Page 25 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“Where we are to go… Raegan has not visited in an age.”

“Speaking of age…” I trailed off, unsure if I truly wanted the answer.

“One-hundred-and-sixty-two.”

Swallowing, I tossed my forehead in Raegan’s direction. “And him?”

“Er,” Killian scratched at his stubbled chin. “One-hundred-and-seventy… eight.”

“Nine,” Shea growled.

“Nine,” Killian laughed.

“So you guys are like… old old.”

“Not at all,” Niamh invited herself into the conversation, crawling her way across the beach until she was in front of us. “By pixie standards, we’re younger than you.”

“And how old do you think I am?”

Shea narrowed her eyes at me just as Niamh spat out — far too quickly — “Forty?”

I nearly choked on sea-salt air.

Shea found the ability to chuckle as she looked between the two of us, her infamous scowl fading and making way for a tense smile. “I think you insult the human, Niamh.”

“Oh!” Niamh squealed like a pigeon. “Sorry!”

Desperate to move on, I looked back to Killian. “Tell me about the Rachainn?”

If I had learned anything about Killian — and his friends — it was that he didn’t like to talk about serious things. Anything that brought a vein to his forehead or creased his brows, he avoided like the plague.

“They’re—”

“Scoundrels,” Shea seethed just as Niamh spat “Idiots.”

“Not really helpful.”

All three of them glared at me.

After clearing his throat only about a hundred times, Killian continued. “They’re radicals. Fanatics who believe in changing the ancient and sacred ways of our people.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“It wasn’t, at first. They each belonged to their own kingdoms before they took to these ideas. Before long, they were ostracized, isolated from the rest of us and exiled from their kingdoms. But that only made it worse, gave them more power, fed the hate that they started to have for their own kin. A couple years ago, it was rumoured that they were planning something.”

“Planning something?”

Killian shrugged. “None of us knew what that meant. Beneath it all, we’re peaceful beings. So no one took the rumours seriously. We believed it to just be more of their antics to breed fear amongst the kingdoms, to demand a change.”

“But now…”

“Now, we might have been wrong to let the Rachainn run so freely.”

“So what are we going to do?”

All three of them shot their brows to their hairlines as they looked at me.

“We?” Shea spat.