Page 60 of Fly to Fury
Mama. He should have told her he loved her at least one more time.
Adry and Louise. He’d have to count on them to be strong for the family.
Ellie and Tryndar. So young. It would break them to lose their big brother.
Merrik. His brother who had followed him so loyally even to this present fury.
The squadron who even now were trying their best to take to the skies.
But none of these things were true regrets. His family and his friends knew his heart. They’d know what he didn’t say and didn’t do.
Pip. There lay his true regret. He should have kissed her. Should have told her he loved her. Shouldn’t have waited so long to take things beyond friendship into more. She would be left with uncertainties that he couldn’t fix now.
There was no more time. He wrapped himself with layer upon layer of his magic, sliced his lap belt with his magic, and fought the forces as much as he could to curl into a protective ball in his seat.
Either this didn’t work, and he’d die a quick butrelatively painless death. Or this would work, and the next few moments werereallygoing to hurt.
Then he shoved all of that gathered magic in his chest outward and into the engine compartment, burning through all the safeguards until his magic clashed against his dacha’s stored power.
The blast exploded outward, and Fieran was thrown upward, the pressure wave pummeling his body and stealing his breath. For a moment, darkness filled his vision as unconsciousness threatened.
He hung for a moment, magic and pieces of his aeroplane all around him.
And then he fell.
Chapter
Twenty
Pip stumbled from the hangar, her breath hitching in her chest.
Her gaze caught on the faraway dot of brilliant blue magic in the sky.
She kept her gaze locked on it, even as tears dribbled down her cheeks. She slipped and slid on the muddy ground, running across the road and through the squadron’s shelters.
As she reached the crest of the rise overlooking headquarters, that blue magic fell from the sky like a shooting star, though this one stole wishes. Seconds later, the horizon flared with a blue explosion, visible even through the crackling magic of the Wall.
Fieran. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Her body shook with the sobs she couldn’t seem to find the strength to release.
“Let me go!” The growled words came from below. “That is my son!”
Pip tore her gaze from the horizon. Beneath the trees forming quarters for the elven commanders stood PrinceFarrendel Laesornysh, armored and armed, struggling against the restraining grip of his brother King Weylind. Blue magic laced Prince Farrendel’s fingers, but King Weylind didn’t waver.
A cordon of elven guards lingered behind King Weylind, tensed, though they didn’t step in between the brothers.
“I know, shashon. But that crash…” King Weylind trailed off, as if he did not want to say the hard truth of it out loud.
That truth nearly sent Pip to her knees. Even the elven king believed there was no way Fieran had survived that crash.
And yet Fieran’s last words to her had been a plea to get his father. Somehow she forced her legs to move, her feet to totter down that rise. She couldn’t fail him.
“He is my son, Weylind! You know what they will do to him. If he is alive, they will torture him. If he is dead, they will parade his body through the streets until it is desecrated beyond recognition.” Prince Farrendel stopped struggling and instead met King Weylind’s gaze with burning silver-blue eyes, his body tensing as if he was prepared to use his magic on his own brother. “Because he is my son, they will not stop until they have avenged their dead on him.”
“And I will not watch our family’s history repeat itself with you.” King Weylind didn’t loosen his hold, his eyes and tone flinty. “I will not release you until I know you are thinking more like Laesornysh than a father.”
The magic around Prince Farrendel’s fingers built. “Dead or alive, I will get my son.”
She was probably about to get herself incinerated by her childhood hero. But Pip stumbled forward, all but falling into the two elves before she caught herself. “Fieran…”
