8
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My whole body was rattling with fear.
Killian, who walked alongside me with one hand around my elbow, was continuously trying to get me to look at him.
Whether he was trying to gauge my reaction to the whole thing, or he was still trying to figure out why I was in the dungeons, I didn’t know.
All that I did know was that I couldn’t remove my gaze from the back of Raegan’s head, where he led our small group through the sweeping hallways of the Cluaineach castle.
It had been so long since I stepped foot in the castle, but I remembered every inch of the hallways as if I had spent my entire life within its halls.
The fireflies that spread over Saoghal were as present and persistent as ever, buzzing from left to right with every small step that we took through the solidified building.
For once, I didn’t want to swat them away.
Killian was a constant at my side. Even when he kept pinching my arm to get my attention, even when I refused to offer him that attention, instead keeping my focus on Raegan with a small tear forming in the corner of my eye.
Killian was, as he had always been, a strange form of grounding for me.
I wished I could turn into him, wrap my arms around his neck and let a whole current of tears from my eyes.
But I kept my chin high, my shoulders square, and prepared myself for the questioning Raegan had for me.
He led us into the throne room.
The throne room, which was the last room I saw in this castle while peace still possessed Saoghal. The very room that Raegan had fooled us all, where he had killed his grandfather and claimed his own bloodline. Where Raegan had claimed both thrones for himself.
In a way, this room was the beginning of the end for the pixies. So I wasn’t surprised that I shuddered as I stepped through the doorway.
Raegan offered a hissed threat at every pixie that had been within the space, some with wings out and on show, others with only the identifying straight-pointed ears of the Cluaineach pixies.
All of them, though, ducked their heads and scattered out of the room without so much as looking at their king.
Then it was just me, Raegan, and Killian. The doors crafted of wood and clay slammed behind us, leaving the three of us in that eerily silent room, a space for grand events and royalty, not for whatever was about to happen.
It was just as I remembered it. Awkwardly empty with very little decoration throughout, other than the tall glass-paned windows that let the sun of Cluaineach bleed across every surface of every room.
Then there were the sconces along the walls, in the few areas that stone stretched floor to ceiling instead of windows.
And the throne.
A crafting of brambles, sticks and stones, and various mud-like substances that over time had created a seat of magnificence. Even though there was no metal, no jewels, the chair still seemed to gleam in a way – as if it knew its purpose was of utmost importance.
The last time we had been here, Raegan had eyed that throne twice before sitting in it.
This time, he simply strode over and dropped himself down, refusing to look me in the eye as he did.
Instead, he kept his focus just slightly over my shoulder, where Killian was holding the most unnatural of straightened spines.
Raegan released a deep sigh, and even though we were half-a-room across from one another, I felt it skitter over my flesh and send a wave of relaxation throughout my trembling body.
“I did not mean for you to remain in the dungeon for a day, but I was called away on other matters,” he began, looking down at his many stone-rings on his fingers. I was listening, but struggling to keep my mouth shut at his revelation of the time I had spent down there.
A day?
Rory would be waiting for me, soon.
Trying my best not to let the urgency show on my face, I merely stared at Raegan.
“I still have my doubts as to your identity.”
“Raegan, that’s ridiculous. It’s obviously her–”
Killian was silenced with a mere lift of Raegan’s hand.
There was something… between them. Nothing tangible, just a shift in the air as their eyes met. That, along with the rigid posture that Killian had suddenly taken to. Add in his constantly clenching jaw, and it was hard to miss that something had transpired between the two of them.
I tried not to look at Killian. I knew I would break if I did. Truthfully, when I offered my services to Rory, I had forgotten that I would need to lie to him too.
“How can you assure me you are who you say you are?” Raegan finally lifted his eyes to me.
His eyes, but not his eyes, because they did not seem to fit his face at all.
They had gone so far past that fox-like stare he had always been capable of harnessing.
This was something else, something dark and stern if only to hide the true emotion behind them.
Straightening my spine until I was nearly as rigid as Killian, I scoffed at Raegan.
“Have you truly become so important that one would think to shift their appearance into that of me? Of what, a human?” I let out a bitter laugh as I shook my head.
“And here I was thinking your ego had reached its peak at our last meeting.”
Those green eyes of his narrowed slightly, the tiniest of sparks flashing in them as the corner of his lip curled upwards.
“Either you are her, or you are a master of disguises and have learned her utter disdain for me with far too much ease.” Humour crinkled the corners of his eyes as he nodded towards Killian. “You truly think it’s her, Killian?”
He didn’t waste so much as a second. “Without a doubt.”
“Very well,” Raegan leant forward, resting his elbow on the armrest of his throne and his chin against his hand. “Then what are you doing here, Olivia?”
I really hoped Killian couldn’t see – or smell – the sweat on the back of my neck.
“I could not hold to my promise. I sought out Saoghal.”
From behind me, I heard Killian let out a short sigh of relief. Not Raegan, though. He frowned at me.
“I do not believe you.”
In order to hide the panic on my face, I rolled my eyes at the King. “What do you believe I am doing here, then?”
He assessed me, his eyes flicking from my feet to the tip of my head and back.
I was starting to realize I had made a mistake.
“Pixies rush in and out of my kingdom every day, some of which are thieves and liars, others simple spies and mercenaries trying to find the hidden entrances of this castle–”
“Raegan, don’t be ridiculous–”
“Keep your tongue to yourself or I will find you an assignment as far from her as I can.”
Both Killian and I swallowed at the same time.
