Page 80 of Why Broken Wings Fray

Yes, I actually said Uhh. I, Olivia Loughty, evenly between twenty-seven and twenty-eight, said Uhh in response to a serious question.

There was a creak and then a thud, Raegan having shut his door and resorted to leaning against it. “Is there more to your story than Uhh?”

No, not really.

“I was… I–” What I really needed was to completely distract Raegan. There were only two ways to do that, and I refused to stoop to the level that one of them required. So I quickly changed paths, shot up to fully-standing, and turned to face him. “I am confused, Raegan.”

His brows both shot high, indicating his confusion as to how my break-and-enter had anything to do with my confusion.

I had to pull at threads in my brain to make my pleading make sense. “I was confused about the concept of mating bonds and I thought–”

Raegan groaned as he palmed his forehead, finally pushing off of the door and taking a few steps towards me. “Olivia, not this again–”

“Shush,” I grumbled. “I can’t help it. I feel so… strange around you–” Not a complete lie. Yes, focus on half truths. The ceadan bond would give me away far too quickly if I did anything otherwise. “I think we might be.”

He shook his head several times, each swipe of it drilling more and more pain into my heart. “This, between us? It is not a mating bond.”

“But, Raegan–”

“It is not a mating bond!” he said, his voice stern yet his expression elsewhere entirely as he began to pace. “No… It cannot, I cannot– No. It is not a mating bond.”

While his pacing continued, I stared at him and slowly used my foot to close the drawer behind me. “I feel otherwise, though. And others, they have said–”

“Others are wrong,” he snarled, though his frustration was odd in that it didn’t seem to be pointed at me. No, instead he stared at the ceiling as he walked back and forth, back and forth. Finally, his movements stopped and he turned to face me. “What does that have to do with you being in here?”

“Well I just felt drawn to your room–” Not a lie. I always felt drawn towards him. “And the only thing that made sense was a mating bond–”

“No,” he grumbled once more. “What you feel… It is nothing more than the ceadan bond. A simple oath transformed and accentuated with magic. That is all.”

I frowned at that. Was he talking about more than what I was talking about? Was he suggesting that the entirety of what was between us was just the ceadan bond?

Worst of all: was he right? Was it truly just the pledge of loyalty that made me crave him so?

“I do not believe you,” I huffed. Yet again another truth.

I hated the bitter laugh that came out of the King, not Raegan. “Well I cannot make you believe me, can I?”

You probably could.

But I saw an in. An opportunity to tackle two problems at once. “Records! You must have records, do you not? Documents? A path of the history of pixies? Something that I could read to hopefully understand you all better?”

I had piqued Raegan’s thin interest.

“It would help me put my outrageous idea of us being mates to rest, of course.”

It hurt me to say it, and it hurt him to hear it.

“It probably would. But no, we do not have… documents. We do not keep our parchments, instead we return them to the earth. Our tales and stories are told only by mouth. Do you humans do it differently?”

I nodded, but my mind was elsewhere.

Pixies didn’t keep records. They didn’t keep transcripts. They didn’t keep ancient scrolls with rituals. Rory must have known this. Brian, too. All of the pixies that had come up with this absurd plan. Mustn’t they have?

Raegan was still talking, muttering about something to do with his history, but I was so deep in that confusion that I had zoned him out.

Rory was wrong. It was a simple accident. Nothing more.

So my plan still stood – I would need to tell Rory that no such thing existed. That their one plan to refrain from killing Raegan just went up in flames. Tomorrow, after Imbolc. One day early, I would head to the causeway and meet the booth-master.