Page 91 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Stay out of it–” Killian started, only to be interrupted by one of the nearing guards.

He squealed, his black eyes shooting wide as both hands reached out and in front of him to block his sight of me. “Daughter of Gealach!”

The one at his side matched his expression, soon shrieking the same three words, “Daughter of Gealach!”

The third, the same.

All of them horrified, all of them shaking, all of them shedding their skin–

Wait, what?

The horrific position that I had put myself in, the very plausible approaching doom that I had lured to myself, became a secondary issue as I watched the three ceadan before me. The three ceadan who seconds ago had been pixies of flesh, bone, and skin, but now had allowed all three things to drop from them.

In their stead, three horses.

Not horses like I knew horses. Not horses like the pegasus’ in the fields. These were horses of the darkest marshes, horses of decaying seaweed and rotting death, horses who opened their mouths and revealed rows upon rows of sharp, glistening teeth.

Their bodies were shaped like the animals I had grown up with, but there was little definition. Everything was fluid and moving, long strands of green-black that flowed and danced as if a breeze constantly graced the castle. Those eyes of solid black now took form in their equine skulls, except they glowed a strange hue of red beneath the black, causing me to look away from them at once.

As one they spoke, their mouths remaining closed. “The sea has long since belonged to us, False Queen of the Waters.”

That noise – their voice – was decrepit and vile, turning my skin near green and tempting me to curl over and hurl.

Raegan, unbothered by the fact that his guards seemed to turn into Kelpies, started to move towards the largest of the three, only to receive a roar that was better suited to a gorilla than a sea-dwelling-horse.

While Raegan was distracted trying to reason with the things, I crept my way back towards Queen Tonn and Tadgh, who had gone deathly still in the face of their oceanic enemies.

“Come on, while they’re busy–”

Queen Tonn and Tadgh refused to move, their eyes wide and pointed at the scene unfolding over my shoulder. I was stupid in that I, too, glanced in that direction only to see one of the Kelpies peel its maw wide open, a glow of acidic bile summoned to the back of its throat.

“First to die shall be the child of Gealach,” it said right before that humming ball flew from its mouth.

Towards…

Me.

They were referring to me. The weaponized saliva that was already generating its own terrible form of heat was on its way through the air and it was not soaring for Queen Tonn nor Tadgh, but for me.

Raegan bellowed my name and then his head was in my side, his arms braced around me, and the two of us were hurling through the air across the hallway of the castle. And it was easy to feel relieved at that, at the fact that I came away unscathed other than a patch on my shoulder that was burning and aching, until we stopped flying through the palace and came to a harsh stop. Because then, I looked in the direction I had been tackled from.

Queen Tonn of Uisge was dead.

41

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My involvement in the slaughter of Queen Tonn and the attempted freeing of her and Prince Tadgh meant that I was escorted right back to my room, placed there, and wasn’t allowed to leave due to the guard that stood on the opposite side of the stone and had grumble-threatened me five times already.

Which was fine.

I was soaked in a mix of Tadgh’s spray of blood, sweat, and possibly some fear-induced tears that had started to stream down my face as I watched Queen Tonn’s body bubble up under the acidic spew from the Kelpie.

What happened after that? I wouldn’t know. Because Raegan did what Raegan always did – he started barking commands at everyone around him. Unfortunately for me, the first one he barked was right at Killian – who thankfully wasn’t a Kelpie and was just a plain idiot – and commanded him to get me out of that mess. I didn’t fight Killian as he dragged me up the stairs and dropped me off in my room like I was some package that arrived at it’s destination.

Again, that was fine.

I didn’t really care.