12
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The double-doors of clay and stone swung open to the dining hall, a space that I vaguely remembered popping my head in once or twice within the Cluaineach castle.
Like every other space in this tremendous palace, whatever wall could be made of glass, was.
Though at this time of day it was pointless, because only starlight and moonlight melted through those panes – yet it was enough to light most of the room.
Where light couldn’t reach, the slack was picked up by the constant appearance of fireflies who took to the shadows and clung to the ivy that draped off of the stone walls.
Reagan dropped my hand once we stepped through that space, offering one of the guards a curt nod as he motioned for me to continue with him. We walked past long stretches of wooden tables, most of which were eerily empty.
The only table in that vast space that was full was the one tucked against the farthest wall, grander than the rest and twice as long. There, a few familiar faces looked up to us, including–
I hardly had enough time to understand what was happening before Shea was charging towards me.
The leathered armour that she wore like a second skin was no more this evening, leaving only her familiar Choilltean greenery and burrow-like, blood-tinted hair upon her head.
But what shocked me the most was not only the speed at which she thundered towards me, but that she hugged me.
“Olivia,” she cried out as she wrestled me into a grip capable of killing a rhinoceros.
“S-shea,” I coughed out, quite convinced that my lungs had been perforated in two spots by my ribs.
I looked past her shoulder to see Raegan laughing to himself, Killian just behind him with the same grin on his face. It was like looking into our past, seeing nothing more than two young males with nothing better to do in their days than wreak havoc.
But when Raegan turned back to the table and moved towards the head of it, I saw Killian straighten his spine and swallow. I wished to keep watching him, to notice the subtle shifts to his body, but Shea suddenly released me.
“I’m so glad you are back,” she said, her eyes far brighter than I ever recalled them being. They had always been this dark sort of brown, yet she was so close to me and they were so wide that I could see the faint dappling of gold near her irises.
“Me-me too,” I choked, unable to truly admit that I wasn’t sure this was actually Shea in front of me. Shea, who at one point I thought would have rather pushed me from the back of a pegasus than endure a single conversation with me.
“Here, Olivia,” Killian called out from where he had seated himself back at the table. He was motioning to the spare seat, the last along the stretch that put me next to him and…
I groaned internally as I slipped away from Shea and found my seat next to Killian, all too aware of the heated glare that he was receiving from Raegan, on my other side. Feeling the simmering testosterone from them on either side of me, I instead found myself staring across the table.
Only to see Aisling.
“Aisling!” I hollered far too loud. Her bubble-gum-pink hair shifted as her head lifted, two terrifyingly orchid-tinted eyes glistening as she met me.
“Oh, Olivia, it cannot be!” she cried out with the full extent of her overly warm heart . She leapt up from her seat and folded herself over the table, reaching a hand out for me and caring very little for the fact that she knocked not one but two goblets over in the process.
“You have to know…” She grabbed onto my hand and squeezed until I was sure I no longer had bones. “I didn’t know. About Rory, I mean.”
I flashed her a fake, knowing smile as I tried to pull my hand away. “It’s okay.”
“No.” She shook her head several times, sending some of that hair scattering down the satin-like clothes of Cluaineach. “It’s not okay. And I swear if I ever see him again, it’ll be at the end of my sword.”
Shea, seated to her side, roared out in agreement at that, raising her goblet for Aisling to clank against.
I said nothing, only glanced between the two of them and wondered how it had been possible for them to become friends.
Shea misunderstood my silence, though, and somehow made a bad day worse by blurting out, “Oh, don’t tell me you’re still a sympathizer of the Rachainn?”
I nearly choked on absolutely nothing as I whirled my focus to her. “Absolutely not.”
It was a very good thing that my oath-bound friend, Raegan, had not been the one to ask me. Actually, he was being absurdly quiet where he sat on my other side at the head of the table, his eyes watching us all from behind the rim of his own goblet.
“Good,” Shea grunted, slamming her goblet down and immediately retrieving the pitcher. “I’ll show not a single one of them mercy. Blood of my blood or not.”
Killian stiffened at my side, giving me something to focus on as my stomach started to grumble.
He looked as he always did; slightly unkempt and out-of-place in the regality of a court. But he also made me feel as he always did; quiet and warm.
I leant against him ever so slightly, letting our shoulders brush as I moved my lips for his ear.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No,” he muttered back, his hand reaching for his own drink. “It is I that is sorry. I should not have surprised you.”
I smiled, partly because of his genuine words but also because I could feel the pumping of the vein in his neck only inches from my mouth, and the vague scent of the woodlands that forever lived in his pores.
The table groaned out as someone kicked one of the legs. My initial assumption was that it was an accident, until I turned to see Raegan’s eyes unblinking on the two of us.
The food was brought out only moments later.
