Page 38 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“She is cruel,” I said, my tone unforgiving if she heard. “But you are not.”

Even I doubted that as his brows twitched and tension took him.

“Do not stoop to her level, Killian.”

He flicked his gaze over my head – which wasn’t exactly hard as he towered over me – and let out another snarl at whatever he saw there. But I did not falter in front of him, keeping my hands on his forearm in order to ground him.

Nothing good would come of letting Killian loose on her, even though in that moment, as she insulted him and looked at him as if he was some great disgust, I wanted to rip her throat from her neck. But we had a duty. Raegan was relying on us.

I moved one hand from his forearm and placed it on his chest, roughly where I estimated his heart was, if it was in the same place as humans. The steady beating of it transferred into me, the quick rhythm at which it pounded against him.

“Settle now,” I whispered. “Be better than them. Be kind.”

He blinked, some sort of realization rushing through his body that had him relaxing at once. I went from standing next to a rabid animal thrashing on the end of its leash to inflict carnage, to a peaceful creature simply staring at me, in the span of a single second.

I turned on my heel to face her at last, using all of the rage that I had siphoned from his body and putting it across my face. “Killian is my protector and he is to come with me.”

She looked taken aback before she schooled her features into indifference. Then she nodded, moving to the side to allow us to walk with her. I hooked Killian’s arm with my own and made sure our chins were higher than ever as we strode up to her.

“Speak of him that way again, and you’ll have a whole lot more to worry about than him,” I hissed as we passed.

The damning and slightly terrifying thing was that I was speaking the truth. I had never been one for violence, but the love I had for my pixies did something to me. Turned me into something. All it needed was a poke.

“Take these,” the Uisge pixie who finally revealed her name to be Bryn said as she passed over two rings. I stared at mine as if it was full of some sort of hidden poison, whereas Killian slipped it easily onto his finger without question.

My thought about doing the same must have been showing on my face because he grinned and leaned towards me. “Unless you plan on holding your breath for the entirety of our visit, I suggest you place that on your finger.”

I dropped my gaze from him and to the rounded band of sapphire, which was overly cold in my palm no matter how sweaty my skin was getting. Trusting not Bryn but Killian, I slammed my eyes tight before sliding it onto my finger.

I didn’t immediately explode, so that seemed to be a good sign.

“Are you ready?” Bryn asked the two of us. A nervous glance was shared as I looked up at Killian, but we ultimately nodded at one another. Bryn shot us a somewhat vicious smile before taking a deep breath, her body expelling a violent wave of air from her. As she did, the waves that had parted to allow us passage onto the riverbed reformed, dragging the three of us down and into the depths.

19

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The last time I had been in Saoghal, I waded into this very water and was met with the blackest depths, a thick, opaque fluid thoroughly contaminated by oil. My legs had burned and my lungs had screamed, but I had kept pushing through the water with all of my might.

This was nothing like that.

This was worse.

It was a storm of water. The sea sloshed around us, as if we had been placed into a small container of liquid and some great being was shaking us with all of their might until we mixed in with the ocean. Over and over we were tossed around, from one side of the world to the next.

The water wanted to devour me. I was sure of it. It wrapped and tightened, swirled and smashed, hugged and dragged, over and over and over. At some point, I was sure I was screaming as my arms flailed wildly, unable to find any sort of balance as the whirlpool continued to rip me apart. My legs kicked furiously, trying to find the riverbed beneath me or the air high above me, sometimes the other way around as my whole being was tilted and thrown.

I fought with all of my might. Until I had no energy pumping through my body, until my muscles themselves turned into mush within my skin. Continuously and without an end in sight, I writhed against the rapids around me.

It was only normal to. Because I was a human, and being submerged beneath the depths as some water god decided to try and blend us into pulp, meant that I was fighting for my right to breathe. I was fighting to get back up to the surface, to feel my face breach and oxygen to fill my lungs.

It was only when my body finally gave in, and I stopped fighting, that I realized I didn’t need to do that. I could breathe. Even as the violence that was the waves crashed against me, I could breathe!

“Olivia!”

That was Killian. Somewhere, someplace close, that was his voice. It tore through the water around me, creating a tunnel of air that his rugged tone travelled across in order to meet me.

At last, what felt like an eternity later, the water settled around us. And there he was.