Page 174 of Twisting Beauty

I was looking at a mirror. I was looking at a ghost.

The dim basement shattered, my vision tunneling down to the pale, trembling girl behind the hatch.

She was too thin, her collarbones too prominent against the neckline of her cream dress, her skin almost translucent like it’d been too long since she’d seen the sun. Her eyes were hollow and oh too still.

How long had she been locked in here?

She tilted her head as she watched me through the hatch, her pale fingertips curled around the edge.

“Hello, sister.”

Oh my God. She spoke with my voice. With the same register, just… thinner.

My body went cold.

Rua glanced past my shoulder, scanning the basement. “So, where is the bastard?”

I fought to find my voice. “I… I…”

Her gaze snapped back to me and moved over my face. They stopped at my neck.

“Well,” she said, her eyes narrowing at me, “didn’t take much to convince you to work for him, did it?”

My fingers flew up to the hickey Lorcan had left on my throat. She thought Deargán had done it. Of course she did.

Except I couldn’t correct her. Couldn’t tell her that the man that’d marked me was the brother she was desperately in love with.

“R-Rua? I thought you were⁠—”

Dead. It was no excuse for what I’d done. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t locked her down here. I had taken her name. I had worn her clothes. I was still guilty.

Fuck, stupid, Liath. I had taken his word that Rua was dead. I had not questioned it. I had grieved for a sister I had never met. I had worn her life on his testimony alone.

She stared at my hair. Her gaze traveled down, over my body, over the dark jacket, over the black sweater and jeans I had on, her gaze pausing on the charm bracelet on my wrist. I’d almost forgotten I still wore it.

Her hair.

Her clothes.

Her bracelet.

“I bet you thought you were so clever when you stole my fucking life.”

Heat rushed up my cheeks, the impulse to explain already clawing up my throat.

I bit it back. There was nothing I could say. Nothing that would unmake months of me sleeping in her bed and answering to her name.

Rua clicked her tongue. “What a kick in the bollocks when you realized that Daddy was just as bad as Michael Byrne.”

I shook my head, my mind still trying to catch up. “Wait, so, you… you know about me?”

She scoffed. “Of course I know about you, Liath.”

Her gaze traveled around me as if she were looking past my skin, at something hovering at the edges of me. Then her eyes snapped back to my face, a scowl on her mouth. “Oh, I know all about you. He made me write your diary pages. Over and over until I got your handwriting right.”

A note in my head went flat.

She kept going. “I wake up and I can still feel him crawling around under my skin.”