Her shoulder trembled under my hand. For a second, I thought she might lean back into me.
Then Archie cleared his throat, the sound cutting across the room like a bell.
“All right,” he said. “We need to talk about what just crawled out of our loch.”
“Let’s go to Grasshopper. I can’t handle this much trauma without food. And neither can all of you,” Lia ordered.
We reconvened in the castle’s restaurant once Faelan had finished with Zara and assured everyone she’d live, provided she stayed off the leg for a few days and Luch made sure that Faelan had downed a specialty tea to help with her strength. Zara leaned back and closed her eyes on the couch, Mitch cuddled at her side.
“I’ll stay here with the lass. You lot go on,” Hilda said, already unfolding a throw blanket to tuck over Zara.
The rest of us filed into the restaurant, in varying states of exhaustion, shock, and mud. The big room glowed with gentle light, and the women went around lighting candles, and pulling tables together.
Archie stood at the head of the long table, his face still masked in concern. Sophie leaned against the opposite end, Lachlan at her back, arms crossed.
I took a seat halfway down, Liora beside me. I made sure our knees touched. She didn’t move away, and I took that as a small miracle and didn’t push for more.
“All right,” Archie said again, voice grave. “Who wants to start?”
Silence stretched.
Then Zara—who I’d thought was asleep—croaked from the doorway where she’d appeared, blanket around her shoulders, and Mitch guiding her path. “I’ll go,” she said. “Seeing as I was daft enough to get dragged out there in the first place.”
“Z—you should be resting,” Liora protested, frustration crossing her face.
“I couldn’t stop her,” Hilda said breathlessly from behind her.
“Sit down.” Lachlan stepped forward and helped Zara to a chair, while Liora all but vibrated with worry next to me.
Lia zipped into the room, bowls of soup in her hands.
“Soup first. You all need your strength.” I blinked as a blur of motion zipped past me and a bowl of steaming soup appeared in front of me. What the hell had that been?
“And whisky,” Lachlan added, disappearing and returning with a bottle. Another blur of motion and glasses appeared at the table.
“What is going on?” I whispered to Liora and a soft smile came to her lips.
“Brice. He’s Lia’s kitchen broonie.”
“Right, of course. Why not?” After seeing a dragon rise out of the loch, nothing else would likely shake me at this point.
Was there anything that would ever be as terrifying?
We all tucked into the soup in silence, Lia hovering over the table, bringing out baskets of bread, plates of cheese, massive amounts of food until Munroe slung an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap, demanding she eat as well.
“I’m sorry. I need to feed people. It’s my love language,” Lia said.
“But you need strength too,” Munroe said, and Lia relented, tucking into her soup as well.
“I think I need to explain. And apologize,” Zara said, and the table all turned to her. She looked incredibly small, her face white with exhaustion, her eyes huge in her face. My chest tightened.
“I heard them,” Zara continued, quietly. “The Kelpies. Not with my ears. In my head. Whispering. Pushing images. They’ve been…louder, lately. I don’t think I realized just what it was at first, but I did tonight. Over the past few weeks, I started to understand what I was seeing.”
Faelan’s brows drew together. “Zara, why didn’t you tell me? You know you could come to me.”
Beside me, Liora’s hand tightened on her soup spoon. Helpless not to, I reached out and traced soothing circles on her back.
“I was going to.” Zara grimaced. “I went out to the loch with Mitch to see if I could get a clearer sense of what they wanted before I rang anyone. Next thing I knew, the ground’s gone from under me and I’m in that bloody gully with a broken leg and the Kelpies shrieking at my back.”