Home. The penthouse with its glass walls and warm floors and a bed I share with a man who I care very deeply for. Yes. I am ready.
He guides me through the main room of the pub, his hand on me the entire time. The crowd has thinned here too, but clusters of people remain at the bar and in booths, their voices a low hum.
We reach the entrance, and Ronan pushes the heavy front door wide for me. Cool night air rushes in, bracing and alive.
As I step through, I glance back over my shoulder. My eyes catch on a woman standing near the far wall beside the coat rack. Her clothing is plain. Long-sleeved, high-necked, the color of oatmeal. Her hair is pulled back beneath a simple cloth covering. Her hands are clasped in front of her the way we were taught to hold them during prayer.
Housemother Ruth?
She is still amid moving bodies, and she is watching me.
My lungs seize.
She holds my gaze for two heartbeats. Then she turns and melts into the crowd near the back hallway.
“Prudence?” Ronan’s hand presses firmer against my back. “You okay?”
She is gone. A man shrugging on his jacket now occupies the spot where she stood. The coat rack holds nothing unusual.
Did I imagine it?
I must have imagined it. My mind is overstimulated—new faces, new sounds, new everything. It constructed a familiar shape from the noise, the way a child sees monsters in coats hung on doors.
“I-I’m fine.” I turn back to Ronan and let him guide me into the night.
His arm wraps around my shoulders, and I press into his warmth. But an icy chill traces the length of my spine, and I cannot shake it loose.
Chapter 14
Ronan
“So let me get this straight.” Lorcan tips his chair onto its back legs—a habit that drove Ma insane when we were kids and still does. “You drove to a cult compound for a routine financial review, watched them drag a girl to a whipping post, and your solution was to marry her on the spot.”
“That’s the short version, yeah.”
“In a dirt yard.”
“Correct.”
“Officiated by a cult leader.”
“Also correct.”
He rocks forward, all four chair legs hitting the hardwood of Cillian’s office with a sharp crack. “And people call me the impulsive one.”
Declan, arms folded against the far wall, snorts. “He’s got you there.”
“Like you have a leg to stand on.” I spin my pen between my fingers. “Either of you,” I say to Cillian, before he can chime in.
Cillian was given his wife to settle a gambling debt. Declan proposed to his in a laundromat at three in the morning to keep her from testifying against him.
“You’re all throwing stones from very fragile glass houses.”
Lorcan grins. “Fair point. But mine’s going to be the best story. Just wait.”
“God help us,” Declan mutters.
Cillian has been quiet through the exchange, seated behind his desk, fingers laced together and resting on the surface. He does this—absorbs, calculates, waits until the noise burns itself out before he speaks. His eyes move from Lorcan to Declan to me.
