47
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I woke up in an unfamiliar room, filled with unfamiliar scents, and an overly familiar face staring at me.
“You should’ve run,” Rory sighed.
“You should’ve restrained me,” I growled, launching myself up from the cold corner of the floor that I had been set in.
The tiny scalpel that had followed me through this whole journey, which was passed from pocket to pocket in each of my outfits, was gripped tightly in my hand as I grabbed onto Rory and threw him up against the closest wall.
It was then that I realized we were in some sort of dark, moist place. Likely a cellar, due to the fact that there were no windows that allowed in natural light, but a flickering light above. A real light, electricity and all, which confirmed my fear that they had, indeed, gotten us out of Saoghal.
Scalpel to his throat, I pushed him as hard as I could against the cold brick behind him and tempted the blade closer to his skin. It rested there, right along his artery, and I warned him with my eyes not to move.
“You took my advice, I see,” Rory grunted as he tried to remain as still as possible. “We sent you into the fox’s den and it seems you emerged a wolf.”
“Where is Raegan?”
My tone caused Rory’s eyes to widen. “Olivia, we need–”
“Where. Is. Raegan.” I was unforgiving with my pursuit, pressing the sharpened blade enough that it pricked a droplet of his blood. He hissed as the iron burned at him, causing his instincts to sharpen as his pupils widened and his lips curled back to reveal his fangs.
“Tell me where he is, Rory, or I will–”
“He is here.” Rory winced, trying his best to slide himself away from my scalpel, but I kept the pressure even to his neck. “He is here.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is he going to remain alive for the next ten minutes?”
Rory cocked a brow, but ultimately sighed. “As long as he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
So probably not.
I grunted, forcing my body to relax in one swift movement that meant I dropped the weapon from Rory. My judgement of his character, even though he continued to prove me wrong, caused me to believe that he meant me no harm. Or little harm.
“Then we are going to talk.”
His eyes narrowed as he regarded me, my slow prowl of him as I took to a wide circle around his body.
“I thought we were friends, Rory.”
I did not say it with the heartbreak that resided within me but with the venom that sat on the tip of my tongue. I imagined if I had a mirror, I would have Raegan’s pointed star and his sly mask that fell on his face when he needed to be ruthless and cruel.
“We are.”
“How can we be?” I stopped circling him and threw my shoulders up to my ears. “Friends do not do that to friends.”
“Do what?”
“You treated me as… what? A broodmare? Nothing more than a thing to be dangled and bred?” I couldn’t even tolerate the word as it came out of my mouth, fouling my voice and making me wince.
Rory, too, winced. “What are you talking–”
I launched at him again, placing the pointed tip of the scalpel to the small gap between his ribs that I estimated hosted his heart. “Do not bullshit me, Rory. The tonic. I know what it is, what you assumed it could do for me.”
Instead of being disappointed in himself or showing any sign of disgust at his actions, Rory instead perked up, his eyes brightening and hope shimmering within them. “You have been drinking it?”
I was taken aback by his switch up, so much so that I couldn’t stop my mouth falling open as I stepped backwards and away from him.
“Olivia, this is important – could it have worked? Did you two–”
I stabbed his forearm as he raised it in an attempt to make some sort of motion with his hand that I assumed would be vulgar. He hissed as he wriggled backwards and away from me, only to slam back into the wall and growl about it.
Now the rage was shifting into heartbreak, my eyes filled with tears as I shook my head in disbelief at him.
“I just… I cannot believe you. I cannot believe you would do this. I can’t even begin to understand why you would do something so vile, so disgusting, Rory.”
“It was for the greater good–”
“I don’t care!” I howled, my voice climbing too high though it shook.
“You… you used me in a way that I don’t think I will ever be able to fully comprehend.
And for what? So some kingdom could have an heir when it already has a King?
Yes, Raegan is the King. The King of Talamh.
No amount of forced heirs from me–” my voice cracked, the tears finally slipping from my eyes.
“We are done. I… I can’t even look at you.
And if I was a different person, Rory, I would gut you.
Right here, right now, I would bleed you dry and I wouldn’t shed a single fucking tear.
