Page 28 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“That can’t be a good sign,” Niamh grumbled as she shuffled the bow on her back, the string no longer digging into her neck. Shea muttered her agreement to that as the two of them grouped up, meeting Killian and I where we stood just behind Raegan.

Raegan hissed a curse under his breath as he looked to the sky, his eyes squinting as the sun tried to radiate them.

“What’s the matter?” Killian grinned. “Our Prince doesn’t want to walk?” He made a point of pouting his lips as he pretended to rub at his eyes. His mockery earned him approving laughter from Shea and Niamh, but I wouldn’t dare let my own chuckle surface. Instead, I pinched my mouth tight and looked at the never-ending abyss of green that we had been deposited into.

I expected Raegan to lash out at one of them, but the Prince turned with a wicked smile on his face. “I could command you to carry me, Killian.”

“You could.” Killian offered both of his arms to the Prince. “Come on, let me serve my royal Highness.”

The two of them locked into a whirlpool of smirks and glistening eyes as their faces twitched.

Niamh stepped to my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. “All this time and I don’t think the two of them have matured even a little.”

My face softened as I looked at her. “They’ve been together for a long time?”

“Too long.” Shea swatted at a piece of grass that was tickling at her head. “Far too long.”

Determined not to be the one to interrupt the two pixies as they shot retort after retort at one another, I let a small smile appear on my face as I turned to the two girls. “What about you two?”

“I joined the ceadan centuries ago.”

Shock tugged at my brows as I accepted Shea’s answer.

“I’m not sure that I’m actually in the ceadan, if I’m being honest.” Niamh paused to swipe some of her hair out of her face as she looked around at the grass. “But the King doesn’t question my comings-and-goings, and Raegan continues to bore me with tasks.”

“So you truly work for Raegan? I thought you were his family, or something,” I admitted.

Shea let a moment of softness grace her features before they snapped tight again. “We are.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Olivia,” Niamh wrapped an arm around my shoulder and turned us away from Killian and Raegan. “Pixies very rarely find true friends. When we do, only death is capable of prying us from one another.”

“That’s…” I trailed off, my mind unable to conjure up a word to explain how I felt at hearing that. It was what I had wanted, my whole life. To belong. “That’s wonderful. Killian is lucky to have you.” As I said it, I stole a quick look at him over my shoulder. Somehow, he had managed to get Raegan into a headlock beneath his armpit and was working at scruffing his golden hair.

“Nah. Killian is one of those ones that could wander this life alone and be content. We are lucky to have him, if anything.”

Killian’s eyes snapped up to us as if he could detect a shift in the wind and his name upon it. When our eyes met, his already wide grin grew impossibly larger and he offered a curt wink.

Only moments later did the earth begin to rumble. My knees wiggled beneath me as I fought to stay balanced, the dirt at my feet dancing as it reacted to the vibrations that graced us. Grass just beyond our position violently parted, the tips just visible as they slanted to either side.

Bursting forward from the clear line they had been travelling, a pixie and his mount slammed to a stop, twisted to the side, and looked down his nose at us.

It wasn’t a hoverfly or a ladybug or a pegasus that this pixie rode, but a jackrabbit. It’s fur a deep tone of brown that matched the mud beneath the grass, his two boisterous ears spanning the width of my whole body as he froze in our presence.

“Prince Raegan Righ’Faiche’Rugadh,” the pixie gasped, some of his neon-purple hair blowing from his face by how quickly his words breezed the air. “We had not received word that you were… you…” The pixie leapt from his rabbit, his two boots slamming down onto the ground before he dropped his body into a kneel, bowing his chin to his chest and curtaining his face in lavender hair.

No one corrected the pixie when he used a name different to the one the Uisge pixie had used. I frowned.

“No need for that,” Raegan mumbled as he worked to fix the hair that Killian had scruffed. “Rise.”

The stranger popped back up to his feet immediately. His hair, while vivid and wild in colour, was thoroughly brushed to the point where it was dead straight, stopping just below his ribcage. It was a strange sight to see after being mostly in the presence of Killian and his friends with their bird-nest hair.

The pixie looked at the rest of us, finally noticing our presence. He dipped a chin to each of us as he placed a hand across his chest.

None of my companions did the same. The air became icy around us, a sharp tension that had me checking to make sure my ears were covered.

“Apologies for my sudden intrusion on your trek. My name is Rory, I came only to check on the entrance of your party into Cluaineach.”

Raegan, having finally finished adjusting his attire, looked at Rory. “Is our entrance being denied, then?”