“Did you feel depleted?” I ask.
“I didn’t hold back a raging fucking fire forever with a giant water-sealed door. You pushed yourself to burnout.”
I hang my head.
“Well, you came through anyway. Even if you felt depleted, you somehow managed to pull that badass ice spear out of your ass and save yourself. Everyone did great. Meela, your fire is really becoming impressive,” Rhydra says, joining the conversation.
Raef looks at me with his mouth open.
“What?”
He cups a hand around his mouth and somehow whispers even louder than his regular talking volume. “Did that really come from your ass?”
“No,” I say, scrunching my eyebrows.
Meela blows air out of her mouth, and it almost sounds like a laugh. Raef lets out a low chuckle, and I smile for a blink.
He winks at me before looking away.
I shake my head, slowly. He’s trying to lighten the mood, as he does.
“You were all badass. I froze for far too long.”
“Same,” Rhydra mumbles, taking a drink.
Does she blame herself too?
“What the fuck were those things?” Meela finally says.
“I think they were the creatures he talked about. The ones that hunted his home back in Dothron,” I say.
“Could be.” Rhydra seems to contemplate it.
“Whatever they were, they were fucking intense. And I’ve seen some shit,” Raef says, staring off in the distance.
I take another large gulp of ale as images of blood and skin and torn clothes flash across my vision.
I cup a hand over my mouth as the horrors haunt my mind, and I look around the room, hoping for something to take their place. I feel Daegan’s eyes on me, but I don’t look his way. I can’t let him see how weak I am.
“Let’s go to our room,” he whispers in my ear.
The shaking of my head is too immediate, too frantic. I can’t go and sit in a silent room. It will only get worse.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “Come on. We need rest.”
He stands before me, still holding my hand, and I finally give in and let him lead me away.
But before we make it out of the room, we’re met with two familiar faces.
Well, familiar to Raef and Daegan.
Two dragon shifters I had seen around the castle but never knew the names of stand in front of us.
“Raevel, Haedan… What are you doing here?” Daegan asks. Not with concern, exactly, but a note of uneasiness.
“Been waiting, hoping we’d catch you coming through here.” The taller one with blonde hair, Haedan, answers.
“Is something going on?”
