Page 3 of Twisting Beauty

The resemblance hit hard enough to jar me for a second. The same plump mouth. The same general shape to her features. Enough of Rua to unsettle me. More than enough of someone else to hold me there.

Rua’s gray eyes had always looked washed out, glassy and half-lost even when she was staring straight at me.

These eyes were sharp, alert, and far too alive.

Her skin held a faint warmth under it, a soft rosiness through her cheeks that made her look like she spent time with her face turned to the sun.

Rua had always looked as if she belonged to ghosts and lived in shadows. This girl looked like she’d fight the dark on principle.

My gaze kept going, slow and deliberate, to the hand she still had flattened on my chest, then over the lines of her body pressed against mine.

She was all wrong for Rua and somehow even worse for me.

She was wearing Rua’s dreary black clothes, as if she were on her way to a Victorian funeral. But the material hugged this girl’s curves rather than hanging off her.

My fingers dug into her hip, the feeling of her flesh, softer than Rua’s, making something tighten in my lower belly.

My heart kicked hard against her palm. She must have felt it, and the thought made something hot and violent twist low in my gut.

My eyes snapped back to her face.

This is not Rua.

Shame burned off fast. Curiosity moved in after it, colder and meaner. If someone had put a stranger in Rua’s skin and sent her into my house, I wanted to know why.

I tightened my hold on her in case she decided to run.

“Who the fuck are you?”

2

LIATH

“Who the fuck are you?”

I faltered. My practiced response dissolved on my tongue, the whole careful architecture of my disguise collapsing for one raw second.

His eyes stayed fixed on my face and his grip around me tightened as if he already knew.

I pulled Rua back around me like armor and rolled my eyes. “Did you forget your own sister, Lorcan?”

His mouth stilled, hard and flat. His gaze narrowed with cold, immediate focus.

I didn’t see the blade until it was already at my throat.

The cold flat of it pressed into the hollow under my jaw.

My whole body locked, every muscle seizing at once in a helpless instinct.

“Lie to me again,” he said, “and I’ll open your vein.”

The edge pressed in. The sting was immediate and sharp and warmth began to track down my throat.

Oh my God. He cut me.

My breath went shallow. Every instinct screamed to push him away and every functioning part of my brain screamed back that I absolutely could not.

Deargán had stripped my mind back, manipulated me and lied to me. But he had never once put a blade to my skin. He never once hurt me.