13
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Killian slipped away from the meal first, right as the silence became somehow more detrimental to my mind than the loudest of sounds. Even though I could feel Raegan’s eyes on my every movement, I rose from my seat, offered everyone a goodnight, and trotted after Killian.
I caught up to him just as he stepped onto the first of the twisting staircase.
He must have heard me the moment I rose, because he was frozen there, his eyes waiting for me to appear in the hallway. As I did, his expression both softened and hardened, unable to decide wholly on which form it wanted to take.
“You didn’t need to leave just because I left.”
I waved him off as I finally arrived at his side. “Walk me back to my room?”
He nodded, offering me the bend of his elbow that I took with ease. Each one of our steps up the stone stairs echoed throughout the entire castle, muffling out the faint trace of laughter in other rooms and chatter amongst the other levels.
“You were very quiet,” Killian said after we levelled out on the third floor.
“I suppose I was,” I hummed, letting his broad arm nearly drag me along. “If I’m being completely honest, I thought that returning here would feel just as it felt the first time.”
“And it does not?” he asked, though we both knew that he already knew the answer to that. I waited to answer him until he finished opening my door, to which I dragged him in behind me.
“Saoghal feels… Saoghal feels sick.”
He frowned at me where he stood a few feet past the doorway, looking around my room as if he had never seen it before.
“It has not been an easy year.”
I stared at him, at his rigid body and tense stature. “I know. I just crave Saoghal. I crave the magic, the endless possibilities, and the flourishing of life. Killian… I just want to feel something.”
He swallowed as he watched my gaze darken.
The few steps that lingered between us felt like miles as I made them, slow and intentional as I refused to look away from him.
When I finally made it to him, he did not relax those stiff shoulders of his.
Yet he, too, could not look away from me.
Those dark eyes were soon glassy, a drunkenness to his gaze that made me place a hand on his chest.
Pushing up onto my toes, I was the one to initiate what had been sitting between us all dinner.
My lips brushed against his, soft at first until something awoke in him.
Hands were on my waist, pulling me against his body and demanding something of me as his pace quickened against my mouth.
Both of my hands in his hair, I swore I felt every moment of sorrow and dread over the last year simply melt away at every tortuous brush of his lips over mine.
Just when I couldn’t breathe, when my body was alive with a thousand rushes of heated current, Killian pulled away from me. He groaned, low and pained as his forehead found my shoulder.
“What is it?” I muttered, stepping back and away from him.
When he looked at me, that look of lust and hunger had dissipated and left in its wake only sadness.
“Killian?”
He rubbed at his face with one of his hands, dragging the skin around his eyes as he let out a deep sigh. “I want to. I really do. But… I can’t.”
I took a few steps back, until my shoulders pushed against one of the posted poles of the bed. Wrapping both of my arms around my body, shame forced my eyes to his shoulders instead of his face.
“It’s not you,” he whispered as he stepped towards me. “Well, it is you.”
I was about to summon my anger from the day in order to chase him out of my room, but the sincerity of the look he was giving me was enough to make me wait.
“I just…” He groaned once more as he pushed at his face a second time. “I don’t think I can go halfway with you.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
I regretted looking at those eyes almost immediately, resorting to choking back a gasp.
“I want you, Olivia. Not just your body but your heart, your soul. But I will never be able to have you. Not in that way. I thought I could indulge during your stay and survive when you left – but I didn’t.
Not at all. I have felt hollow since your departure and I do not think I can survive it again. ”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I just stared at him.
“I was relieved to see you today, I really was. But I looked at you and I felt that pain again. As long as you are destined to leave, which you will always be, I cannot go halfway. I cannot give you a part of me and not the rest. And I cannot accept a part of you and not the rest.”
“I’m not asking for–”
“I know. I know what you’re asking for, what you think will help you. And perhaps I am selfish as I cannot grant you this reprieve. If that is the case then I will forever be selfish because I cannot become the male I was after you left.”
My brows were convinced they needed to duel one another for domain over my eyes as I continued to frown at him.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. I truly am.” Then he was turning away from me, moving towards the slightly-askew door. “Get some rest. We leave tomorrow.”
~
My cheeks were so thoroughly red and hot that it transferred into my vision.
I wasn’t capable of seeing much more than a few inches in front of me as tears threatened to blur everything out.
That was why I didn’t see my next visitor.
I only knew he was there because of how I always knew he was there.
“I have known Killian for several decades, yet I have never seen him skulk down a hallway as he just did,” Raegan said, leaning his weight against the doorway where he assessed me.
I had resorted to flopping down on the edge of my bed, lacking even the energy to glare at him.
“Can I credit that glorious attitude of yours for lashing him so?”
“Can I help you with something?”
“We haven’t been able to truly talk since your return and I wanted to, before you leave for Uisge.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
The look he gave me was laced with mischief as he drove his eyes up and down my body. “Then you shall listen, only.”
I groaned, flipping onto my side and curling into the fetal position so that I knew he could see me when I rolled my eyes.
“I am thankful for your return, for your honesty and loyalty–” Ouch, “– I trust very few in this castle, less so across my two kingdoms. Even those that I once thought closest to me seem to linger with their eyes on my back these days.”
“I’m really not in the mood.”
I hated how much that made him grin. “I can see that. This mood… It is unfamiliar to me – I have not seen such a scowl across a face made for only elegance.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. Knowing Raegan, it was a bit of both.
“Your assessments are very helpful.”
“I aim for them to be,” he purred. If only he knew how that tone churned my whole body to nothing but butter. “Was it the other way around, then? Not you that whittled down Killian, but he who scorned you?”
The glare Raegan received through my brows was sufficient enough to make him bark out a chuckle. But then he took a few more steps into my room and the air tightened around me, my lungs quickly taking up a strained state.
“Did he hurt you?” Raegan’s voice had shifted into something beyond the kingly-arrogance or the fox-prince-slyness.
“No,” I huffed, pushing up and leaning against the palms of my hands. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Raegan’s eye twitched.
“This is just me, now.” I motioned to my entirety, making sure to pout for extra theatrics. “I am permanently miserable and as cranky as can be.”
I could tell he wanted to laugh at that, but he wasn’t quite sure how serious I was being. “Ah. So you are as you were before you met us all, once more.”
“Correct.” I snapped my fingers. “Even Saoghal is incapable of providing me the relief I so desperately crave.”
“Relief,” he hummed, “not cure?”
“How can it be a cure when I can only stay here for set periods of time? No, it will only ever be a relief, a momentary breath of fresh air. But it does not seem to want to give me even that right now.”
“How bad is it?” he asked, his voice even and containing none of his many masks.
“I’ll be fine,” I grunted as I pushed to my feet at last, wavering slightly over my ankles.
It only hit me then that I was droning on about nothingness with a pixie king.
Once I remembered that, I swallowed and straightened my spine.
“I’ll be fine, I will. Just every now and then it’s nice to have a distraction, you know? ”
Raegan’s face showed all too well how he knew.
Which is why it shouldn’t have surprised me when he closed the door behind him and proceeded to take a few more steps into the room.