Page 12 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Your hair looks like moonlight. No longer the reflection of the sun of Cluaineach as it had been in the hour of our meeting. No, like moonlight. Even starlight, it seems.”

He hummed to himself, his eyes flicking over my face. But he still wasn’t surprised to see me, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then his hand released my hair, he let out a deep sigh, and he continued his walk straight past me.

I stuttered out my words faster than I could think of them, if only to keep him, his body, his warmth, in front of me for a moment longer. “My hair hasn’t changed.”

Raegan stilled. His whole body bristled, a movement that caused the air around us to shift and vibrate. I couldn’t help but to all of a sudden match his strange stance, his ramrod straight back and his widened eyes.

He moved towards me, his hand stretched out towards my face. I was relieved, until that hand gripped my throat and lifted me up off of the floor.

Gurgling, I tried with all my might to claw at the hand tightening and tightening around my neck, until I was left choking on my own spit. He watched me writhe, his eyes growing wider with every second as a whole new emotion set over his face.

Still choking me, he tipped his head to the sky above and roared, “Even in my most wretched of hours, I have not heard her voice.”

The air around us continued to buzz as I kicked out, my hands desperately scraping at the lengths of his forearm. But he didn’t care. He only continued to glare at the sky, as if he planned on setting fire to it himself.

“What is this? Why do you mock me so, Cernunnos? Why further darken my most blackened of hearts?”

He’s gone crazy.

I could see it, now. What Rory had warned me of, what I had wanted to believe so wholly was not true. The paranoia was rife across his features, his eyes continuing to stretch, his face twisting into fear. My vision was beginning to blur.

“Perhaps not Cernunnos,” he dropped his glare from the sky, holding fast with his grip around my neck, and began to scan the meadows around. “Perhaps a sly plotting of my enemies. Why must I be mocked with that which was my one reprieve?” At that, his voice cracked and his eyes stopped searching our surroundings. Instead, he let them fall on me, his gaze meeting mine as I tried to fight for air. “Soil my soul with anything but her.”

There was no ability for me to speak. Instead, I used one of my flailing arms to reach up to the necklace around my neck, to the flimsy silver chain that I had attached a thoroughly dried-up aotrom to. Grabbing on to it, I pulled it free of my shirt and tried to direct his attention to it.

Frowning, he released me and let me settle back over my feet. His eyes blinked at that aotrom, over and over, until he finally looked back at me.

“It is truly you?”

I rubbed at my neck, my breathing hoarse and choppy as my lungs desperately dragged air into them. Instead of being able to answer him, I simply nodded and continued to work at my neck with both hands.

His face relaxed. Which allowed me to relax.

Again, another thing I shouldn’t have done.

Because while Raegan appeared like he had given up on choking me to death, he instead placed his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. What nerve he managed to pinch, I would never know – because I simply blacked-out.

7

____________________

I woke up surrounded by moisture.

I felt blindly in the space around me, seeking the puddle that I must have been sitting in. The air that lingered in all directions smelled moist, while it was thick enough to coat the inside of my lungs with some sort of sludge. The only reasonable explanation was that I had been set in a sewer and left to rot.

On first inspection of the space, I wasn’t too far off. I was in a dungeon. A pixie dungeon.

I groaned as I rose to my feet, padding my way across the compacted mulch and whatever fluid was causing it to squish beneath my feet. There were bars all around me, save for the far wall which was the wall of the castle itself – a familiar clay-like stone that I recognized as the Cluaineach castle.

Rubbing at the sore-spot of my neck where Raegan had pinched me, I shuffled to the border of the bars and pressed my face between them.

There wasn’t much to see outside of my little square cage. Only an aisle-way that continued from my cell to the next, a very faint, flickering sconce several feet past the farthest cage from me, and that overwhelming drip of something from the ceiling.

Grunting to myself, I paced back and forth in that space. Over and over, ignoring the horrid texture beneath me, and focusing instead on the darkest corners of the cell as if I could imagine an ally in them.

That kept me occupied for all of thirty minutes. After that, I stood in the corner of the cell and stared at the wall.

That lasted an hour. Then I was back to pacing, to stepping repeatedly in the same footprints with the challenge of trying to create a permanent path of my stay.