“I do not believe a word that is coming out of your mouth, little human,” Raegan sighed, pushing up to his feet. “Yet I have a need for you, as it so happens. If you are able to prove your loyalty to me and my kingdom, then perhaps I will allow you this brief return.”
I wasn’t sure if the pixies could hear things like heartbeats, but I sincerely hoped not. Mine was thundering.
“What would you have me–”
“You are to swear into my ceadan.”
“Raegan, don’t–”
Raegan’s glare at Killian was enough to halt the words in his mouth. In lieu of whatever he was about to snap at his King, he let out a low growl and scuffed his boots against the ground a few times.
I wasn’t scared of Raegan, though. So I turned my attention over my shoulder, feeling the air knock out of my lungs as I latched onto the gaze of Killian’s much darker green eyes.
“Why is that a bad thing?”
Killian went to open his mouth, but Raegan answered for him. “It’s not.”
I whirled a furious glare back at Raegan. “Then what are we waiting for?”
It was possible Raegan could see right through me, because he simply twisted his small grin into a wild smirk and dipped his chin at me.
Killian had never been the brooding type, yet he looked like a frustrated bull from where he stood off to the side of the throne-room. His eyes would not leave me, no matter how blatantly I avoided them.
Raegan, having climbed down from his throne and dais, was now in front of me again.
Only a few inches away, his height shadowing the natural radiance spilling through the room.
Except, as always, Raegan generated his own form of vibrant warmth, a hue so pure and brilliant that I continuously found myself wishing to bask in it.
Instead of paranoia or fury in his eyes, he had resorted back to that mischievous, young-prince-look that I had come to hate-to-love over my short time knowing him. There, his head slightly angled, his eyes unblinking as he stared down at me, he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Tell it to me now, honestly, and I will not make you take the oath. No matter what you tell me, I will send you on your way and no punishment will follow you.”
I held that unblinking stare, even though all I wanted to do was melt from the intense way that he looked at me.
“I told you the truth, Raegan. Let’s get on with this oath so I can eat something.”
He let out a breathy laughter that was just as fake as it was accusatory.
“Killian, leave us.”
“But–”
“Leave us,” Raegan snarled, refusing to look away from me as he ushered that threat across the room. Something within my bloodstream heated at such a noise coming from him, but I couldn’t quite figure out if it was fear or something else.
Just as Raegan would not look away from me, I would not look away from him. So I was left listening to the faint patter of boots that suggested Killian’s departure, followed by the creak of the door as it shut once more.
“You truly do not wish to confess to anything before we proceed?”
“No.”
Raegan’s face—sharp, lethal, and forever sly—softened. “Then we shall begin. And I hope, deep within me where I thought I lost the ability to do such a thing, that you do not let me down, Olivia.”
He meant it, too. That only made me feel sick. But I nodded.
Wordlessly, still not breaking that eye contact with me, Raegan removed one of the rings from his right hand.
A dark, near-obsidian looking ring that was somehow both dull yet capable of catching the light behind us.
From his thumb he pulled it, until he placed it in his palm and offered it between us.
“Place your hand atop mine,” he said.
Swallowing, if only to rehydrate my drying mouth, I set my hand on top of his. The two of us paused for a moment, equally as entranced by the feel of our skin against each other, before Raegan cleared his throat and shook his head.
“This is an oath ring. What you swear upon this ring is bound by the gods and their magic, until such a time comes that you are released from the oath by the Crown or by divine will. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He looked far too humoured in comparison to how dreadful I felt.
“I, Raegan Righ’Fiodh’Faiche’Rugadh, offer a ceadan oath to Olivia Loughty. Such an oath will bind her loyalty to me, ensuring a shield across my back and a sword at my side. From henceforth, no lie shall fall between us and no deceit shall strain this oath. Do you wish to be oath-bound?”
His hand was so… so warm. The skin along the padding of his fingers and the peak of his palm was thoroughly calloused, brash and scarred just as he was.
But the heat that emanated from his flesh, the way that it transferred in to me and settled some ancient, rowdy darkness within me, left me transfixed.
So much so, that I did not hear him talking to me.
It was only when his free hand pinched at my chin and tilted my head up, our eyes meeting once more, that I realized.
He had a tight grin on his face as I stuttered out, “Y-yes.”
Heat flared between our hands, coming from that near-black ring that sat between our flesh. It burned and tempted the outer layer of my skin, until it dulled completely and Raegan snatched away from me, sliding it back on his thumb.
I thought we were done, but Raegan pressed impossibly closer to me, his lips near my ear. Moisture skipped over the sensitive skin around my neck as he leaned against me.
“I have dreamed of seeing the real you again for far too long.”
Swallowing, I took a small step away from him and heeded the mischief in his eyes.
“Let me ask you once more, Olivia. Why are you back in Saoghal?”
I thought back to Rory, to his explanation of this very oath and my ability to manipulate it.
“Because I lost the light.”
His eyes wanted to pinch, his face starting to flip into a frown, but he managed to snatch his resolve at the last moment.
“Were you sent here?”
“I made the decision to come.”
Another twitch of his brows, followed by a large draw of breath.
“Do you wish me any harm?”
The answer, honest and damning, came from me before I could stop it. “Never, Raegan.”
“Good,” he hummed. Stepping towards me once more, his face melted into the young Prince that basked beneath a high sun, a version of him that I thought had died the day his title changed. “Good, Olivia. You just might be the only person I can trust, then.”
I said nothing as he led me out of the throne room.