Roasted chicken seasoned with spices of both the earth and the town shops in Marazion, complete with steamed vegetables that varied from Brussel sprouts to potatoes, carrots to peas.
Everything was steaming, sending wisps of scent into the air where it collected and clouded above us.
I was glad I didn’t have a pixie sense of smell, because I was sure I would be drooling if that was the case.
I was pretty sure someone farther down the table was, actually.
Everyone dug in without a word being shared between them.
Only the fluidity of their functional friendship, bowls and drinks passed with ease without the question being asked, the understanding of which one of them liked which spices and who was missing certain ingredients.
At the end of it all, though, I couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong.
It wasn’t that they were missing Niamh – even though that was glaringly obvious. No, this was something else. A tension that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, not until Raegan suddenly cleared his throat and set his cup down and every pair of eyes at that table whirled to him.
“I have plans,” he declared, his eyes narrowing and taking to that pointed-state that I couldn’t decide whether I loved or hated. A bit of both – the danger and the allure.
“How kind of you to actually inform us this time,” Shea snarled, wrath riding through her eyes until she suddenly slammed her mouth shut and stared down at the table.
Raegan didn’t look insulted or infuriated by her outburst, though. Instead, he simply took to a practiced smirk that I knew I hated.
“She did not mean it, Rae–”
Shea shot Killian a decimating look. “I absolutely meant it.” Then that glare slid across the room until it was on Raegan. “There was a time where I could have spoken this freely to you, Raegan. Yet you have become something – someone – that I do not recognize.”
I placed a Brussel sprout on the prongs of my fork and bit into it, staring at the plate beneath me and grimacing as the noise of my throat swallowing echoed across the world.
“Shea,” Killian growled, “Not now. Not today.”
“When then, Killian? Ever since that night in this gods-cursed castle, he has changed.” She stopped in her spitting to shake her head a few times.
“He has kept to this castle every hour of every day since. He lurks in every shadow and broods in every room. He cares very little for how much chaos he has caused. Yet today?” She was cackling, now.
“Today, all of a sudden, he decides he wishes to spring back to life–”
Her words halted as her eyes shifted ever so slightly to Raegan’s side. To me.
I watched her throat bob as she swallowed the rest of her anger.
“Are you done, Shea?” Raegan drawled, his cockiness written across every inch of his face. “Or do you wish to shout at me some more?”
Killian’s brow cocked up as he turned to Raegan, as he recognized the tone that I had picked up on immediately. It was the one of light taunting that prefaced mockery or laughter that I had seen from him. Killian looked at him as if he had seen a ghost.
Raegan took a deep breath, the shadows moving from his face with every minute movement. “I have received word that Queen Tonn of Uisge grows more and more restless.”
“Not without encouragement from King Nevan, I assume,” Killian grumbled.
“Assumably,” Raegan sighed. “We must win Queen Tonn’s favour back. She had faith in my kingdoms, in me, all that time ago. She has never been fond of Choilltean, but she found it in her heart to ally with us, only because of the life debt she felt fall into her lap.”
I was stabbing a carrot over and over with my fork. I was on the third line of stab marks when I realized the conversation had stopped. Awkwardly, I looked up from the massacre of my food to see everyone was staring at me.
“Me?” I gasped.
“You saved the Prince of Uisge,” Aisling ushered across the table. Her pitch and excitement at such a feat was far too familiar to Niamh, forcing my eyes away from her.
“She will not speak to me, nor will she speak to any of my messengers that I said,” Raegan continued, “but you, Olivia… I believe she will entertain a conversation with you.”
“That’s why you want me to stay? To go and speak with Queen Tonn?”
Shea looked between the two of us several times with a general frown.
“Yes. You very well might be the last hope for my kingdom. Yet again.”
“She cannot go alone,” Killian grumbled.
“Killian is right. If Queen Tonn suspects she is anything more than a messenger to you, Raegan–”
“Quiet,” Raegan hissed. “I am aware, which is why she will be escorted there and back. Queen Tonn would not dare ail herself with the curse of harming a messenger. She knows that she would face the judgement of the gods.”
Shea snorted as she folded her arms over her chest.
“So I will send with her–”
“Me,” Killian barked. “I will go.”
Raegan’s eyes were capable of flaying bones from flesh with the look that he offered Killian. “I was going to send Shea.”
My face twisted in a complete reflection of what, exactly, I thought of that suggestion. It wasn’t like I disliked Shea… We were just as compatible as a puppy and a honey badger.
“I’ll go with Killian,” I said, refusing to meet the gaze of any of the three of them.
I highly doubted Shea would even care, Raegan would have no choice but to go along with my decision, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see on Killian's face.
Relief or disappointment? Both would have forced me into another state of confusion.
Needless to say, the remainder of dinner was had in complete silence.