28
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After storming out of the dining hall, tripping and stumbling down hallways as rage pushed me to implode, I found a balcony and threw myself out onto it.
I had only five minutes of peace before the doors behind me opened and I refused to turn to acknowledge their presence.
“I thought I reeked,” I said as I stood on a balcony similar to the one I had once stood at, watching as Raegan sauntered out and to my side.
“Seems like you’ve bathed.”
I said nothing. It was somewhat infuriating that he could tell.
“Why are you out here? They’re moving on to dessert in there, and if Killian has his way, there will not be much left soon.”
I let his sarcasm roll off of me like I was oil and he was water.
“I see,” he said, his voice even as he met me along the railing.
As one, we looked out across the world, just like we had before.
Except it was not Choilltean that we glanced across but Cluaineach.
The sun was ready to give up for the night, lingering on the horizon as if it was waiting for something.
“How long did it take?”
I snapped back at his words, tearing my focus from the eerily quiet Cluaineach full only of fireflies and to its King at my side.
“How long did what take?”
“For you to regress. You mentioned it before you left, but we never spoke more about it. How long after leaving Saoghal–”
“Three days,” I admitted.
“Ah,” he said. “An hour, for me. Watching you go was not so dissimilar to watching a cloud slide over the sun. Except the storm endured with every moment I spent in your absence.”
I begrudgingly looked at him.
“I know that you do not like to talk about it,” he began, his face so open and welcoming that I wanted to melt. “But I would very much like to hear it.”
“It’s not that I don’t like to talk about it.
” I paused only to take a seat on the bench nearby, pulling my knees up to my chest where I set my chin on the tops of them.
“It’s just that I’ve been talking about it for…
so long. So very long. There’s nothing new for me to say.
There’s nothing I can say that I haven’t said a hundred times before. ”
“Not to me, though,” he said, blinking slowly at me as he followed and sat at my side. “And I wish to learn of it. Because right now all I have are assumptions and I want to do better than that. I want to give you the understanding that you deserve.”
“I don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t know what to say that might make someone listen.
I talk to my doctor and he tells me that I need to exercise more, so I run every morning and every evening until my body is on fire.
I talk to my gynaecologist who tells me that it is my hormones that are out of whack and that it is normal for women, so I must take multivitamins catered to women, which by the way cost twice that of the generic multivitamins.
I go back to my doctor and he says that it’s my diet, that I’m eating too much of this or too much of that which makes my brain short-circuit, so I work with a nutritionist and I eat so many green things that I am sure my blood runs green, now.
I talk to my parents and they tell me I should get out more, so I go to events during the week until my body is so rundown with exhaustion that I sleep on the train home, and then I go to the bars at the weekend and drink until I can’t feel my soul within my body anymore.
And I talk to my coworkers and they say–”
Raegan silenced me as his hand found mine. His grip was soft as he placed it atop of my hand, his expression unreadable as he glanced at me. It was then that I realized I had been rattling off nonsense, my lungs burning as my body begged me to breathe.
“I am listening, Olivia,” he said, his tone something grounding and necessary. “I will listen. I promise you that – I have no idea what any of what you just told me means, but I am not them. I am here to listen.”
I knew that was true as I looked at him.
I didn’t need to make excuses like I did to strangers, I didn’t need to sugar-coat it like I did to the people that cared about me, and I didn’t need to hold back like I did at the doctors.
I could tell it to him, the dark parts and all, leaving me raw and vulnerable before the King of Talamh, and he would look at me the same way he had always looked at me.
This was the version of Raegan that threatened to ruin me. It wasn’t the charming allure that came with his fox-like expressions, nor the shy intrigue of the power within him and his title, nor the shy attraction that I felt whenever I looked at his sharp features or his strong body.
It was the revealing of his soul, the opening of his heart, the briefest of glimpses at the true Raegan beneath it all.
The Raegan that was the sun but had been behind storm clouds for so long that he no longer knew which direction he needed to shine.
The Raegan with golden, feathered wings and joy across his face at last. This was the Raegan that I would give myself wholly to.
So just as he claimed I deserved understanding from him, he deserved an explanation from me.
“Do you remember when I dove into the water of Uisge when it was overrun with oil?”
His low groan indicated that he remembered all too well.
“Do you remember the state I was in afterwards? I could hardly speak, my body was shutting down with every passing second, I could hardly move my muscles. And the exhaustion… Oh, the exhaustion.”