So be glad that I am who I am, because for once in my life I am struggling to grant mercy. ”
His eyes were watering just as mine were, though his were wider and full of a hazy sort of confusion. “You don’t mean that. Please, let me just–”
The whole cellar structure that we were in rumbled. Not because of a harsh wind or some sort of earth-quake, but because of a roar. This roar was familiar in that I knew the owner of it, but unfamiliar in that it wasn’t rage or anger that caused the noise like usual, but pain.
Extreme pain.
That – knowing Raegan could cry out that way – ended the conversation between Rory and I within a second. I turned on my heel, my heart in my throat and my scalpel gripped in my hand, and ran towards that broken voice. Even though Rory begged me not to.
~
I was right in believing that we were underground, but it wasn’t a cellar that the Rachainn had taken us to but some sort of intricate series of dark, wet tunnels that I struggled to find my way through.
Every-time I started to get lost, though, Raegan would release another one of his blood-curling screams and my feet would be pounding against the stone beneath me once more.
He had howled at least ten times already, each time his voice cracking more and more though he was louder and louder. But I could hear that faint weakening to his cries, evidence of whatever was happening to him breaking him, moment by moment.
When I turned the last corner, guided mostly by the lights around me that bounced reflections off of the collections of puddles every few feet, I understood why Raegan was breaking.
That turn led me into a large, open room. Yet again there was no natural sun in that space, no windows for it to pour through. Even if there had of been, I doubted the sun would have wanted to witness what was happening to the King in that murky room.
There were five Rachainn within the space. They had placed themselves randomly throughout the bare room, resorting to leaning against the rusty-coloured brick walls or crouched over their ankles as there seemed to be no sort of furniture. Four of them, I did not know.
One, I did.
The one that was stood next to Raegan, the one that was pulling cry after cry from him, I knew.
Except it was not a Rachainn, as the other four were, as was Rory that had sprinted after me.
No, who stood against the farthest wall, his eyes focused solely on Raegan and the heavy, agonized breathing that came from him, was a fairy.
Taran.
I might have spared an extra minute to appreciate that, to put the pieces of the puzzle together and somehow figure out who was on what side of this multi-faced war of Saoghal. But I couldn’t. Not when I got a look at Raegan, at what was making him bellow the way he was.
I doubted I would ever come to know how they managed to get him to reveal his wings.
His father had tried. Tremendously. Repetitively. Raegan had never given in, never revealed his most vulnerable, most treasured part of him.
Now, though, he had. Both of them were out, spread as wide as they could go. Raegan couldn’t pull them back, even if he wanted to, because they were pinned to the stone wall, two anchors on which his whole body hung from.
He was a few feet off of the ground, his toes scraping the floor only when he screamed and adrenaline stretched his body as far as it could go. His shirt had been ripped and discarded, likely to bring forth his wings, and Raegan was coated in a wild concoction of his own sweat, spit, and… blood.
Blood.
So much of it.
So much blood that Raegan’s wings of ethereal, golden beauty were no more. They were dull in that space, appearing somewhat white, if it wasn’t for the blood that had splattered up and down, left and right, across them.
I didn’t understand. Not at first.
Not until Taran leaned into Raegan and snarled something in his ear. He gave him all of three seconds, counted aloud. Raegan said, and did, nothing. He only hung, his head heavy, his golden hair curtaining his face and hiding his expression from all.
By the time Taran hit three, I could do nothing. I was left standing, petrified and horrified, as Taran grabbed one of Raegan’s largest feathers and yanked.
Blood sprayed from the snapping and ripping of the shaft, the red liquid pulsing across the room and steaming as the heat of it contrasted the room.
Taran grinned as he watched that spray path, which meant that as he assessed the arch of the droplets, his gaze fell right on to me.
“Ah!” Taran beamed, tossing both of his bloody hands into the air. “There she is!”
My warpath of seething bloodlust started right there – determined to free Raegan from the torture and kill a fairy in the process – as I went to take off, to charge at him. Which was exactly what I would have done, had Rory not grabbed on to me from behind and restrained me.
“No!” I screamed, my voice thoroughly damaged. “Let me go, Rory!”
My voice awakened something in Raegan, causing him to lift his head.
It was only an inch or so, enough for his hair to part and his blood-shot eyes to find me.
The pain that flashed over them was a new sort of pain, more of a worried look, before the green slipped and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.