bag. He doesn’t speak at first—just looks me over, checking for new injuries, for pain I’m hiding, for any reason to turn back and kill someone.
“You good?” he murmurs.
“I will be.”
He takes the bag from me, brushing his knuckles down my arm in a way that wouldn’t look like anything to anyone else. But to me? It feels like the closest thing to saying he almost lost his mind down there.
“Stay close,” he says, voice softening just an inch. “I’m not letting anything else near you tonight.”
Rouge pokes his head in from the hall. “Lovebirds, clock’s tickin’. Let’s go.”
Cillian shoots him a look that could peel paint. Rouge smirks and disappears. Cillian places his hand on my back again, guiding me out of the room, through the narrow hall, toward the side door that leads to the waiting SUV. I don’t look back. He ushers me out the side door and into the night, one hand still firm at my back. The SUV is already running, engine low and ready, Rouge in the driver’s seat with a smug little grin like he’s been waiting his whole life to yellgo, go, go.
The doors slam. Seatbelts click. And then we’re moving.
Rouge swings the wheel hard, taking the narrow dirt road behind the old paddock—so overgrown and forgotten that not even Darragh’s men bother to guard it. Branches scrape along the windows like fingernails, the path twisting into the trees before spilling us out onto a private lane that only three people in this world know exists.
The further we get from the estate, the easier it is to breathe. Not easy—justeasier.The kind of breathing you do when you’ve survived something and haven’t yet processed the fact that you actually lived.
