26
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“I don’t understand,” I shot to Niamh in the quietest voice I could manage.
“Yet again, you’re to thank—” she smiled “—they found him on the tanker that you sent them to.”
“He… He was responsible for the desolation of Uisge?”
“One of the ones responsible, yes.” She let her smile melt off as Killian and Shea dragged the pixie through the room, halting in the center of it and letting him collapse to the ground in a pile of limbs.
Of all the stories Killian had entertained me with today, he had noticeably left that one out.
Killian and Shea both took steps back and away from the Rachainn, revealing his state for all to see.
In some ways, it looked like his body had been put through a shredding machine, only to be yanked out before it reached his chest and vital organs.
In other ways, he looked as if it was by some divine miracle his heart beat at all.
I narrowed my eyes at Killian, then Shea. Which one of them was capable of such brutality?
But Raegan rose from his seat and strode over towards the pixie, and only then did their prisoner start to writhe against the ground, making all sorts of incoherent groans and cries.
“I’ve been having a chat with our friend here,” Raegan said smoothly as he dropped into a crouch beside the Rachainn, even going so far as to push some of the choppy lengths of pink from the pixies face so we all could see the artwork that had been carved into his face.
“He’s told me some interesting things, haven’t you Eoghan? ”
The Rachainn — Eoghan — flinched at the sound of his name. It was getting harder to tell whether his lack of speech was voluntary, or if he genuinely could not speak anymore.
I wasn’t the only person who thought the whole thing was slightly morbid. Rory was noticeably pale from where he sat down the table, his eyes aimed at anything but the prisoner.
If the monarchs weren’t listening to Raegan before, they sure were now. They watched him with a predatory unease, or maybe it was more like the stare of prey, the uncertain blinking and refusing to look away from him out of fear of the repercussions.
“What is this?” King Ronan finally declared.
“This, Father, is the result of all of the kingdom's blissful ignorance towards the Rachainn. This is the son of the one they call King amongst the Rachainn. Isn’t that right, Eoghan?”
It seemed a pity to keep Eoghan alive. He continued to whine behind Raegan, his eyes blinking in and out of focus as his chest heaved air to his lungs.
“That is not possible,” Queen Tonn added, earning her a wrathful glare from Raegan.
“Possible and current, Queen Tonn. Why Eoghan, why don’t you tell them where your vermin friends are at this moment?”
Eoghan said nothing.
Raegan shook his head. “The full force of the Rachainn gather, in their entirety, on the outskirts of Cluaineach where they work to perfect their next attack.”
The Kings and Queens at the table burst out in low whispers, cast down the length of the table to advisors or guards or partners, whomever would listen.
But Raegan wasn’t done. He held a hand up to the room, silencing them all in the smallest of movements.
“It is now that we must act. We may never get a chance like this again. So I would invite any of those who care about the future of Saoghal to gather with me first thing, for the first of our war council.”
No one moved. No one spoke. I wasn’t sure if anyone was actually breathing.
“Come or don’t. But know that it will be Choilltean blood that spills upon Saoghal to defend you all.”
King Ronan looked prepared to argue that declaration, but chaos waved through the room before he could. Raegan hit something, some small moral flaw within the pixies — pride and honour. Because they were all outraged at the thought of only Choilltean riding to war against the Rachainn.
When I finally looked back at the Prince, he had his previous poisonous smirk across his face.
~
Dinner was had. Plates filled with steamed things and spiced things and smoked things spread across the table, soon the space so overcrowded and demanding that it was hard to hear over the chatter between the pixies, the brief bouts of laughter and the clanking of stone things against stone things.
The whole time I remained silent, my eyes incapable of being lifted from Eoghan in the center of the room.
I shouldn’t have felt pity for him, for all that he inflicted on Uisge and all of the lifeless faces I had to engrain into my memory, but I did.
I felt pity for him the same way one might feel pity for roadkill – this innate desire to see a life be ended in ways that were not horrible and gruesome but easy and pure.
So I didn’t look away from him. And somewhere amongst it all, he found my watching eyes and he held on to them, too.
