Page 63 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“Actually,” Niahm began, “Killian is right – he beat you the last time. And the time before that.”

“Niamh!” Raegan hissed just as Shea began laughing. “Alright, alright. One round.”

We collected on the ground, halfway through the meadow we had been flying over.

Apparently, hail-jumping was something of a little game between the four of them. I didn’t understand a single moment of the explanation that was offered to me as we hit the earth. But I wouldn’t have to understand it, because in only a few minutes I would see it.

Shea jumped off of Milis, offering her mount to Killian after he finished begging her for several minutes. He whispered something to the pegasus, leant over her mane before he pushed them up into the skies. Niamh and I followed, leaving Shea on the ground to be the ‘judge’ of the strange game that was about to unfold.

We climbed higher into the sky than we had before, until we seemed to be in the very spot that hail poured down to the earth below.

“Hold on tight, Olivia,” Niamh muttered in my ear. “Sonus will follow them, so movements might be abrupt and choppy. And the last thing I want to do is be diving through this storm in search of you.”

Gulping, I nodded to her.

Killian and Raegan on Milis and Rìoghail squared up just beneath the cloud, careful to shoot out of the way whenever one of the car-sized balls of hail emerged from thin air.

Niamh sat taller behind me. “You two ready?”

The two males tossed thumbs up in our directions, a competitive strike lashing lightning behind their eyes.

“Three… Two… One… GO!”

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the sound of her tight, pursed whistle, but what they did I would never have guessed.

Killian and Raegan, at the same time, slid off of the pegasus’. They each fell for a few minutes before Raegan slammed his body against a piece of hail, Killian following shortly after on one several feet away from his Prince. Using the hail as some sort of aerial vehicle, they continued to careen down to the ground. I thought that perhaps that was the entirety of the game, until Raegan lifted himself up, crouching over the ball beneath him and leapt to another piece, lower than the first.

My heart was in my throat as I watched both of them leap-frog across falling collections of ice, occasionally missing their mark and soaring towards the earth before they splattered on the ground. Rìoghail and Milis kept up with them, the creatures embarking on their own strange form of competition as they ducked and dove through the onslaught, narrowly missing piece after piece as they kept their eyes on their caraid.

Raegan let out a wild cackle as he stood up on his piece of hail, flexing for the whole world to see. Killian had his own plan, though, and jumped through the air to knock Raegan off of his piece, the two of them whirling through their air completely interlocked. A gasp tore from my throat as I watched them, until at last they each found another piece to surf down towards the ground.

“What happens when they get to the –”

Killian, stood up on his piece like he was nothing more than a skateboarder, hit the ground. The hail exploded beneath him, sending shards of it in every direction and making Shea block her face with her arms as she let out her own bout of raucous laughter.

Raegan landed not a second later and declared that a second round was needed.

Four rounds later and Raegan finally beat Killian. I was pretty sure I had thrown up somewhere along the way, but was glad to see their faces stretched into wild grins as they met us with Shea back on the ground.

“You two are insane!” I hollered through the whistling winds that started to pick up around us.

“We prefer the term brave,” Killian cackled.

“No, no! Just insane. Stupid, too!” I called back, earning me a humoured smirk from Raegan as he found himself on Rìoghail’s back once more. Far more dishevelled than how we had left the dragons, the three pegasus’ took to the sky once more, Rìoghail and Milis noticeably lagging behind Sonus.

We crossed the border of Cluaineach not too long after, finding ourselves above the stretching waters of Uisge that stood between us and Choilltean. Though the storm continued to wage on above us, we twisted and spun around falling hail as we began the long stretch of flight over the water, prepared to get to the other side and hopefully take a minute or two to rest.

We never got that chance, though.

Because as we glided above the ocean, I glanced down.

There, I saw the mass slaughter of pixies.

23

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The vast stretch of water between Marazion and St. Michael’s Mount was no longer blue or green or any unique combination of the two colours. The beach was hardly visible. The shallowest parts of the bay were no longer transparent, granting a subtle peak into the land below.