Page 24 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“My… I’m…” I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to shy away from the permanent intensity of his eyes. “I’ve been feeling… weird around you.”

Something flashed behind his eyes, something that I would normally equate with humour but his face did not shift. “Any fool can see you are quite taken with me, little human. I thought that was obvious.”

I let out a chuckle as I pinched at his forearm. “Very funny.”

“Then what is it?” he asked as he settled into the image of a king once more. I hated that – that ability of his to shift into whatever personality he needed.

“My chest… My breathing… The very beating of my heart – it changes. And I’ve heard stories and tales of the mating–”

Raegan’s sharp laugh full of falseness and ingenuity made my heart sink. “Mating bond?” Another laugh, another knife right through my soul. “You’re human, Olivia. You cannot be bound to a mate. And certainly not me.”

There must be a level above embarrassment, because it washed over me like a furious wave that made my body flush with heat.

“Then what–”

“Come,” he said, turning away from me and affirming the bend of his elbow around mine. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

I really wished I could have hated him at that moment. But he was Raegan. And that thing I was trying to tell him about – it didn’t want me to hate him. So with a sigh and a grumble beneath my breath, I let the King of two kingdoms lead me towards a dining hall full of pixies.

12

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The double-doors of clay and stone swung open to the dining hall, a space that I vaguely remembered popping my head in once or twice within the Cluaineach castle.

Like every other space in this tremendous palace, whatever wall could be made of glass, was. Though at this time of day it was pointless, because only starlight and moonlight melted through those panes – yet it was enough to light most of the room. Where light couldn’t reach, the slack was picked up by the constant appearance of fireflies who took to the shadows and clung to the ivy that draped off of the stone walls.

Reagan dropped my hand once we stepped through that space, offering one of the guards a curt nod as he motioned for me to continue with him. We walked past long stretches of wooden tables, most of which were eerily empty.

The only table in that vast space that was full was the one tucked against the farthest wall, grander than the rest and twice as long. There, a few familiar faces looked up to us, including–

I hardly had enough time to understand what was happening before Shea was charging towards me. The leathered armour that she wore like a second skin was no more this evening, leaving only her familiar Choilltean greenery and burrow-like, blood-tinted hair upon her head. But what shocked me the most was not only the speed at which she thundered towards me, but that she hugged me.

“Olivia,” she cried out as she wrestled me into a grip capable of killing a rhinoceros.

“S-shea,” I coughed out, quite convinced that my lungs had been perforated in two spots by my ribs.

I looked past her shoulder to see Raegan laughing to himself, Killian just behind him with the same grin on his face. It was like looking into our past, seeing nothing more than two young males with nothing better to do in their days than wreak havoc.

But when Raegan turned back to the table and moved towards the head of it, I saw Killian straighten his spine and swallow. I wished to keep watching him, to notice the subtle shifts to his body, but Shea suddenly released me.

“I’m so glad you are back,” she said, her eyes far brighter than I ever recalled them being. They had always been this dark sort of brown, yet she was so close to me and they were so wide that I could see the faint dappling of gold near her irises.

“Me-me too,” I choked, unable to truly admit that I wasn’t sure this was actually Shea in front of me. Shea, who at one point I thought would have rather pushed me from the back of a pegasus than endure a single conversation with me.

“Here, Olivia,” Killian called out from where he had seated himself back at the table. He was motioning to the spare seat, the last along the stretch that put me next to him and…

I groaned internally as I slipped away from Shea and found my seat next to Killian, all too aware of the heated glare that he was receiving from Raegan, on my other side. Feeling the simmering testosterone from them on either side of me, I instead found myself staring across the table.

Only to see Aisling.

“Aisling!” I hollered far too loud. Her bubble-gum-pink hair shifted as her head lifted, two terrifyingly orchid-tinted eyes glistening as she met me.

“Oh, Olivia, it cannot be!” she cried out with the full extent of her overly warm heart . She leapt up from her seat and folded herself over the table, reaching a hand out for me and caring very little for the fact that she knocked not one but two goblets over in the process.

“You have to know…” She grabbed onto my hand and squeezed until I was sure I no longer had bones. “I didn’t know. About Rory, I mean.”

I flashed her a fake, knowing smile as I tried to pull my hand away. “It’s okay.”