44
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A combination of every emotion was what led me to awaking in Killian’s bed, our clothes tossed around the room and a banging headache behind my eyes.
Killian’s arms were wrapped tightly around me, making it more difficult than ever to maneuver my way out of them.
He let out a quiet groan as my body heat left him, leaving me holding my breath at the side of the bed as I waited to see if he would rock back to sleep.
He did, so I let my lungs drain and expand once more as I crept across the room.
Unable to find anything in the dark, I swiped at a shirt that I was certain was about six sizes too big for me, but shrugged and slipped my body into it anyway.
I wasn’t sure where I was going, why I was going there, but I just needed to breathe. I wanted to be alone with Saoghal, one last time, before it was gone altogether.
I tip-toed out of his room, shuffled my way down a hallway, and found a balcony door before me where the moonlight tried to spill into the castle.
Casting a gaze over my shoulder to make sure no one was following me, I pulled at those doors and let the chilly midnight breeze skip over my skin as I shut them behind me.
The balcony wasn’t large. It had a few chairs off in the corner, and a gorgeously carved railing made out of branches and wood that I moved towards, setting my hands against the top of it and looking out across Saoghal.
I was just about to say my goodbye to the world that healed me, until my body tensed.
There was another body on that balcony.
I knew it long before I saw him. Just like every time he was in my vicinity, I could feel him.
I’d know he was there even if I was blind and deaf, even if my touch on everything else had been completely lost. Sometimes, it felt like we were magnets.
Sometimes it was strong enough to draw me towards him, other times it was if we had been flipped and we were being forced away.
All I knew was that it was powerful and burned into me like the sun, and for the first time I simply closed my eyes and let it devour me.
“Late night?”
I was glad my back was to him, because I would never in a thousand lifetimes want him to see the smile that crept over my face.
“You could say that.”
The air shifted as he rose to his feet, as he took quiet steps towards me. “I don’t need to, I could hear that.”
And I was even more glad that he couldn’t see my face as heat flooded my cheeks. “W–”
“I jest,” he purred. That noise would never fail to churn something deep inside me. It was a noise capable of making me feel primal.
“What version of Olivia returns to your world?” Raegan finally halted at my side, placing two hands on the branch railing.
His physical presence made me open my eyes, but not to look at him, not yet. “What do you mean?”
“The one lost to darkness, or the one who found the light?”
I pondered that for a moment, my eyes still cast out across Choilltean.
“I don’t know,” I sighed, relieved to be rid of the weight.
“I think you do—” He smiled, also looking across the world. “Cluaineach lives within you now, as it always has for me. Perhaps that is why the last few weeks have been bearable, because you brought a piece of it to my court. For that, I am thankful.”
Swallowing, I finally looked at him. In such a short time, I had met a dozen variations of Raegan.
The Raegan that was a friend, that laughed like a child and partook in hail-racing, who roared out with his arms to either side of him atop a pegasus.
The Raegan who was a prince, who had assessed me head to toe on my first day here, who had sent a shudder over my skin.
There was the Raegan that was a king, who had an impossibly high chin and stern scowl over his face, turning that shudder into a true shiver of fear.
Then there was the Raegan that I couldn’t quite place, the one who leant against his dragon and let the weight of the world roll off of him, the one who tipped his head to the sun and let a rare smile crawl over his face as golden wings snapped free from his flesh.
But this Raegan... Somehow, he was all of them, yet none of them.
“What about you, Your Majesty?” I mocked a bow for him. “Did your duty finally align with your heart?”
He looked down at me, his eyes soft but his jaw stern. “Almost.”
Content to leave it at that, I tried to turn my focus away.
But a calloused thumb and a calloused finger pinched at my chin, drawing my face back towards his.
Slowly — agonizingly quietly — he brought his lips down and to mine.
Just a brush of them, hardly connecting at all, yet everything in me crashed down.
Like I had been impaled on a blade, all of my air was stolen from my lungs. And my chest tightened yet loosened, leaving me numb and shaking as he finished sweeping his mouth over mine.
With his breath lingering on my lips, he muttered, “Almost.”
Drawing away from him, my eyes wide and unblinking, he offered me the truest version of himself behind his eyes.
Just as quickly as he had shifted into that real version of himself, he shifted back. Shaking his head as if to rid himself of a bee, he took a breath and finally looked away from me.
As one, we looked out. Beyond Choilltean, following the trail of fireflies as they scattered across the blue of Uisge. But there, just against the fading horizon, was Cluaineach. It warmed me in ways I knew I would never feel again.
I dared a sidelong glance at Raegan and finally confirmed my deepest suspicion. The sun was bright and it was warm and it was life and joy, but he was somehow even more. I looked at Raegan and wondered if, at his side, I would ever need to search for light again.
When Raegan’s hand found mine atop the railing, I closed my eyes and wished, for the last time, that this didn’t have to end.
But it did.