Page 32 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Yes,” Raegan snapped, cutting Shea off. I broke my stare with the jewel long enough to catch Shea’s snarl.

“What… What is it?” I dared to ask, snapping the tension between the two of them. Raegan’s eyes remained hard and unforgiving as he found me at his side, but his hand tightened for a moment against the fleshiest part of my knee, a reminder that the real him was there, somewhere, drowning beneath the rest of him.

“It’s–It’s Queen Tonn’s family necklace. It was taken from the neck of her grandmother – gods, it must have been several centuries ago now?” That was Killian, partaking in his own form of true shock as he stared at it. “Raegan, you will give it up?”

“Give it up?” I frowned. “If it’s hers… her family’s… How did he have any right to hold on to it to begin with?”

The jewel was no longer the most interesting thing in the room. No, I was. Yet again my ignorance to their ways was as obvious as my own hair within a field of darkness, because everyone was watching me with judgemental eyes.

“My grandfather took it from them,” Raegan explained, ignoring all who stared. “I do not condone every action of my kin, and I had planned on returning it to her once I took to Choilltean’s throne. But she will not accept any form of correspondence from me, and I will not trust the deliverance of it to any half-witted pixie.”

Raegan’s tone was snide, his eyes upturned, and his smirk shadowing his lips. I knew what that expression meant, what it had prefaced before, and it made me shudder. Nothing good ever came from his fox-like expressions.

“Some of my ceadan will escort you to the boundaries of Cluaineach. But beyond that, Olivia…” Raegan trailed off, his brows so tightly pressed against one another that they looked as if they had become one. “Beyond that, I will not be able to reach you. I will not be able to protect you.”

“I will,” Killian declared, and I knew that he had dug his own grave the moment he said it. Raegan’s glare, weaponized and sharp, shifted to his friend on the other side of me. I leant forward, blocking the King of Talamh from killing Killian with his gaze alone.

“I’ll be alright,” I assured Raegan, not completely believing it but hoping that Killian’s unspoken promise of my safety would be sufficient. “Really, I’ll be alright.”

I made Raegan meet my eyes, I made him see what remained unsaid between us. It was the slow blinking and the softening of the skin around mine that said I will return to you, and the slight nod of his head that signified his relief at it.

“I best go and get ready, then,” I said, speaking to no one in particular.

Nodding, I bade farewell to my friends around the dining table as I rose. One last dip of my chin was offered to Raegan, whose gaze had slipped into something not quite his. I couldn’t focus on that, though, not with the knowledge of what I had to do.

Smiling at them all, I pivoted on my heel and strode out of the dining hall, listening to the echoing of their laughter that kept that smile on my face for the entire climb up the twirling stairs. Fireflies accompanied me, buzzing and circling everywhere I went. It was strange to think at one point, their presence had been a nuisance and a frustration, but now they were a strange sort of comfort, a white-noise that I needed at all hours of the day to survive.

Now, they were home.

Cluaineach was home.

Saoghal was home.

And the pixies were my home.

I would do everything I could to keep it that way. If that meant detouring from the plan I had with Rory in order to try and keep the peace between the kingdoms, then Rory could wait. Sooner or later, I would find the ritual they needed. But first, my pixies needed me.

16

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“This is Ciara,” Shea announced, prepared to offer no further explanation as I halted in front of her at the double-doors of the Cluaineach castle.

Killian waltzed up to my side, kitted in his leathers and dual swords sitting comfortably over his back. “She’s another of Raegan’s ceadan,” he explained, either overly aware of how confused I was or simply helpful. It was hard to say.

“‘Another of Raegan’s ceadan,’” Ciara, who somehow looked even more ruthless than Shea, scoffed. “I recall a time when you considered me much more than that, Killian.”

My eyes shot wide as I forced myself to swallow, desperate to keep my expression from my face.

Killian shot her a cruel smile and an even more unpleasant wink that she rebounded away from and snarled at. It was like watching two alley-cats prowl one another, except no one said a thing.

“And I’m Liam,” another pixie said, bowing handsomely in front of me and scattering his sun-kissed brown hair across his face. He swept it back with a calm ease as he rose at last, offering me a smile that could contest Killian’s in the mischievous-joy department. “I wasn’t sure if anyone was planning on introducing me.”

“Oh shut up, Liam,” Shea and Ciara both barked at the same time, which only brought about a new tension as the two females glared at one another.

It seemed, as Niamh had once explained, that not all pixies got along. And, the bond that I had seen between Raegan, Killian, Niamh, and Shea, had been a rarity. Because these four definitely did not respect and adore one another in the same way.

All of them wore the same attire of leather. Leather arm-guards, leather breast-plates, leather shin-guards. Ciara had two swords over her back beneath her meadow-grass-green hair, whereas Liam had an intricately carved bow strung over his back and a quiver swinging from his hip.