Page 28 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“I don’t want to talk.”

The look he gave me was laced with mischief as he drove his eyes up and down my body. “Then you shall listen, only.”

I groaned, flipping onto my side and curling into the fetal position so that I knew he could see me when I rolled my eyes.

“I am thankful for your return, for your honesty and loyalty–” Ouch, “– I trust very few in this castle, less so across my two kingdoms. Even those that I once thought closest to me seem to linger with their eyes on my back these days.”

“I’m really not in the mood.”

I hated how much that made him grin. “I can see that. This mood… It is unfamiliar to me – I have not seen such a scowl across a face made for only elegance.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. Knowing Raegan, it was a bit of both.

“Your assessments are very helpful.”

“I aim for them to be,” he purred. If only he knew how that tone churned my whole body to nothing but butter. “Was it the other way around, then? Not you that whittled down Killian, but he who scorned you?”

The glare Raegan received through my brows was sufficient enough to make him bark out a chuckle. But then he took a few more steps into my room and the air tightened around me, my lungs quickly taking up a strained state.

“Did he hurt you?” Raegan’s voice had shifted into something beyond the kingly-arrogance or the fox-prince-slyness.

“No,” I huffed, pushing up and leaning against the palms of my hands. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

Raegan’s eye twitched.

“This is just me, now.” I motioned to my entirety, making sure to pout for extra theatrics. “I am permanently miserable and as cranky as can be.”

I could tell he wanted to laugh at that, but he wasn’t quite sure how serious I was being. “Ah. So you are as you were before you met us all, once more.”

“Correct.” I snapped my fingers. “Even Saoghal is incapable of providing me the relief I so desperately crave.”

“Relief,” he hummed, “not cure?”

“How can it be a cure when I can only stay here for set periods of time? No, it will only ever be a relief, a momentary breath of fresh air. But it does not seem to want to give me even that right now.”

“How bad is it?” he asked, his voice even and containing none of his many masks.

“I’ll be fine,” I grunted as I pushed to my feet at last, wavering slightly over my ankles. It only hit me then that I was droning on about nothingness with a pixie king. Once I remembered that, I swallowed and straightened my spine. “I’ll be fine, I will. Just every now and then it’s nice to have a distraction, you know?”

Raegan’s face showed all too well how he knew.

Which is why it shouldn’t have surprised me when he closed the door behind him and proceeded to take a few more steps into the room.

14

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I thought I had seen every variation of Raegan. But the one who stood in front of me, who lingered in the silence that proceeded the closing of my door, was something else entirely. His face was darkened, a strange shadow across his features that once again made his pupils widen, his nostrils flare. His lips parted, revealing the sharpened tips of his fangs that glistened against the fireflies around us.

But he was nervous. Or scared. Or… something that made his heart beat so fast that I could feel it as it pulsed across the room. He stood there, this King, and stared at me as if the smallest movement on my behalf would cause him to scatter like a deer through the woods.

Then he took a step.

It was the smallest thing, full of uncertainty, yet laced with curiosity as he watched me, unblinking. He took note of every drag I made into my lungs, every expulsion of air. He saw every slow blink I made. I was equally as tranced, simply standing there with my arms wrapped around me, just as prepared to bolt with whatever was occurring between us.

My bloodstream was a violent current within my veins, sloshing around and heating by the moment, threatening to scorch every layer of flesh just to erupt from me. But I remained still, watching as Raegan took another step.

Then another.