Page 122 of Why Broken Wings Fray

Shea had a tear in either of her eyes and one on her chin. She wiped none of them away.

“I should have sent her away long ago. I should have sent her away the day Killian walked her through those doors and I felt a warmth like none other. I should have sent her away when one look from her stilled the beat of my heart and collapsed the expansion of my lungs. I should have been selfless–”

“She wouldn’t have wanted that, Raegan,” Shea murmured, crouching closer again. “She was like you in that way. Stubborn beyond belief with a heart far larger than what was good for her. And… And she loved you. I saw it when she first visited, and I could not look away from it when she returned. She would not have allowed you to cast her aside. You know this. Whatever it was that was between the two of you, it was raw and it was real. The gods themselves cannot deny such a thing.”

Raegan’s frown slipped off of his face, just as the rest of his emotion did.

He snapped upright, his body taking to a rigid, straight line at once that caused Shea to gasp and stumble away from him.

“No one is to enter this room,” he commanded, his voice that of a King’s once more.

Shea flicked her eyes from Raegan to his human, over and over again. “She’s not going to–”

“Go and hunt, Shea. Hunt to the ends of this world and the next, if you must. The Rachainn have spread out but they will not stay that way for long. I want them all dead.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you sure–”

“Go. Out,” he snarled.

Raegan knew when he was cruel. He knew how to be cruel. He knew the way to hold his body so that others did not argue with him, he knew how to sharpen his voice so that others scattered away from him. And he knew Shea was not deserving of it, but he did it nonetheless.

Shea bowed to her King, a cautious look in her eyes, before she shot out of the mausoleum and shut the stone door behind her.

~

Raegan broke.

It had started the moment she died, but it truly knocked into him then. His body decayed from the inside out, his mind soon a cruel torture that he had to endure as he looked at Olivia.

He grabbed onto her hands, her skin so pale and cold as they touched. Slowly, one pad of her finger at a time, he kissed the frigid skin.

Back on his knees, a position he would only ever take to for her, he pressed her knuckles to his trembling lips and closed his eyes.

“Cernunnos,” Raegan whispered, a warm tear gathering in the corner of his eye.

Uncurling her fingers, he placed them against his cheek and leant into them, nuzzling his nose into the bend of her wrist where her pulse should have been strong.

“Cernunnos, I beg,” the King croaked. “I beg of you, give her back to me. Take my crown, take my title, take my people, if you must. Take it all. Just give her back to me, please. Let me have her, let me love her. Let me love her the way she deserved to be loved. Let her turn me kind and soft and warm, just as she was.” Raegan’s voice cracked at last as he tried to bring warmth to her skin by rubbing her hand on his cheek. But her skin would not take to the temperature. “Give her back to me,” he murmured, brushing a kiss across her palm a second, third, fourth time.

But Raegan knew, then, that he had been wrong. That he had been a fool. Because the gods did not forgive him. And he was, as he had always been, unworthy.

Unworthy of love, yes.

But unworthy of Olivia Loughty.

Unworthy of the little life she would have gladly lived with him.

56

____________________

The King of Talamh did not move from the resting place of Olivia Loughty for many days. The sun shifted overhead, the moon danced across the sky, and then the songbirds sang for the bright horizon beyond, and Raegan did not move.

No one came for him, either. They knew better. Shea popped her head in on occasion to make sure he was still alive. His ceadan left water at the door and refused to step into the space.

On the third day, though, that door did creak open behind him. Wider and louder than before, suggesting a body was soon going to continue through it. One did, and Raegan knew his scent immediately.

“I did as you asked,” Killian muttered. Even though his voice was low and quiet, it still bounced around the room and caused Raegan to lift his head from where he had placed it in Olivia’s cold hands.