26
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I wasn’t sure what I was expecting upon my return to Cluaineach, Killian in tow at my side and nearly dragging me the entire way.
There was excitement when we strolled up to the castle doors and saw none other than Shea and Aisling awaiting us, the latter throwing her arms around my neck and nearly taking me to the ground, while the former grunted and met Killian in a strange shake-of-the-forearms.
I shouldn’t have, and I knew I shouldn’t have, but once I finally got Aisling free of me, I looked over and behind her. And deep down, I knew why I did it. I knew who I hoped would have been there to greet me. Yet it still destroyed something small and tired in me when he was nowhere to be seen.
“You smell like fish,” Shea snarled as she finally stepped back from Killian and assessed him head-to-toe.
“No,” he said through a grin, “I think that’s you.”
Her rebutting growl would have been enough to put the conversation to rest, but the two of them instead locked gazes in a challenge of who was more stubborn.
Two bulls primed and ready to charge one another.
Except all at once they laughed and stepped towards one another, wrapping arms around waists and shoulders.
“Come, fish-boy, we’ve got dinner waiting for you!”
Killian allowed Shea and Aisling to begin walking us towards the dining hall within the palace, but whatever it was that was in me that had been beaten down by disappointment, cried out. Enough to make me slow my pace, enough to make me turn my head, enough to guide my feet away from them.
“Olivia,” Killian called after me as I was suddenly walking towards the staircase and not the dining hall. “Are you not coming?”
“Yeah, I just need to freshen up first,” I called back, not completely sure of the honesty of such a statement but needing to give him some sort of answer. He responded with a strange grunt of knowing before the three of them continued on, their footsteps echoing across the palace of clay.
Somehow – a miracle, I was sure – I reached the third floor of the Cluaineach castle.
I veered away from the winding staircase and found myself walking down the long, darkening hallway as the sun slipped away beyond the kingdom, casting the floor-to-ceiling window panes in shadows instead of the usual dripping of sunlight.
That wasn’t why I walked straight past the fourth door, the door that led to the room I had been staying in. No, whatever it was that drove me to continue walking, to stiffen my pace and neutralize the scowl on my face, it wanted to remain anonymous within me.
I had only a few days left before I had to meet Rory again, and I didn’t want to meet him only to tell him I hadn’t even stepped foot in the King’s chambers.
Unfortunately, that thought was also not why I turned at the handle of his door and pushed open the stone.
It probably would have been a good idea to knock, but I didn’t need to. I knew he was in there, I could feel his heartbeat through the hallways, I could smell that strange scent of his from between the cracks of his door. I also knew that he was alone.
But I wasn’t prepared to see him as I saw him.
The room was cold, the temperature within it cruel and unforgiving as I stepped into the space and shut the door behind me.
Just like the rest of the castle, every corner of the room was spreading shadows from it as the sun abandoned us.
But unlike the rest of the castle, Raegan did not have much in the form of sconces on the wall or fireflies to illuminate the world around him.
No, instead, Raegan stood against the farthest wall of his room, his back to me, his arms braced on the small table against his window.
The last droplet of sunlight was being summoned towards the King of Meadows and Woodlands, using the last of its strength to offer him the faintest glow as he hung his head between his shoulders.
Swallowing, I stood in the awkwardness of me having not knocked, and him not greeting me as I interrupted whatever it was that he was doing.
A brief glimpse around the room gave off no indication as to why the King was standing before his window like that.
Other than the table he was brooding over, there was a large, four-postered bed that looked as if it could house all of his ceadan in it if he wished, as well as a small ensuite that likely hosted one of their strange bathrooms. There was hardly a thing in the room that made it a room. Hardly a thing that made it a home.
I cleared my throat at last.
“You know, here we consider entering without knocking to be rude.”
Oh, I didn’t like his tone. I recognized it immediately, which was furthered by the shudder that rattled my whole being.
It was a quick glimpse into our past, the day that he had walked me from this very castle to meet Urram and Gliocas, the day that he had called me a coward only after I had spat the same insult at him.
There was a brief warning, that small voice in my head that screamed get out, Olivia! But I was a stubborn idiot, because I simply stood there and let his words bounce right off of me. He was angry, sure. But so was I.
Others might have evaded Raegan’s eyes, might have dodged out of his path, or might have kept their mouths shut when he was in one of his tempered moods. But I would not. I could not.
So I crossed my arms over my chest and somehow stretched my height another inch, still staring at where he was curled over across the room.
“You didn’t welcome me home.”
The faint outline of his shadowed body revealed him swallowing.
Narrowing my eyes, trying to keep my temper level, I peered over his shoulder towards the window, to the sight that it revealed. It was as I had guessed – a direct line of sight to the doors of the castle.
