Page 69 of Where Broken Wings Fly

He knew exactly what I was asking, because he creased his brows and looked away from my paper. I finished scribbling one more sentence then chucked the quill at his head, my only option for earning his attention.

Killian can come in.

~

Killian arrived a few hours later, after I had drank enough lemon-tea to be sure that there were no more lemon trees left on this earth. While I absolutely hated the taste, it soothed the length of my throat and allowed me to speak words, though sparingly and carefully.

He crept into the room and shut the door behind him, leaning against it as he frowned at me. “For someone who claims to hate darkness, you sure were quick to jump right into it.”

It was supposed to be a joke, probably. But neither one of us laughed, instead just staring at the face across from one another as we took in the state of our skin. Killian’s face was red, not flush with heat but with a new layer of skin that looked about as tight and painful as my own face felt.

“You almost got yourself killed,” he sighed, moving further into the room and stopping at the end of my bed.

“The. Twins?” The healer had warned me not to speak, but I just had to know.

“Alive. Thanks to you.”

“Then,” I groaned as I shifted in the bed. “It. Was. Worth. It.”

Making a straight line of his lips, Killian shook his head slowly at me but refused to take his eyes away from mine. “You’re really something else, you know?”

“Laughing,” I coughed, trying my best not to actually laugh. “If you have. Just come in. Here to yell at me. You can save. Your–” I began hacking, my hands wrapped around my throat, “ – your breath. Your patronizing–patronizing Prince beat. You to it.”

“Oh for all that is heavenly and good, please stop talking,” Killian laughed as he crossed the space halting at the edge of my bed.

“May I?” He motioned to the opposite side of the bed, the gaping space between me and the edge. Nodding, I watched as he awkwardly fit himself into the space, capable of hosting another me but perhaps not someone of his width. After maneuvering himself in various directions, he gave up and with a sigh sunk into the material beneath us. “I’m not here to yell at you, Olivia. I’ve come to provide you with some entertainment while you rot here for the next few days.”

“Valiant,” I croaked.

“I thought so.” He grinned. “I don’t have much to offer in the form of entertainment, of course, but I do have stories.”

My eyes shone ever so brighter as that thought sunk in.

Killian, at last settled next to me, released a deep sigh and an agonized groan that made me flinch. Finally gathering the courage to look up at him, I realized he was already staring down at me.

“You terrified me,” he admitted, his voice low and quiet.

I went to apologize, but he shook his head.

“I am trying my best,” he said, frowning. “I am trying my best to be more… more human. For you, I mean. I am trying to keep my more… pixie instincts and behaviours hidden.”

“Don’t,” I breathed. “I want you. The real you.”

He shook his head again just as a guttural noise slipped from him.

“When you slipped beneath the water for the last time and didn’t come back up, I couldn’t take it. The thought of you…” He shook his head a third time and I placed my hand over his just to soothe him. But like I had seen from Raegan several times, his pupils blew wide and his nostrils flared.

“I thought you were as good as dead, and then you were lifeless in my arms and I couldn’t pretend to be human anymore.”

“What does that mean?” I whispered, somewhat afraid of what he might say. Did he want to… eat me? Worse? I regretted asking.

“We do everything intensely, Olivia. We fight with earnest, we laugh hard, we dance harder. We hate powerfully. We love passionately—” He paused, looking down at our conjoined hands. His burly fingers flexed a few times, sending a shiver along my body. “And so I looked down at you, at your face that I feared would never look back at me again, and I resorted to my most primal of states. You were mine and I thought I had let you die.”

“Yours?” My voice was something below a whisper. Frail and uncertain, yet needing to be heard.

“I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t mind that you don’t. But something shifted, Olivia. I…” His pupils continued to widen, even when he blinked several times to rid himself of the look. “I see you now, looking at me with your beautiful, wide eyes, your lips that draw full breaths, and I want to do nothing but take you into my arms and never let the world harm you again.”

I swallowed. The heaviness of his words were somehow denser than the oil-water I had drowned in. But I wasn’t afraid of his intensity, or the way that his gaze drank me in.