“Stay where you are!” she yelled. “We’re working on a safe way down. Don’t move.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I called back, voice wobbling, my head throbbing from where I’d cracked it on a rock on the way down.
Other faces appeared along the rim. Lia with flour on her cheek and a knife clutched in one hand like she’d run straight from the kitchen. Shona, eyes wide, chanting as she coaxed roots to twist into makeshift steps down the side of the gully. Willow, eyes closed, muttering something to herself.
Beside them, familiars and creatures crowded the edge. Gnorman and Gnora, the gnomes that I’d only been told about, but hadn’t met yet, peered down with identical looks of horrified fascination. Gloam, Faelan’s fox, paced restlessly, fur bristling. A sleek black crow—Kaia’s—swooped close, cawing in agitation. Bracken scampered down the side of the gully, his fur puffed out.
And there, shouldering his way through the cluster, was Torin. His gaze found me instantly, something raw and wrecked in his eyes when he saw me crouched by Zara, mud-smeared and shaking.
“Liora!” His voice cracked. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I lied again, because there were bigger problems than my bruised backside and the gash in my head. “Zara’s leg’s broken. And she’s… holding them off. Somehow.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded once, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl into his strong arms because it was truly where I felt the safest. It was a bit of a shite time to come to that realization, but nonetheless, there it was.
“Right,” Shona shouted, voice carrying over the chaos. “We need a stabilization spell on her leg before we move her. Lia, can you?—”
“I’ve got it,” Lia called, already digging in her bag for herbs. “Shona, with me.”
Zara’s grip on my hand tightened so suddenly I flinched.
“Liora,” she gasped. “They’re pushing harder. I can’t—shite, they’re angry. The Stone, the island, the bargains?—”
“Okay,” I said, panic spiking again. “Okay, okay, what do you need from me? I’m a chartweaver, not a Kelpie whisperer, but I’m an excellent panicker, if that helps.”
She actually huffed a tiny breath of laughter, then sucked it back on a groan as her leg shifted. “I need you to see,” she whispered. “You can see threads. I can see intent. Together we might—bloody hell, hold off!—buy Loren Brae some time.”
“See what?” I asked, throat dry.
“The choice,” she said. “There’s always one. They want to be seen. To be counted. As a part of this place. Not just monsters in the dark. If we don’t acknowledge them, they’ll tear it all down. The Stone is only part of it. There’s something about a bargain … that needs to change.”
My brain tried to process “renegotiate magickal bargains with ancient elemental loch spirits” and promptly short-circuited.
Behind us, the Kelpies shrieked again.
I risked a glance.
They were closer now, churning toward the water at the mouth of the gully. Their long tails lashed the surface, sending up plumes of spray, and where their hooves struck, the loch boiled.
“They’re coming,” Agnes’s voice warned from above.
“I know,” Zara whispered. “Right. Enough talking.”
She sucked in a breath, her fingers crushing mine, and began to chant.
The words were Gaelic. They rolled out of her in low, rhythmic waves, each phrase vibrating in my bones. My skin broke out in goose bumps, and I swear the air thickened around us.
And as the Kelpies barreled toward us, my vision shifted.
An astral map appeared before me and glowing lines flowed, the threads of all those around us, those of Loren Brae, those who had come before and those who would go ahead of us, flinging into the air in one giant astral map.
And the Kelpies’ threads joined it.
The Kelpies were just as much a part of Loren Brae as anyone else was.
Their history ran deep, if not deeper, than anyone before us.
But as I gasped, and looked around, one thick glimmering thread rose above all of us, and I turned, following it as it connected from the island where the Truth Stone was buried all the way to the shore.