Page 183 of Twisting Beauty

Deargán was across the cell in two strides. He hit the hatch frame with both hands.

“This isn’t the end, Lasair,” he vowed. “I’ll come for you. You’ll wake up one night with your throat cut. Just like your father.”

“No.” Alistair was pouring clear liquid from a glass bottle across the desk, across the papers, across the photos of Powell on the wall. “I don’t think so.”

The smell of it reached me a few moments later. The sharpness of alcohol that made a small shrill scream start up in my head.

I moved to the hatch, pressing my face close to Deargán’s at the opening, the heat off his skin burning into me. His cello scent-song, so familiar, settled into the space between heartbeats.

On the hatch frame, his little finger shifted, brushing mine.

I hesitated for a second before I answered with a press of my own.

Alistair finished pouring and dropped the bottle to the floor with a smash. He turned on the Bunsen burner, then touched the flame to the desk.

The fire took, racing across the table and leaping to the floor where the alcohol had pooled. The basement filled with orange and heat in the space of a breath.

Through the flames, Alistair walked up the stairs, our only exit that he’d now cut us off from.

“Farewell, my pets.”

Through the hatch, the air was already shimmering with heat. Smoke was beginning to gather along the ceiling, drifting toward us.

Behind me, Rua had started to make a small thin whine like a child.

The acrid smell of smoke reached me, a sharp hissing sound coming from somewhere behind my eyes, splitting through the cello notes.

I stepped back from the hatch as Deargán slid it shut with a slam.

But it would not hold off the fire.

Smoke was already starting to curl in from under the door. The smoke would kill us before the fire could get to us.

We were all going to die.

51

LIATH

Thin gray threads of smoke came under the door, the heat pressing through the walls of the cell. Behind me Rua was breathing too fast, gasping in short, jagged bursts.

I turned to Deargán and we locked eyes. What the fuck are we going to do?

Tunnels. Deargán built this place. Deargán who concealed everything, who had a key for every door. He had to have built himself an out.

“Is there another way out of here?” I rasped.

He let out a huff. “No. I was meticulous in securing it.”

The smoke was getting thicker. Rua coughed, her gasping turning into hacking, and a second later my own throat caught on it, too, making me cough, the air hurting my lungs.

Fuck, we had to stop the smoke.

I ran into the small cell bathroom, yanked towels off the rack, shoved them under the tap, and twisted it on full, soaking them. Then I was back at the cell door, pressing the wet bundle against the gap at the bottom of the metal.

It might hold back the smoke for now, but it wouldn’t stop the fire from coming. The heat was already coming in, the wall warming up.

My phone.