He did not blink and I did not blink. Maybe he was delirious, or maybe the lone pixie simply did not want to die alone.
Of the many small mercies I had granted across the span of my life, perhaps that was the greatest that I offered.
Because as he took his last breath, while the people of Choilltean, Cluaineach, Uisge, and Speur dined, my eyes were with him.
And it was only when I saw his chest refuse to rise for the last time that I calmly stood up from the table and left the throne room.
I had only made it to the second floor, turning off of the spiral staircase, when a body appeared in the center of my path and I was forced to see two dark eyes glaring down at me.
“Do not speak to me right now,” I hissed as I tried to walk straight by Raegan, but a large hand wrapped around my elbow and yanked me back.
I snatched away from him as quickly as I could, making an effort to take several large steps away from him no matter how much my body cried out for me to find rest, instead.
“What’s happened to yo–”
“What happened to you!” I roared back, tears already lining my eyes. “I see now that I was a fool, that you played me for a fool the last few days. Because that…” I lifted a hand back towards the throne room. “That was the real you, wasn’t it?”
Raegan looked taken aback, his mouth slightly agape, his dark eyes becoming ever darker as he stared at me. When he went to open his mouth wider to begin a sentence, I shook my head.
“Don’t, Raegan. I don’t want to hear a single thing you have to say.”
This time when I tried to pass him, he let me. But I wouldn’t get off that easy — the Prince followed in my shadow.
“I do not understand what I have done to upset you.”
I scoffed, slamming to a stop and whirling on him so quickly I was sure he got a mouthful of my hair. “What you did to that pixie… it was barbaric. It was inhumane. It was disgusting, Your Highness. And above all, it was uncalled for.”
Raegan went to say something, but stopped himself at the last minute.
Instead, he recycled his words and tried something else.
“Uncalled for? Have you forgotten so easily what those monsters did to the people of Uisge? Have you let the women and children with mangled bodies and blackened eyes and mouths out of your mind so easily, Olivia?”
“N—”
“He should be thankful,” Raegan hissed, his mind momentarily slipping elsewhere as a new expression took to his face. “He should be thankful that he had been out of my midst when Killian brought you up. He should be thankful that he was nowhere near me when I saw you harmed.”
“This isn’t about me, Raegan! This is about what you did–”
He took a large step towards me, his body crowding mine and forcing my back up against the nearest vine-covered wall.
“I will do what I have to, to protect my people. And yes, it might not always be pretty, but forgive me for not giving a shit.”
My anger was flickering within me as I was stolen by his presence, by the mass of him pressed against me, by the darkening of his eyes as he tilted his head with a predatory curiosity. We were sharing the same air.
But I was logical and not so easily swayed by the Prince. Even though something in me was aching to step towards him, to let every part of me touch every part of him, I let out a low hiss and pivoted my way off of the wall.
“Exactly!” Bitter laughter tied its way around my tongue, loosening itself to our surroundings.
“Exactly, your people. That is what made it so easy for you with Eoghan, isn’t it?
That he had pink hair, no ears, and existed beyond the invisible line of Choilltean.
Forgive me for thinking that only makes you insular, that it could make you just as much of a monster as them. ”
“Then you are a fool, Olivia. Just as you claim. Because it is not that simple. And I couldn’t possibly expect you to understand.”
I scoffed again, half-cackle half-gasp following. “Right. Because I’m just a stupid little human. I’m not mad at you. Really, I’m not. I’m mad at myself. Disappointed in myself for seeing you as something that you’re not. You can’t help who you are.”
Raegan frowned, and I was sure I saw a tenderness to his eyes that was far too akin to sadness for me to acknowledge.
Lifting a finger, I poked his chest. “He might have been a monster. But then what would that make the one who let him slowly bleed to death in the midst of a conversation that planned the slaughter of his people?”
I wasn’t sure that my point even made sense, but I had said what I wanted to say. So I moved away from Raegan and slammed my bedroom door several feet away, leaving the Prince to linger in the hallway with an absent look on his face.