I don’t rush it. I don’t look away.
His gurgle turns wet. Desperate. Ugly. His body jerks once, twice—then slackens as the string bites through what’s left holding him upright. Blood runs hot over my knuckles. I pull. Hard. Final.
Padraig Keane collapses at my feet, the violin string snapping free and recoiling like a severed promise. His body hits the chapel floor with a dull, unceremonious thud—no heroics, no witnesses worth impressing.
Just stone. Just blood. Just the end.
The chapel goes silent again. I stand there, chest rising and falling, fingers still curled around the string that once made music and now makes history. Finn doesn’t speak. Neither does my father. And somewhere deep in the bones of Belfast, something old and rotten finally stops breathing.
The silence afterward is heavier than the violence. It presses into my ears, my ribs, the hollow behind my eyes where grief used to scream. The chapel breathes around us—stone damp with blood, candles guttering low, saints cracked and watching like they always have.
Useless. Witnesses only.
I loosen my fingers at last. The broken E string slips from my grasp and coils on the floor beside Padraig Keane, red and gleaming, like it’s proud of itself.
I should feel lighter.I don’t.
This doesn’t bring Ciaran back. It doesn’t give me seventeen again. It doesn’t unteach the way love learned to sound like gunfire in my bones. But itdoessomething else.
Finn’s hand finds the small of my back. Not possessive. Not protective. Present. Steady. The kind of touch that saysI see you standing in it and I am not afraid of you.
Behind us, my father exhales. It’s a small sound. Broken. Human. I don’t turn around. That man does not get my face tonight.
Instead, I lift my violin again. The body is stained now, varnish darkened where blood kissed the wood. I should mourn it. I don’t. Instruments are meant to be played. So are girls like me. I raise the bow. The first note shivers through the chapel—low, raw, unpolished. Not a lament. Not a prayer. A reckoning. The sound of Belfast streets at dawn. Of doors locking. Of power shifting quietly when no one is looking.
This is not the song I played for a boy I loved. This is the one I play for the woman I survived into. The melody coils upward, sharp and aching, threading itself through stone and smoke and memory. It does not ask forgiveness. It does not beg absolution.
It claims.
Finn watches me like I am a cathedral rebuilt from ash. Like he understands that this is not grief anymore—it is inheritance. And he stands at my side not as my keeper, not as my shadow, but as my equal.
When the final note fades, it does not echo. It settles. I lower the violin. Padraig Keane lies cooling at my feet. My father stands somewhere behind me, alive and ruined and waiting.
And I—I stand in the chapel where it all broke, breathing, unbroken, bloodied but upright. This didn’t fix what they took from me. But it marked the beginning of what I will take back.
Chapter sixteen
The Crown Made of Teeth
Finnian
Idon’tspeakasweclimb the stairs. Neither does she. The estate is quiet in the way only old houses get after blood has been spilled elsewhere—like the walls know better than to ask questions. My men line the corridors, faces forward, eyes averted. No one looks at her. Not out of fear.
Out of respect.
Róisín is streaked with it—rust-dark smears on her hands, her wrist, the hem of her dress. Not wounded. Not shaken. Just marked. Like the city itself reached out and claimed her back. I keep my hand at her lower back as we walk. Not guiding. Not owning. Just there. She doesn’t lean away.
The doors to our suite open without ceremony. Warmth spills out—steam curling faintly into the hall, carrying the scent of oils and clean water and something softer beneath it. The bath has been drawn already. Deep. Waiting. For her.
I feel it then, low and sharp in my chest—the aftershock. Not the violence. The silence after. The way wars don’t end with gunfire but with the quiet decision ofwhat comes next. The door closes behind us. I finally look at her. Really look.
There is dried blood along her throat, caught in the hollow above her collarbone. A smear at her knuckles. Her hair has come loose from its pins, dark strands falling around her face like she’s been pulled out of a painting—saint and sinner all at once.
She meets my gaze without flinching.
“You alright?” I ask.
It’s a stupid question. I know that. She knows that. Still—she nods.
