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“Put it down.”

“He told me you murdered her.”

“And you believed him?”

Ma’s boots stay planted, her shoulders squared, and her chin lifted toward his face. The gun in his hands doesn’t draw so much as a flinch from her, and I don’t understand why.

“Ma.” My throat is raw from the smoke. “C’mon, put it down.”

She doesn’t even glance at me.

“Sixteen years.” Rain runs off her jaw. “Sixteen years, and ya still walk into my yard with that Harrington face on ya.”

Lorcan’s jaw ticks. “Don’t talk about my mother.”

“I wasn’t.”

The way she says it lifts the hair on my arms.

“Lorcan.” She announces his name like it pains her. “There’re things about that night ya don’t⁠—”

“I said, don’t.”

His hands are shaking now. Sixteen years of not having answers shaking down the barrel at my mother.

Ma returns his stare, then whatever she was thinking closes over, and she’s my ma again, turning the rifle back on Keira.

“Harringtons aren’t welcome here. None of ya are.”

“Ma—”

“Your time with my boy ends tonight.”

Goosebumps race over my scalp as the rifle explodes.

“No, Ma!”

The bullet crosses the yard and Keira jerks, folding onto her knees.

I run at my mother as Lorcan fires. His bullet turns her upper body. Her finger clamps around the trigger, and the rifle fires again as Fionn’s arms lock around my middle and pull me to the ground as a third shot cracks through the rain.

We hit the concrete hard, and he rolls on top of me.

It takes me a second to register what’s happened. There’s bright red spreading through the soaked fabric of his shirt.

“Oh, my God⁠—”

I get out from under him, my hands tearing at the cotton to get to the wound.

“Jesus, Fionn. You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.” He winces, trying to sit up. “Went through the side.”

“Don’t move.”

“Sera.” He gets his hand under him and pushes up anyway, and the snarl he makes doing it is one I’ve never heard out of him. “Keira––”

Across the yard, Ma lies where she fell. Her rifle rests across her chest, the barrel angled toward us, but her fingers are loose around the stock and her open eyes are fixed on nothing.