15
____________________
Upon passing out and having, quite easily, the most restful sleep of my life, I woke with a banging headache.
I was prepared to startle to consciousness, immediately regretting letting the King of Cluaineach and Choilltean into my chambers, yet that shameful wave did not grace me.
Instead, I felt renewed. Like I had awoken in another time, one where Saoghal wasn’t at war with itself and I wasn’t plagued with darkness.
At the end of the day, it had been a very good distraction, even with how brief it was.
After having a castle servant knock on the door and inform me of breakfast, I groaned my way towards the attached bathing chambers where I started the day by pushing my hair out of my face.
I was glad I did. Because as I shoved some of that pale-blonde hair from my face and it slipped over my shoulder, I saw the faintest of marks against my neck. Frowning, leaning closer to that odd suspended-water-mirror, I tried my best to get a better look at the two tiny pricks in my neck.
Grabbing some of the powders, I worked extensively to cover up the tiny mark and the subtle bruise that had formed beside them. Overall impressed with my ability to do such a thing, I slipped out of the bathing room, got dressed, and prepared myself for hell on earth in the form of breakfast.
Pushing open the dining hall doors, I expected the whole room to go silent, as if they knew what I had done last night.
Thankfully, no such thing happened. Quite the opposite, actually – as I strode across that grand space towards the table full of friends, they were loud.
Rowdy and laughing, chatting and cheering, just as they had been when I came to Saoghal before.
It was not a table full of a king and his guards and advisors, but a table full of old friends. That, along with the sudden flash of heat that came from the sun rising and penetrating the many windows of the dining hall, forced a smile to my face.
At least until I drew nearer and Shea, halfway through an apple, coughed out, “Gods, girl. Look at you. How late of a night did you have?”
Everyone went eerily silent as they turned to me.
Faces I knew like Shea and Aisling, faces I had yet to know but recognized from the halls.
Worst of all, though, were the two overly familiar to me.
Killian, his brows shaped into a question-mark on his forehead, and Raegan, shit-eating-grin on his face and one brow cocked at my unkempt appearance.
“Not late enough, actually,” I said to Shea, yet refused to blink off of Raegan. That cocked brow of his twitched even higher as he regarded me, a cunning gleam to his eyes as he nodded towards the one spare chair.
Yet again, placed next to Killian at the end of the table, bordered by the head-chair that Raegan sat in.
This is hell.
Just as I sat myself in the chair, grimacing as it slid across the stone floor, Raegan lifted his fork to his mouth and placed a strawberry there.
“A late night?” he drawled, far too much humour in his eyes for how early it was. “Do tell us, Olivia. What could possibly have kept you up so late?”
I wanted to punch him.
Killian chuckled at my left, as if he had any idea what Raegan was doing. If he did, it would have been a whole different sound coming from him.
Shooting daggers at Raegan with my eyes, I took a deep breath and grabbed a handful of blueberries from the bowl in front of me. “Oh, it was nothing. Really, nothing noteworthy.”
Raegan grinned. “Is that so?”
“Sure is.”
“I’m sure getting settled back in is a tedious venture,” Killian said, coming to my rescue in ways he would never understand.
The tension between Raegan and I had turned thick, forcing me to swallow most of it as I veered my focus back to the empty plate in front of me and the three blueberries that I had squished in my palm.
Raegan narrowed his eyes at Killian, which if it hadn’t been for the planned murder behind them I might have been relieved to have the attention off of me.
Instead, Killian only made it worse when he reached across the table and grabbed onto a bowl of assorted fruit, turning to the side and offering me some.
“You like peaches, don’t you?” he said, his eyes wide and full of Killian-joy.
“I… I do,” I laughed. “You remembered?”
“Of course.” He smiled as he rolled a few slices onto my plate. I had only just placed one in my mouth, content to listen to the small conversation being had farther down the table, when Killian leaned against me.
It was more than just a brush of our shoulders – he leant the majority of his weight against my side as his mouth neared my ear. “I wish to apologize.”
Feeling the bumps lift across my body immediately, I shook my head. “No apology needed. It was I–”
“No,” he breathed. As if I wasn’t already dangling on the edge of his words, he shifted the hand closest to me until it was on my knee, where he squeezed. “I was wrong.”
Trying to hide the shock from my face, I turned my head towards him and frowned.
“I have learned nothing in life but that it is short. That, and you make me happy, Olivia. I will accept only a day with you if that is all that you are able to stay, over being so near to you but feeling so distant.”
I was regretting the peach. The sweet fruit felt overly acidic in the back of my throat as I stared at Killian.
“So I apologize, once more,” he sighed, his hand a heavy presence on my knee “And I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive my harsh departure from your company last night. Perhaps… Perhaps we can move forward from this?”
I couldn’t help but to smile at Killian. Brash-appearance yet soft-hearted Killian, fervour between his brows but sweetness on his tongue.
“Of course–”
Our side-conversation had garnered some attention. That was made apparent by the sudden appearance of another hand, this one on my other leg, farther up my thigh. The grip of it was tighter, more intentional, and ever so slightly demanding.
I swallowed as I felt both of them touching me; Killian in a soft and gentle way at the tip of my knee, Raegan with a daunting and alluring tight grip on the middle of my thigh.
Sneering, I turned my head until I saw Raegan watching us, a goblet of something to his lips leaving only his brows and eyes visible behind the rim.
But that was all that was needed, because everything he would never say was in that look, in the furious creases of his brows and the pain in his eyes.
~
Neither one of them removed their hands for the entirety of our breakfast. Killian’s grip remained soft and grounding against my knee, whereas Raegan’s hand roamed as he spoke.
