Page 85 of Why Broken Wings Fray

Though the music was fast and rowdy, the tempos aggressive and demanding, Tadgh took my hand gently and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me against him in a way that suggested we would not be meeting that rhythm.

I placed my free hand carefully on his shoulder and awaited him taking the lead. Which he did. And I was right – the way he moved us was nothing short of wrong, our dance becoming something of sweeps and twirls, reconciliations against chests and faces too close together.

“Tell me,” he whispered after a stretching silence, “What is it that you have been tasked with doing today, Olivia?”

The accusatory tone was almost hidden beneath his charming lilt, but I caught it.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

His laugh was bitter and choppy, his breath skimming my revealed neck. “Don’t you? Were you not told to seek me out? To dance with me?”

I pulled back from him, needing to get a read of his face to judge his sincerity. The sharp hue of purple that met me would never fail to make me stutter. “N-no? No, I was not.”

He hummed, bobbing his head side to side before looking away from me and towards nothing. “Interesting. Perhaps it is my mother who is paranoid. Our subjects claim as much.”

I rolled his words around my head several times, somewhat distracted by trying to keep a safe distance between our bodies as he moved us around the meadow. “Wait, were you given a task?”

His smile was poisonous.

“Seek out the human, Tadgh. Pull her into your arms and keep her there, Tadgh,” he began, in a voice not his but light and high-pitched. “Let your hands wander, Tadgh. But do it right in the center, right in clear view, right where he can–”

At last, I looked in the direction that Tadgh had been staring in since the moment we joined hands, only to confirm my fear.

Raegan.

They were using me to goad Raegan.

Shit.

“I must admit–” Tadgh paused to spin me away from him, only to yank me back with just as much intention, “–I would have sought you out without the instruction from my mother.”

Tread carefully, Olivia.

“I am flattered, Tadgh. In more ways than one. But you both misunderstand – Raegan will not so easily be enraged.”

Tadgh’s snicker heated the side of my face. “Won’t he?” I saw his brows lift, his eyes watching Raegan carefully through them as he lowered his face closer and closer to my neck. “It seems that there is much for you to learn about us still.” His hand shifted lower, splaying out and sliding slowly and intentionally down my spine. The shudder that scattered across my back caused me to arch into him, earning me an approving growl as his grip tightened on my hand.

“We are possessive by nature,” he whispered, his lips so close to touching my ear. “That much I am sure you already know. But there is one thing that we do not barter with. Our females are the one and only thing that hold no room for argument.”

I flicked my gaze over my shoulder to see Raegan. Whatever he was feeling, he was doing a very good job at hiding it, even as his knuckles whitened against his glass, his whole body stuck in a state that appeared to reveal he wasn’t breathing.

“What is it that you are planning? What is your mother planning?”

Tadgh feigned an appearance of insulted as he backed off of me. But then his face relaxed into something knowing and sly, a sight far too similar to another Prince I knew. “I am inclined to believe that it is not so different to what your King is planning.”

“He’s not–”

“Where is your friend, Olivia?” Tadgh’s eyebrows lifted. “Raegan’s true sword, his true shield. His shadow from the moment they met. Where is he tonight, of all nights, when Raegan dines with his enemies?”

Fear, uncertainty, and a dripping of betrayal soared through my bloodstream.

Tadgh dipped low only once more, his mouth finding my ear, his lips intentionally running the shell. “I offer you one shred of wisdom, dearest human: Your King is always plotting. Always scheming. Deceit has been bred into him and he will forever rely on it.” Tadgh pulled away, shooting me a sharp wink that made me shiver. “Do not forget that.”

Then Prince of Uisge offered me yet another bow, blew a mocking kiss in the air, and strode off.

The problem was – the reason I felt so uneasy as he left – was that I believed him. And I had allowed my blindness of Raegan to conceal that.

I did the only thing I could think of – I stormed off.