Page 57 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“No,” he said through a grin, “I think that’s you.”

Her rebutting growl would have been enough to put the conversation to rest, but the two of them instead locked gazes in a challenge of who was more stubborn. Two bulls primed and ready to charge one another. Except all at once they laughed and stepped towards one another, wrapping arms around waists and shoulders.

“Come, fish-boy, we’ve got dinner waiting for you!”

Killian allowed Shea and Aisling to begin walking us towards the dining hall within the palace, but whatever it was that was in me that had been beaten down by disappointment, cried out. Enough to make me slow my pace, enough to make me turn my head, enough to guide my feet away from them.

“Olivia,” Killian called after me as I was suddenly walking towards the staircase and not the dining hall. “Are you not coming?”

“Yeah, I just need to freshen up first,” I called back, not completely sure of the honesty of such a statement but needing to give him some sort of answer. He responded with a strange grunt of knowing before the three of them continued on, their footsteps echoing across the palace of clay.

Somehow – a miracle, I was sure – I reached the third floor of the Cluaineach castle. I veered away from the winding staircase and found myself walking down the long, darkening hallway as the sun slipped away beyond the kingdom, casting the floor-to-ceiling window panes in shadows instead of the usual dripping of sunlight.

That wasn’t why I walked straight past the fourth door, the door that led to the room I had been staying in. No, whatever it was that drove me to continue walking, to stiffen my pace and neutralize the scowl on my face, it wanted to remain anonymous within me.

I had only a few days left before I had to meet Rory again, and I didn’t want to meet him only to tell him I hadn’t even stepped foot in the King’s chambers.

Unfortunately, that thought was also not why I turned at the handle of his door and pushed open the stone.

It probably would have been a good idea to knock, but I didn’t need to. I knew he was in there, I could feel his heartbeat through the hallways, I could smell that strange scent of his from between the cracks of his door. I also knew that he was alone.

But I wasn’t prepared to see him as I saw him.

The room was cold, the temperature within it cruel and unforgiving as I stepped into the space and shut the door behind me. Just like the rest of the castle, every corner of the room was spreading shadows from it as the sun abandoned us. But unlike the rest of the castle, Raegan did not have much in the form of sconces on the wall or fireflies to illuminate the world around him.

No, instead, Raegan stood against the farthest wall of his room, his back to me, his arms braced on the small table against his window. The last droplet of sunlight was being summoned towards the King of Meadows and Woodlands, using the last of its strength to offer him the faintest glow as he hung his head between his shoulders.

Swallowing, I stood in the awkwardness of me having not knocked, and him not greeting me as I interrupted whatever it was that he was doing. A brief glimpse around the room gave off no indication as to why the King was standing before his window like that. Other than the table he was brooding over, there was a large, four-postered bed that looked as if it could house all of his ceadan in it if he wished, as well as a small ensuite that likely hosted one of their strange bathrooms. There was hardly a thing in the room that made it a room. Hardly a thing that made it a home.

I cleared my throat at last.

“You know, here we consider entering without knocking to be rude.”

Oh, I didn’t like his tone. I recognized it immediately, which was furthered by the shudder that rattled my whole being. It was a quick glimpse into our past, the day that he had walked me from this very castle to meet Urram and Gliocas, the day that he had called me a coward only after I had spat the same insult at him.

There was a brief warning, that small voice in my head that screamed get out, Olivia! But I was a stubborn idiot, because I simply stood there and let his words bounce right off of me. He was angry, sure. But so was I.

Others might have evaded Raegan’s eyes, might have dodged out of his path, or might have kept their mouths shut when he was in one of his tempered moods. But I would not. I could not.

So I crossed my arms over my chest and somehow stretched my height another inch, still staring at where he was curled over across the room.

“You didn’t welcome me home.”

The faint outline of his shadowed body revealed him swallowing.

Narrowing my eyes, trying to keep my temper level, I peered over his shoulder towards the window, to the sight that it revealed. It was as I had guessed – a direct line of sight to the doors of the castle.

“So, what? You stood up here and watched us return but couldn’t come and see me home?”

Home. I had said it twice, now. And I knew he had heard it twice. Yet neither one of us commented on it.

Something wasn’t right, though. Something had Raegan’s shoulders too tense, his body too rigid, as if the slightest change to the air around us would cause him to suddenly explode.

I took a step towards him, and he took a step away, pushing himself farther into the shadows.

“What is wrong with you?”

“You,” he growled. “You absolutely reek–”