His eyes and his words were directed at everyone around the table, but his fingers lightly grazed up and down my thigh in a reassuring, soothing sort of motion that made me wish I could flop onto my side and purr.
The only thing that stopped me from doing exactly that was the constricting fear, the worry that at some point, their hands were going to touch.
And I had seen a possessive side to both Killian and Raegan, which meant I didn’t have to imagine what would become of the dining hall if they realized what was happening.
I should have pushed one of them off.
I just couldn’t decide who.
There was Killian, the soft-hearted, kind-soul who wanted to promise me everything and more, who wanted to lay himself bare before me no matter what would become of him.
And then there was Raegan, who would never put me above his duty, who would only ever be able to offer me a hidden side of himself. But that hidden side of him… My whole body ached in warning as I thought about pushing him away from me. It cried and deafened me, wept and blinded me.
So I let them both remain. I decided that it wouldn’t matter, in the long run.
All three of us would be nothing more than heartbroken when I returned to the life of a human once my job was done, so what harm could it cause?
It was cowardice that made me consider: would it not just be easier to indulge… both of them?
~
After nearly an hour of everyone alternating between laughing and eating, Raegan cleared his throat. The power of it, the vibration of the movements, travelled down his arm and straight into the contact he still held possessively on my thigh.
“Olivia, Killian–” I couldn’t have been the only one who heard how begrudgingly he bit out his friend's name. “You are traveling today. To Uisge.”
The room fell silent, some with goblets halfway to their lips, others mid-chew.
All eyes landed on Raegan. It would forever amaze me how he remained so still, so confident, so strong with every pair of eyes on him, some of which were narrowed and doubting of their King.
It was a credit to those many masks he wore, the ones I hated and wished I could peel from him, except I now understood they were what allowed him to survive.
He pulled something from a hidden pocket within his surcoat, the sheen of it nearly blinding me.
“You are to take this to Queen Tonn. Tell her it is a token of my genuine intent, and that I wish to host her and her court here so that we may, at last, discuss the events that have transpired.”
He said nothing further as he set the large, blue gem down on the table.
It had some sort of chain wrapped through it, though it was no metal nor material that I had ever seen.
But it beckoned all to look at it, drove all mouths to open.
The necklace was not completely of this world, I believed that more than I cared to admit as I stared into the promising abyss of it.
“Is that—”
“Yes,” Raegan snapped, cutting Shea off. I broke my stare with the jewel long enough to catch Shea’s snarl.
“What… What is it?” I dared to ask, snapping the tension between the two of them.
Raegan’s eyes remained hard and unforgiving as he found me at his side, but his hand tightened for a moment against the fleshiest part of my knee, a reminder that the real him was there, somewhere, drowning beneath the rest of him.
“It’s–It’s Queen Tonn’s family necklace. It was taken from the neck of her grandmother – gods, it must have been several centuries ago now?” That was Killian, partaking in his own form of true shock as he stared at it. “Raegan, you will give it up?”
“Give it up?” I frowned. “If it’s hers… her family’s… How did he have any right to hold on to it to begin with?”
The jewel was no longer the most interesting thing in the room. No, I was. Yet again my ignorance to their ways was as obvious as my own hair within a field of darkness, because everyone was watching me with judgemental eyes.
“My grandfather took it from them,” Raegan explained, ignoring all who stared.
“I do not condone every action of my kin, and I had planned on returning it to her once I took to Choilltean’s throne.
But she will not accept any form of correspondence from me, and I will not trust the deliverance of it to any half-witted pixie. ”
Raegan’s tone was snide, his eyes upturned, and his smirk shadowing his lips. I knew what that expression meant, what it had prefaced before, and it made me shudder. Nothing good ever came from his fox-like expressions.
“Some of my ceadan will escort you to the boundaries of Cluaineach. But beyond that, Olivia…” Raegan trailed off, his brows so tightly pressed against one another that they looked as if they had become one. “Beyond that, I will not be able to reach you. I will not be able to protect you.”
“I will,” Killian declared, and I knew that he had dug his own grave the moment he said it. Raegan’s glare, weaponized and sharp, shifted to his friend on the other side of me. I leant forward, blocking the King of Talamh from killing Killian with his gaze alone.
“I’ll be alright,” I assured Raegan, not completely believing it but hoping that Killian’s unspoken promise of my safety would be sufficient. “Really, I’ll be alright.”
I made Raegan meet my eyes, I made him see what remained unsaid between us. It was the slow blinking and the softening of the skin around mine that said I will return to you, and the slight nod of his head that signified his relief at it.
“I best go and get ready, then,” I said, speaking to no one in particular.
Nodding, I bade farewell to my friends around the dining table as I rose. One last dip of my chin was offered to Raegan, whose gaze had slipped into something not quite his. I couldn’t focus on that, though, not with the knowledge of what I had to do.
Smiling at them all, I pivoted on my heel and strode out of the dining hall, listening to the echoing of their laughter that kept that smile on my face for the entire climb up the twirling stairs.
Fireflies accompanied me, buzzing and circling everywhere I went.
It was strange to think at one point, their presence had been a nuisance and a frustration, but now they were a strange sort of comfort, a white-noise that I needed at all hours of the day to survive.
Now, they were home.
Cluaineach was home.
Saoghal was home.
And the pixies were my home.
I would do everything I could to keep it that way. If that meant detouring from the plan I had with Rory in order to try and keep the peace between the kingdoms, then Rory could wait. Sooner or later, I would find the ritual they needed. But first, my pixies needed me.