47 #2
“Come on,” Rory growled as he tried to wrestle me out of the room.
“No,” Taran said. “She can stay. She can watch. Pride might keep him from passing out.”
Raegan managed one word. It was jagged and rough, hardly audible at all. “Olivia.”
That was when I became truly wild. Thrashing and bucking against Rory, trying with all of my might, with every shred of strength, to free myself from his cruel hold. Again and again and again I writhed against him, my skin alive with a burning sensation wherever he had a hold on me.
“Please stop,” Rory begged as he continued to adjust and adjust and adjust.
Taran grabbed on to another one of those magnificent, glistening feathers and yanked.
I couldn’t take it anymore. The noise that tore from Raegan’s mouth shattered everything I was. As the blood began to flow eagerly to those torn sections, I felt a part of me die.
“Please, Rory!” I wailed, bucking against the hands of the guards holding me down. “Please!”
Rory didn’t look at me.
“Take the oath, Raegan,” Taran said, looking uninterested and almost bored as he rocked weight over his hip and sighed.
Raegan said nothing, keeping his head hung, his eyes shut.
“Take the oath and this will all be over. I’ll even throw in a sweetener and promise not to hurt her–” Taran looked wicked as he pointed at me, his lips curled into a cruel smile. “Not too much, anyway.”
I hated that Raegan was letting Taran get to him, because he let out a damning noise even though the rest of him remained still.
His chest was rising and falling far too fast, sweat continuing to fall fast and true across his body, causing him to glisten beneath the light.
But not as he usually glistened, with regality and radiance, but with a slick painting of pain.
“Going once,” Taran purred. “Going twice?” He sighed and rolled his shoulders backwards, cracking his neck as he stepped towards Raegan. “Pity.”
I watched as Taran let out a beastly snarl and grabbed onto the next feather on Raegan’s wings. I saw true, indisputable fear tear open the King’s eyes, something I rarely saw across his face. And the cry that fell from his lips as that feather was torn from him cracked another part of me.
“Rory, you have to stop this! Whatever it is… Whatever you need him to do – let me help.”
Raegan’s eyes, tear-riddled and dark, lifted to mine before he returned to hanging his head in agony.
Even Rory knew that what was occurring to his King was wrong, but he sighed over my shoulder. “We tried that. We tried doing this through you.” Then his voice was soft and full of apologies. “I am sorry. But until Raegan takes this oath, I cannot let him go.”
“Stop!” I roared, vibrating with an indescribable amount of pain. “Please, Rory! Please, stop. Don’t do this. Please, I love him!” I screamed, putting every ounce of all that I was into the noise. Then again, quieter and reserved for only the gods, “I love him, please help him.”
Raegan’s eyes shifted for a second, before the blood-loss crashed over him and forced his body to go limp against those chains.
Taran growled as he slapped Raegan’s face several times, the King refusing to wake in any way. With a huff of defeat he strode away from Raegan’s near-lifeless body, taking to his place against the closest wall where he rocked his weight backwards. “That’s a shame. We were just getting started.”
I knew I could reason with Rory. I hated him and I was beyond disgusted with him, but at his core he was a pixie. He knew that this was wrong, that the torture and bleeding of his king at his hand was likely to earn him some sort of curse by some sort of god.
So I stopped fighting him and pivoted into his chest
“He is losing too much blood. He is going to die. Soon, Rory. He is going to die soon. Please, let me take him home,” I wailed, finally finding the strength to rip my wrists away from him.
“He belongs in the meadows beneath the sun. Do not let his last hours be in this dark, moist place. I beg of you.”
“He offered us no mercy,” Rory snarled, as far away from my friend as he had ever been. “I am inclined offer him the same.”
I did not have a second to think. The urge came over me quickly, a rage so all-consuming that I wasn’t even sure I was in control of my own body as I gripped my scalpel and plunged it forwards.
As I finished impaling Rory – a deep, horrific wound to his gut – I turned that sizzling wrath to the three Rachainn who had watched Raegan bleed, and the fairy that had bled him.
The moment my eyes met theirs, they became nothing but dust. The only warning of such a thing occurring had been the faintest of flashes — a quick brightening of the brick around us, a cloud that contained every colour of the rainbow, sparking and cracking dust and powder of purples and pinks, blues and greens.
In that brief second, it almost looked as if the cosmos had exploded before my eyes.
I equated it to Raegan, who was conscious and groaning behind me.
Turning on my heel, I sped to his side and quickly worked at the chains around his wrist. Next were the two blades that had been shoved through feather and muscle and bone, that had severed the beautiful width of his wings.
I yanked them out, trying my best to zone out how he reacted to it.
He continued to make ailed noises, his eyes rolling around his head as his body tried to fall forward to his knees.
“I’m taking you home, Raegan,” I muttered to him, wrapping myself around his waist as he finally curled over.
I knew that taking him back meant only one thing for me.
He had known, this whole time, that I had been spying on him.
Maybe the first time he let me go out of pity.
This time, after all Rory had inflicted on him, Raegan would not let me live a second longer once he had the strength to strike me down.
That was why I was taking Raegan home.
That was why, as I heaved at the King to begin dragging him, I took us home.
If either of us were going to die in this wretched hour, it would be beneath the sun in Cluaineach.