“So, what? You stood up here and watched us return but couldn’t come and see me home?”
Home. I had said it twice, now. And I knew he had heard it twice. Yet neither one of us commented on it.
Something wasn’t right, though. Something had Raegan’s shoulders too tense, his body too rigid, as if the slightest change to the air around us would cause him to suddenly explode.
I took a step towards him, and he took a step away, pushing himself farther into the shadows.
“What is wrong with you?”
“You,” he growled. “You absolutely reek–”
“Raegan! That is so incredibly rude–”
“– of him. Of my friend and brother. You absolutely reek of Killian and I cannot stand it.”
“You are joking, right? This is some sort of joke?”
Shaking my head, at my wits end with these male pixies and their absurdity, I stepped towards him. Only to have him growl, truly beast-like, before he stepped away again.
“Stay away, please.”
“You… you are so difficult! What of it?” I snapped, charging towards him. “It does not matter. Does it?”
I finally had a somewhat decent view of the side of his face, only to see his lips curl upwards, his teeth bared.
“Well? Does it?” I was pressing my luck as I moved towards him, encroaching on his personal space. “If it bothers you so, King Raegan, then do something about it. Claim me as yours, once and for all.”
He let out a deep snarl as he spun away from me, pacing the length of the room several times as he rubbed at his face. “You know that I cannot.” At least he was moving, proving that he wasn’t wound so tightly he was waiting to burst.
“Then you have no right to stand there and scowl at me. And you certainly have no right to look as if you hate him.” I placed myself directly in one of his paths, tempting his quick-moving temper.
“I will make my own decisions and you will not look at me that way for it. So if that means that I smell like him–”
Raegan interrupted me with the most primitive noise I had ever heard.
“If I smell like him, you are going to have to learn to live with it. You will say and do nothing to Killian. Or you will lose me entirely.”
He blinked several times, his anger steaming from the top of his head as he glared at me.
“You are… You can be so incredibly difficult to care for, Raegan!”
I regretted saying it immediately, but it just kept spilling out of me, even as I listened to the little croak that came from his throat. And I was shouting, why was I shouting?
“We had a lovely day. I had a lovely day with Killian.”
Raegan finally broke. “Then why are you here? Why do you stand here and torture me so? Why not just go to Killian?” His face twisted into fury and envy. “Go to Killian and drown yourself in his simplicity.”
I didn’t expect so much… sorrow to travel with his words. It made my whole body shift as I shook my head slowly. I had pushed him too far, I saw that as clear as I saw the anguish in his eyes as he looked at me.
But I was angry at him for being angry at me. “It is not simplicity that makes me want to be around him! It is that he knows what he wants and he is not afraid to admit it. Or to claim it–”
“You do not get to do that,” he snapped at me, turning away once more. “Do not compare us. It is not fair. I did not ask you to place yourself before us and pick.”
“Raegan, I—”
“Do you think I do not know? Do you think I do not realize that Killian is a far better male than I will ever be? Do you think I do not know that he could easily take you from—” He swallowed thickly, his shoulders heaving as his head hung.
“You come in here demanding to know why I did not welcome you home? Because I could not bear it. And yes, perhaps that makes me selfish, but I never claimed to be anything else. I needed to adjust to you slowly upon your return, allowing myself the time to come to terms with the fact that you no longer smell like my kingdom, my castle, me–”
“Well… Why didn’t you just say that?”
The disappointed way in which he shook his head broke my heart. “Just go, please.”
I tried to step towards him again, “No, let me–”
But he jumped away, lifting his arms as if I had a disease. “Leave.”
~
It took all of my remaining strength to depart from him, to leave him broken, tired, and in agony in the shadows where he dwelled. To have to see the back of his head instead of the pain in his eyes. And I knew it wasn’t fair, that none of it was fair.
I deserved simplicity. I deserved an easy type of love, the type of thing that Killian had, and would always, offer.
There was also the logical side of me, the small voice in my head that said none of this mattered, because before long I would be gone again.
But all of those thoughts were muted. All of those thoughts were numbed. All of those thoughts were drowned. Because what existed alongside them, what dwelled within my mind at all hours and left me unable to settle for anything else, was him.
All I could think about as I walked away from his chambers, taking the length of the hallway one pitiful slouch at a time, was the broken noise he made when I weaponized the very thing he used as a reason to keep me away.
Raegan was difficult to care for. He made it even harder most of the time, intentionally pushing at everyone around him until they were so far that he could blame it on the fact he was hard to love.
Undeserving of love. Impossible to love.
He wanted to prove to the gods themselves that everyone would decide he was not worth it.
And all I had done was confirm that for him.