39
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I was in a blind fury as I stormed away from dancing and the music, my head pounding and my world spinning as the harsh reality of being in a realm with the fair folk continued to crash over me.
I managed to find my way back into the castle, take the stairs three at a time, and level out on the fifth floor – and floor I had yet to find myself on.
There, pacing the length of the hallway with one of my hands around my throat and the other across my mouth, I tried to think. I tried to think as Raegan would think.
“Only fools think that they understand the prince.”
Had Killian been right, that first day that I asked him about Raegan? Had the truth so obviously been before me this whole time and I had numbed myself to it?
Raegan had claimed what was strong between us was the ceadan bond, nothing more, nothing less. Did the ceadan bond make me turn away from the things that he did? Was that why Killian and Shea could so easily forgive him when he did cruel things?
My whole world was closing in on me, suffocating me, so my only option was to brace my hand against the closest wall and hyperventilate.
Great.
Close to heaving, I remained in that position – somewhat curled over and about ready to faint – for far too long. My heartbeat was in my ears and my stomach was churning, threatening the one swig of nectar that had hit my stomach like an anvil in the ocean.
“Here,” a voice, familiar yet unfamiliar as I spiralled away from reality, said as a body approached me.
The light within my eyes shadowed as they pressed closer, as their one arm wrapped around my waist and the other grabbed my shaking arm.
Carefully, one step at a time, my nameless and faceless saviour maneuvered me out of the hallway and into the closest room.
The door shut behind us, the sun bled through the glass-walls, and I finally took a deep enough breath that I was able to look up.
Of course, it was the one person who I likely needed to be far away from right now.
“Are you alright?” Raegan asked, his hand moving for one of the tendrils that tickled at my brow. I swatted him away, taking a large step backwards and away from him.
“Olivia?” His face was pinched so tightly, the confusion pressed into the creases of them, that I felt a pang of pity for him. Only for a moment.
“W-what are you… What is tonight? What is it really?”
His look of shock lasted only about the span of one of my rapid heart beats, before he sighed and rolled his shoulders back. “It is Imbolc. Has no one told you about Imbolc?”
“I’m not in the mood for this, Raegan,” I seethed, bracing myself against the nearest wall as my knees threatened to give up on me. He took a hesitant step towards me, his arms out as if he planned to help, only to realize that I was serious.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed if you don’t know what it is–”
“Raegan!” My body was still shaking, except now it wasn’t overwhelm but anger that made my bones rattle. “Why is the Queen here? I know you have plans. Where is Killian?”
“Killian?” he scoffed. “Probably busying himself with the females–”
“Don’t,” I growled. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
The softness and openness that had been dominant on Raegan’s face the last few days dissipated, leaving only the King glaring down at me. “I will do what I must.”
“No,” I begged. “No, not this again. Please – please. Just tell me.”
He shook his head, over and over, before he turned away. “You need not be concerned with anything, Olivia. Enjoy tonight, I beg of you, and leave it at that.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is fair and it is what it is.”
My heart was deflating in my chest, leaving me empty and broken. “It will always be this way, won’t it?”
He stared at me, absent of all thought.
“You claim it is the ceadan bond and I, finally, agree with you. Why else do I let you do this? Why else do you think it’s okay to do this to me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Us, Raegan! You said it was the ceadan bond, that all I feel for you can be whittled down into such a tiny thing–”
He shook his head. “I did not mean that. That is not what I meant.”
“Then what?” I pleaded. “Please. You have left me confused time and time again and I cannot figure it out! I need you to tell me. Tell me, what is it that–”
“I cannot think!” Raegan roared, his pacing renewed as he ran a hand through the base of his hair.
“You walk into a room and I cannot think. It is as if my tongue has been ripped from my mouth and my body has been taken over by another. Everything about me simply numbs when you share the same air as me.” Then he prowled closer, his movements abrupt and intentional, forcing my feet backwards until my back slammed against the nearest wall.
