6
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Raegan.
I was looking at Raegan.
Even though I had seen him every hour of every day for the entirety of my time away from him – it still punched all of the air from my body as our eyes met. I felt the need to gasp, to desperately refill my lungs as the King of Choilltean and Cluaineach – Talamh – stared at me.
He looked so familiar yet so unfamiliar.
His hair, now flourishing as a radiant golden hue with dark brown peppered throughout, was brushed through, half of it tied up messily on his head.
Which meant that his ears, still mutilated and destroyed beyond belief, were on show for all to see.
What was left of his ears was adorned with all sorts of jewels, just like when I had first met him.
Golds and silvers, both man-made treasures and that of the earth, hung from his ears, his neck, his arms.
Around his body he did not wear the familiar clothes of Choilltean – those leaf-like, cotton-textured clothes that I had worn for a month.
He did not wear the familiar clothes of Cluaineach – that thin, near-translucent material that was tough and supportive yet felt as light as wearing nothing.
Instead, Raegan wore what I could only describe as what a king of pixies would wear.
A tight black shirt tucked into loose fitting trousers, completed with a regal surcoat of leather that stretched beyond his waist. It was tight in every place it should be, loose everywhere else.
It revealed his broad, impossibly muscular shoulders, his testing biceps, and the sharp cut of his body.
But his eyes. They took to that fox-like shape that I had become far too familiar with.
Far from the soft, glimmering eyes that I had last looked into atop a balcony in the castle of Choilltean.
No, this Raegan had the eyes of the Prince I had met at the beginning of it all, the wickedness across his face just as it had been the day he killed Diarmuid and took both thrones.
It stole another gasp from me, for a whole different reason.
Raegan was as beautiful as he had ever been; as regal, poised, and radiant. Yet he was also as threatening as he had ever been; as sharp, dangerous, and enticing. It made me shudder.
His head craned ever so slightly as he blinked at me.
There was no shock across his features, nor was there any sign of disappointment.
Which, considering the last time I was here I had promised to never seek Saoghal – or him – out again, made me tilt my own head, freeing some of my hair across my shoulder.
Small, perfectly calm and calculated steps brought him towards me. I couldn’t move – I was stuck in place, petrified by both his excellence and his darkness.
There was an odd smirk on his face as he stopped in front of me, forcing me to tilt my chin slightly to make up for his towering height.
His hand reached up towards my face, his finger wrapping around one of those strands of hair, just as he had the first day he met me. Tilting his own head, that malicious look seemed to disappear, if only for a minute, as he sighed.
“Your hair looks like moonlight. No longer the reflection of the sun of Cluaineach as it had been in the hour of our meeting. No, like moonlight. Even starlight, it seems.”
He hummed to himself, his eyes flicking over my face. But he still wasn’t surprised to see me, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then his hand released my hair, he let out a deep sigh, and he continued his walk straight past me.
I stuttered out my words faster than I could think of them, if only to keep him, his body, his warmth, in front of me for a moment longer. “My hair hasn’t changed.”
Raegan stilled. His whole body bristled, a movement that caused the air around us to shift and vibrate. I couldn’t help but to all of a sudden match his strange stance, his ramrod straight back and his widened eyes.
He moved towards me, his hand stretched out towards my face. I was relieved, until that hand gripped my throat and lifted me up off of the floor.
Gurgling, I tried with all my might to claw at the hand tightening and tightening around my neck, until I was left choking on my own spit. He watched me writhe, his eyes growing wider with every second as a whole new emotion set over his face.
Still choking me, he tipped his head to the sky above and roared, “Even in my most wretched of hours, I have not heard her voice.”
The air around us continued to buzz as I kicked out, my hands desperately scraping at the lengths of his forearm. But he didn’t care. He only continued to glare at the sky, as if he planned on setting fire to it himself.
“What is this? Why do you mock me so, Cernunnos? Why further darken my most blackened of hearts?”
He’s gone crazy.
I could see it, now. What Rory had warned me of, what I had wanted to believe so wholly was not true. The paranoia was rife across his features, his eyes continuing to stretch, his face twisting into fear. My vision was beginning to blur.
“Perhaps not Cernunnos,” he dropped his glare from the sky, holding fast with his grip around my neck, and began to scan the meadows around.
“Perhaps a sly plotting of my enemies. Why must I be mocked with that which was my one reprieve?” At that, his voice cracked and his eyes stopped searching our surroundings.
Instead, he let them fall on me, his gaze meeting mine as I tried to fight for air. “Soil my soul with anything but her.”
There was no ability for me to speak. Instead, I used one of my flailing arms to reach up to the necklace around my neck, to the flimsy silver chain that I had attached a thoroughly dried-up aotrom to. Grabbing on to it, I pulled it free of my shirt and tried to direct his attention to it.
Frowning, he released me and let me settle back over my feet. His eyes blinked at that aotrom, over and over, until he finally looked back at me.
“It is truly you?”
I rubbed at my neck, my breathing hoarse and choppy as my lungs desperately dragged air into them. Instead of being able to answer him, I simply nodded and continued to work at my neck with both hands.
His face relaxed. Which allowed me to relax.
Again, another thing I shouldn’t have done.
Because while Raegan appeared like he had given up on choking me to death, he instead placed his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. What nerve he managed to pinch, I would never know – because I simply blacked-out.