Why Broken Wings Fray (Chronicles of Saoghal #2)

1

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I saw him everywhere.

None of the others. Only him.

Only Raegan.

Flashes of his face in crowds, echoes of his voice in my ear, appearances of his body in reflections. A glimpse of golden-feathered wings in the sky above. Glinting green eyes beneath a radiant sun when I closed my eyes. The power of his body pressed against me at my lowest.

For almost a year, I lived with this haunting.

I could not rid myself of the Prince of Choilltean and Cluaineach.

Well, the King of Choilltean and Cluaineach.

The King of Talamh. I could not dream of anything other than the golden-haired pixie with vibrant eyes and deep shadows beneath them.

I could not feel anything but that subtle brush of his lips over mine and the placement of his hand atop a railing.

My entire being was possessed with this overpowering presence and I had no idea how I felt about it.

There was some grief there, because I couldn’t remember Killian’s face.

Or Shea’s, or Niamh’s. Only Raegan’s. And not in the way that I could recall the faces of people I knew well like, say, my family.

No, this was as if every single one of his features had been stamped into my brain and I could draw an exact replica of him from memory alone.

I had forgotten what Killian’s melodious, childish laughter sounded like, yet Raegan’s rattled my brain most hours of the day.

It was in my darkest hours that I didn’t hate the ghost of him.

In the hours that I could not recall how Cluaineach had once illuminated my skin and bore a heat into my soul so powerful – that was when I was happy to have the ghost of Raegan lingering.

I would close my eyes, prepared to be lost to the utter dread and darkness that had lived with me my whole life, and that was when he would appear.

His hand would graze mine. His lips would tickle at my ear as his breath rushed over my skin. The smell of him – something I couldn’t quite put into words but smelled natural and right, it would breeze by my nose and help me lift my head out of the dark abyss.

Really, it was when Saoghal was as far away from me as ever, that Raegan was as close as he could be.

~

After another ten-hour shift composed of whining dogs and shrieking cats, packing wounds and stitching injuries, I reached a whole new appreciation for the simple things: my couch, a bottle of wine, and a bag of crisps.

Like most nights, when I kicked my feet up onto the coffee table, switched on some trashy-movie, and let the couch devour my body in one deep breath, Urram was there at my side.

Urram; the dragon-turned-African-Grey-parrot.

My caraid. A creature who had once dwelled in the depths of Saoghal and chose to leave it all behind, simply because we had bonded.

Because the magic that ran through Saoghal had twisted itself around the two of us, binding heart-and-soul for all of eternity.

That was the only reason that I wasn’t completely insane as I frowned and turned to him, only to say, “Do you want to go back?”

Birds couldn’t snort, yet Urram somehow made a croaked-version of it. “No. And neither do you.”

Pulling my hand up to my mouth, I began to chew on my fingernails as I stared at him. I only had a few minutes before he let out a shrill call and flew out of the room, considering that’s how he usually reacted when I brought up Saoghal.

“Do pixies… What happens to…” I took a deep breath, hating that my mind had strayed to this thought but possessed by the desire to know. “What happens to the pixies when they… when they die?”

I was hoping Urram assumed that I was referring to Niamh – the young, wanderlust pixie who died defending Raegan. The pixie who had such a wide, vibrant smile that she would have been capable of clearing a whole thunder-storm with such a simple movement.

I grieved her, for many months, upon my return to London and then Cornwall.

Her last few mumbled words, the attempt to console those around her as she bled out, they played in my head over and over some nights.

She mixed in with my other best-friend, Charlotte, who had died almost a year and a half ago and was the very reason I had found Saoghal.

But my question was not asked for her.

I asked it, because as I did, there was a brief shadow of a long-haired, winged, pixie-king in the dark corners of my TV.

Urram finished contemplating my question – I had learned that the odd click-clack that he did with his avian tongue was evidence of such a thing – and cocked his head at me. “Why do you ask?”

“Call it curiosity.”

“I’ll call it tempting yourself.”

“It’s not,” I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest just to see a flash of movement in the corner of my eye – golden hair and green eyes. “Are you going to answer the question or should I go and google it?”

Urram made another one of those scoff-like noises just as he shook a few feathers free of his dark coat. “This Google you speak of knows nothing of Saoghal.”

I was somewhat impressed that Urram even remembered what google was. The last time I brought it up and he had asked what it was, I explained it was a vast expanse of knowledge shared over the years. To that, he had equated such a thing with a dragon.

“Well if you leave me in silence, then what difference does it make?”

Right as I started to lean over for my laptop, Urram finally let out a low caw and drew my attention back to him.

“Mag Mell,” he began, “they go to Mag Mell.”

“Mag Mell,” I repeated, remembering Niamh referring to such a place. “What is it?”

“Sanctuary. Paradise. A freedom from the heavy burden of living offered to the fair folk or those who die with honour at their side.”

My brows pressed against one another as I stared at my strange bird-dragon. “What about… What about their souls? Do they… haunt people?”

I gulped. I had been playing around with this idea the last few months, but Urram was right – Google did not have the answers when I searched for it.

My search history looked something like this:

What happens to dead pixies?

Do pixies get to keep their souls when they die?

Are there pixie ghosts?

And, Do pixies have souls?

All of the above was earning me no traction on the search engine.

Urram’s beady, black eyes blinked a few times. “No.”

I blew out a breath of relief. While I couldn’t decide how I felt about the constant lingering of Raegan around me at all times – I knew for a fact that I didn’t want him dead.

It might have just been easier to admit to Urram what was going on. Except I knew exactly how that conversation would have gone, because he would have said what he said almost daily since we relocated to Cornwall. Which was, “We shouldn’t be here. You are tempting yourself.”

If he knew that I was day-dreaming, actually dreaming, and drowning in memories and ghosts of Raegan, he would have demanded we move back. And for the first time I might have been inclined to agree with him.

But every time I had that thought, there was a pain in my chest. Not a sharp pain or a dull pain, not a throbbing nor a zap.

It was a tightening, as if an anvil had been placed over my heart and more and more and more weight was being applied.

My lungs started to flatten, forcing me to gulp air down by the mouthful, until I was dizzy and passing-out became a very real fear.

I didn’t know what that feeling was, either. And I certainly would not ask Urram.

~

I floated along, day-to-day, not so different to how life had been prior to Saoghal. I went to the clinic and spent my days covered in blood not of pixies but of poodles and ragdolls, all the while with a dragon-turned-parrot lingering in the staff room and swearing at me on my lunch break.

I had promised Raegan I would never return to Saoghal. I promised I would never seek him out, even though every corner I turned had his face and smell and touch in the dark shadows.

I had intended to keep to that promise, too. I really wasn’t going to seek him nor Saoghal out. Other than the four-petalled aotrom that I kept on a necklace around my neck and the dragon that preened himself on my kitchen-table – I was going to let Saoghal become a distant memory.

Saoghal came for me, instead.