He continued towards me until his chest grazed my chest, his head angled in the strangest of ways as he drew in a large breath.
“I cannot think when you look at me like that, Olivia,” he snarled. “I cannot think when all I can smell on you is how desperately you want me.”
As if to prove his own point, he wrapped an arm around my waist and yanked my body against his. I didn’t have enough time to correct the noise that came out of my mouth, instead forcing us both to witness the soft moan as I felt the stiff length of him grind against my waist.
His voice, drunk on lust and lazy, slithered into my ear, “I cannot think when you whimper at my mere touch.”
A haze had fallen over me, all of my senses disappearing as he rotated his hips ever so slightly, sliding the risen hardness of him against me. I couldn’t even remember what we were arguing about.
“I cannot think when all I can focus on is how desperately I want you.”
Just as he rubbed against me again, this time his hand moved along my front, his fingers soon dragging against the insides of my thighs.
Like I was put on this earth only to obey every subtle command from him, one of my legs hitched up against the wall and allowed his fingers access to the concealed curve of me.
“But you claim it is just the ceadan bond.”
Raegan made a guttural noise, evidence of a frustration at the resurfaced conversation.
It should have stirred some sort of terror in me, but instead it flashed my body with heat at the exact moment that his fingers — through the heaviness of fabric — pushed against me.
Moaning once more, I angled my hips for a better, more torturous swipe of his fingers.
“Not the ceadan bond,” he muttered, his whole body crowding mine as his lips found my neck. “I have wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
“You are just saying that–”
“I prayed,” he began, his breathing dull and his eyes fluttering, “I prayed, morn and eve. I prayed to every god, begging them to bring the sun to Choilltean.” He managed to still his wandering eyes long enough to look at me, a certain level of desperation within them that made me draw in a sharp breath.
“You arrived, radiant and powerful in your kindness and your goodness, your hair like sunlight and a pair of eyes that can see right through me, and I knew that the gods had not completely forsaken me.”
“Raegan–”
“So you ask me what it is? What I feel?” There was a tear in the fox-King’s eye as he stopped blinking altogether, even his chest slowing in its rise and fall.
“I want nothing more than to be with you, Olivia. I want it more than I wish to breathe, I want it more than I wish for a heart that beats. But that is the issue – because I have known my whole life that nothing must rise above my duty. I must care for nothing more than I care for my kingdom.” His face pinched as he let out a low groan, shifting awkwardly over his feet.
“The gods have been cruel to us, my sweet human. If I could remove myself from you, I would.”
“Don’t say that–”
“I mean it,” he coughed out, his throat growing hoarser with every word as he took an abrupt step back, reality crashing down on the both of us. “I wish it was just me that suffered as a consequence of my title.”
“You will tempt the gods with talk like that.”
Raegan let out a spluttered version of his infamous, snarky laugh before his eyes moved to the ceiling above us. “If they are listening then I pray they hear my pleas. I pray they shift the skies and shake the lands until this little life that you and I pretend we can have, can be our reality.”
He took one last look at me, his eyes hooded with a new sort of sadness, before he brushed my hair behind my ear. “You ask me what tonight is? Tonight is for you, Olivia. Fill my kingdom with your beautiful laughter and your magnificent smile. Let us worry about the rest later.”
All I could do was nod at him, the rest of me petrified into a strange stillness born of his admission that I never thought he would offer.
He stepped towards me and pressed a soft kiss to my brow before turning and leaving, this time for good.
Maybe the trick to understanding Raegan was in accepting that he was not meant to be understood but accepted. Fox-slyness, many masks, snide smirk and all. He was not a book that I could open and read, that I could learn in a linear way, but one that traded in truths and vulnerability.
If that was what Raegan needed from me, then I could do that. Because I, too, was not so easy to understand, and he had accepted that the moment we met.
And maybe, just maybe, I needed to stop listening to everyone else. Everyone else, who didn’t know Raegan.
The real Raegan.