37
____________________
Killian dropped me off in the guest-chambers.
I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone.
I wanted to ask him to stay. I didn’t want to ask him to stay.
By the time I sorted through my own emotions and tight chest, Killian was gone.
Fate had made the decision for me, apparently, so I grumbled to myself, shut my door, and wandered over towards the bed.
I let the back of my knees hit the edge of it, dragging my back down and onto the sheets where I stared up at the ceiling.
It was strange. So much had happened, so much darkness and terror, yet I still felt more alive than I had in years.
It was this place. I had known that the entirety of my stay, but it truly engrained itself into me then.
Whether it was the magic in the air, the pixies themselves, or the concept of Saoghal, I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that it had crawled beneath my skin and was now a part of me, whether I liked it or not.
At that thought, I groaned and twisted onto my side, pulling my knees up and against me where I hugged them with all of my might.
It was in that strange fetal position that I noticed the spreading warmth across my body, almost as if Saoghal itself was with me, that I wasn’t alone even when no other body occupied the same space as me.
With a smile creeping over my face, my eyes started to flutter shut, and I let sleep drag me down.
~
A second, a minute, an hour, a day later — who knew — a knock tapped against the door to my room.
I was sprawled out on my front, none of my limbs in a position that was comfortable but spread across the bed like some mangled creature.
I awoke to a pool of drool at the corner of my mouth and a new sort of heaviness in my head.
Groaning, I pulled myself together and rotated onto my back, content to stare at the ceiling.
The knocks came again, assuring me that it had not been a dream and someone was actually wanting access.
“Come in.”
I remained on my back, staring at nothing, as that person moved into the room and shut the door behind them.
Somehow, I knew who it was long before he spoke.
“You are alive, are you not?”
I pulled my chin to my chest just to glare at Raegan, who for once wasn’t dressed in jewels and chains and rings but wore nothing but a plain dark shirt and dark pants. For the first time since knowing him, he had his hair pulled back into a mockery of Killian’s infamous bun. His ears were on show.
With a tiny smirk on his face, he took a few more steps into the room and looked around it, taking a quick note of everything that was in there. Which was nothing, in reality, only what had been there when he had granted me the room weeks ago.
“I had wanted to talk to you, before…”
I nodded, pushing up onto my palms where I watched him cautiously.
“What you did yesterday, Olivia… Thank you.”
“You’re thanking me?” I was glad I had sat up, because I nearly choked. “What for?”
“Not many would have done what you did. I understand now why Urram wanted you there. In a way, I think you saved us from ourselves.”
There was nothing to say to that, so I just frowned at Raegan.
There was something brittle to his voice, to his face, as he looked at me. “My mother was a wonderful female.”
If Raegan was going to use pity to wrangle me into a conversation, then he was going to win. Because I did feel sorrow for him, and an ounce of pain in my own heart as I saw him shift uncomfortably within his own body.
“You remember her?”
A small smile shone through on his face. And although we were back in Choilltean, he had never looked so radiant. It was like Cluaineach was an everlasting flame beneath his skin, capable of coming to his aide when he felt true darkness.
“I do. I’ve never met someone so… whimsical. So full of joy. And she was so pure, you know?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.
“She was so good and I just cannot help but wonder… I cannot help but wonder what she would of thought of all of this. What she would have thought of me.”
It felt like the type of situation where I should have gone to him. Held his hand. Helped him restore strength. But I didn’t. I just stared, unsure of where he was going with this if not just for needing to say it.
“What you did yesterday, my mother would have done. What you said yesterday… She said something similar to me, once.”
My brows quirked to show him I could hardly remember what I said yesterday in a fit of adrenaline.
“‘Mercy is not a weakness but a strength’.”
Ah.
“And it just reminded me… Reminded me of the type of king that I have always wanted to be.”
The war between duty and heart. He had toyed with that, not so long ago.
In reality, Raegan had toyed with that his entire life, it was etched in the very lines between his brows if one only looked hard enough.
I had trouble imagining that anyone ever had, though.
Which was why he was standing there, talking to me of all people.
“I think I know what she would want me to do.”
“Is it what you want to do?”
His eyes softened as he looked at me at last, as the truth bore into my flesh under the intensity of those eyes. Those eyes that were light once more, even though Choilltean clouded the sun from his reach.
“I want to. I really do. But, if I can be honest with you, I’m terrified.”
Another instance where it looked as if he was a stranger in his own skin. Another instance where I should have gone to him and touched that very skin, just to remind him that he was in it. But I didn’t.
“Then it’s probably the right choice.”
The smile that his lips stretched into wasn’t a true smile, only the ghost of the real thing.
“Will you be there tomorrow, during the rites?”
“Do you want me to be there?”
I didn’t realize it was such a heavy question until Raegan’s face shifted into the one more familiar to me, to the hard lines and set jaw.
“Do you want me to want you to be there?”
I recognized his smirk almost immediately. “We could do this all day, Raegan. But I’m tired, so let me just say I’ll be there.”
“Then let me say I do want you to be there.”
Somehow, that truth felt more damning than any of the others that he had spoken to me. So I nodded, a quiet dismissal of him from my room that he understood and departed from.
The conversation had been so strange, at such an odd hour, that I was almost convinced that it was a dream.
Or, like me, Raegan didn’t know whether or not he wanted to be alone.
And perhaps, on this night out of many others, the simple warmth of Saoghal had not been strong enough to ease him.
So I told myself that the reason he sought me out, of everyone, was because I was just a human who wouldn’t remember any of this in a week's time.
That was what I told myself, anyway. It was easier that way.