Page 109 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Leave me, now.”

“I cannot.” I didn’t mean because he wouldn’t make it back on his own. “Just a little farther, Raegan–”

“No!” he roared, sliding out of my hold and stumbling backwards. He shied away from my eyes as he braced himself, all of his muscles contracting, his face pinching. What he was bracing himself for, I had no idea, until all at once his wings shuttled into his body. No matter how well he had prepared himself for that, he still let out a screech of agony that tore at the rawest parts of my heart.

“That’s not going to help.”

“Maybe not,” he grunted. “But that will.” He pointed to the sun. “Though everyone around me seems to prefer otherwise, I am part Cluaineach pixie. I will heal beneath this sun, just let me go and leave.”

I wasn’t even holding on to him anymore, which was a clear sign that he was not okay and was more than likely delusional.

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“You must. You are a traitor.”

A thousand blades to the chest wouldn’t have caused me an equal agony.

“The truth will come out, soon, I imagine,” he sighed, his face darkening with every passing second as he rolled onto his back and splayed his body out. “I will not be able to protect you.”

“Protect me? Raegan, I… I betrayed you. Am I not deserving of the punishment that would befall me?”

His voice was even, his eyes pointed to the sky, as he said, “Your sentence would be death. And I lack the strength to sentence you.”

Shaking my head, I dropped to my knees so I didn’t have to voice my words across a larger distance. “So you would rather I go?”

He wasted no time before nodding. “I must put my people above all else. Above even you. So I cannot put myself in a position where I would need to choose.”

“You are speaking of more than my sentence, aren’t you?”

He said nothing, only took a broken breath.

“It was always going to be this way, wasn’t it?”

Yet again he formed no words, but he did nod.

“Why does it need to be this way?”

“You are my one weakness,” he said, a new darkness to his tone as he tried to whisper instead. “My heart, my body, my mind should exist for only my kingdom. Yet you… I cannot have weaknesses, Olivia. You are everything to me and you shouldn’t be.”

War and Duty. Opposite sides of his heart.

He was trapped in it yet again. Except, this time, it wasn’t two kingdoms that called to him, but the duty to his domain and a human woman who threatened it all.

“Can’t you just… Go? Turn away from this and never look back. Be gone — be gone to a place where I cannot scent you at every turn, where I cannot see your eyes in my darkest hours, where I can finally think as myself once more?”

“No,” I breathed. “No, I cannot.”

“The human world – it awaits you. It can offer you everything.” Raegan finally looked at me, though his eyes met mine along the length of his nose. “That little life that we dreamt of – it was only that. A dream. Reality waits for you to seize it, and we both knew that I would never be a part of it.”

I hadn’t experienced many goodbyes in my life, but this was starting to appear like it was one.

So I let out a strangled whimper as I shook my head. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can make it so.”

The smile that took to his face was somewhat insulting, a curling of disappointment as he blinked at me. “We cannot. You have never been foolish, Olivia. Do not start now. See me for what I am, see this situation for what it is, and run. Run while you can, before they place chains on you and place you before me.”

He was truly begging.

And that was why I rose. That was why I sniffed back the last of my tears and stared down at him, starting to convince myself that it was going to be the last time my eyes set on the King of Talamh.