He nodded, biting back a simmering rage at the image I was painting.
“That’s how I feel all the time, Raegan. Not the not being able to speak, but just that exhaustion. Bone-level exhaustion. It takes everything in me to simply rise every morning.”
He stared at me.
“Which sometimes I want to lean in to. On the weekends I want to rot. Truly rot, caring little for the life I am allowing to pass by. But then anxiety walks in. Anxiety jolts me to life, sears my bloodstream, and sets me charging forward at a pace that my exhaustion won’t allow me to travel.
So I’m constantly stuck between drowning in the heaviest of waters and paddling my heart out. And I don’t see an end in sight.”
“You are tired?”
I shook my head. “No. I sleep. I sleep full nights. Sometimes I sleep nights and days. I sleep and I sleep and I sleep. And then I wake and am… tired. It’s not necessarily my muscles that are so exhausted but me. My heart. My mind. My soul.”
At last he nodded, knowing flashing behind his eyes. “Like you know you must keep pushing, that you must keep your chin high and your shoulders higher, but that you want to collapse under it all.”
“Yes.”
“What helps?”
“Nothing.” You. “Sometimes I sit in front of the sun and I feel charged for an extra hour. Sometimes I laugh with my family and I feel renewed for a day. But it keeps coming, like a storm-cloud that will forever hover over me.”
“You said before that Saoghal helped.”
“It did. But I fear I have brought that very darkness here. To you and your home and your world. I have plagued it just as I–” I gasped, drawing a sharp breath as my lungs tightened and tears pricked the insides of my eyes.
“I have blackened your lands, Raegan. What they say about me… That I am the bringer of evil… I fear it is true.”
He shook his head several times, rage flickering in the depths of the green there. “I do not believe that. I cannot believe it. Because…”
I didn’t think he would continue. I thought he would retreat, like he had so many times before, but he saw the tear roll down my eye and he sighed.
“The darkness that you speak of… I know it. Perhaps I do not know it the same way that you know it, but I have felt its caress and I have heard its haunting songs. Though I had always thought that it was normal, that it was how the others felt, too.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “It was not until you that I realized otherwise. And I cannot tell you why, Olivia, or when, but you waltzed into Saoghal and made me believe that I had never known true sunshine before you. You did pour something over these lands, over all of Saoghal, but it was not darkness. And whatever it was that you accidentally gifted me with, it remained with me. Long past your departure. So when I felt those shadows pressing in again, when I, too, thought I would drown, you–”
“You saw me,” I murmured.
His eyes widened. Whether it was the knowing way that I spoke or the fact that he had just revealed far more than he intended to, I wasn’t sure.
All that I knew was that I saw the exact moment a mask of his came slamming down over his face, and then Raegan was gone. Or the Raegan that I wanted, was gone.
“Raegan… What I said earlier…” I wasn’t sure what to say, but he was staring at me, waiting for me to continue, so I did. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t think you’re… I didn’t mean it.”
His smirk was poisonous as he rose to his feet only to turn and lean over me, his lips near my ear. “You remember taking the ceadan oath, don’t you? Well, little human, I would prefer it if you didn’t lie to me.”
Neither of us said anything until he straightened his spine and resumed the role that he had been born for. “Thank you for sharing,” the King of Talamh said.
I hated that. I hated it so much that I wanted to shout and scream at him. How could he so quickly sink back into King Raegan and so far from the Raegan I desperately needed at my side? How long had he spent mastering his masks so that he could always be protected?
Or had it been taught to him? Whereas I ran and I drank, took multivitamins and ate spinach, went to events and did whatever I could to survive, did Raegan learn his masks? Did he adapt a different one for the varying days, for the opacity of darkness that lingered?
Could I learn them, too?
“Yeah, whatever,” I spat in response, taking a page out of his book and ending the conversation with that tinge of attitude that suggested we would never have it again. He stiffened, his body bristling as my words met him, but he did not say anything to it.
Even though he had shut me out once more, he reached a hand towards me and let one of his infamous grins possess his face. “Come inside, Olivia. Killian wishes to show us this cake that you two found. And it is not green, so I will command you to eat it if I must.”
Frowning, I rose to my feet and took up a stride at his side, ignoring as he let the untouched peace-offering that was his hand fall back to his side.