“YOU’RE GOING the wrong way,” Fallon informed her.
Shea stopped, her shoulders tightening before she did an about face. Fallon waited for her with an expression that was both expectant and amused. She swept by him and stalked along the tents.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
He knew she didn’t.
She’d stormed out of the tent when he failed to answer, and now she was wandering around the encampment with no real clue as to where to find Reece. She was faced with admitting her hotheadedness or committing to this course of action.
Fallon paced along beside her, his large form shadowing hers. “How long do you intend to waste your time when you could just ask for help?”
Shea took a deep breath and stopped, turning to meet Fallon’s eyes. He lifted one eyebrow expectantly. Nope. She couldn’t do it. She turned on her heel and kept walking.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. His lips covered hers before she could form a protest.
Need rose in her—a torrential feeling threatening to subsume her beneath its fury. The pure gratitude that they were both alive to fight, and love, and everything that came with it.
The fury of their passion eased, and she pressed several kisses to his lips before she pulled away and pressed her face into his chest. His arms were a warm weight around her as he rested his chin on top of her head.
Together they breathed, Fallon’s hand smoothing down the back of her head.
Seeing him race into danger had given her new insight into how he must feel when she did the same. She was just grateful that he’d come out the other side unharmed. There were some among the Trateri who had not been so lucky.
She sniffed and stepped back, her eyes holding his for a long moment. Understanding was there. Understanding and a somber realization that the day could have very easily ended differently—that it very nearly had.
Shea had been lucky with that stunt with the eagle. By rights she should be dead or at least gravely injured. If it hadn’t veered toward that copse of branches when it had, she and Mist would have hit the ground with nothing to break their momentum and probably have broken every bone in their bodies.
“He’s this way,” Fallon said.
He took her hand and led her through the camp. A thin coating of sadness covered the people Shea saw. The Trateri moved with a grim purpose as they prepared for a second possible attack from the eagles.
They’d fortified several of the tents and had set upraised sentry posts at regular intervals in the camp. Several of Fallon’s soldiers manned them, their eyes turned to the skies and long-range weapons held in their hands. She even thought she saw a boomer or two among them.
Fallon noticed where she was looking. “I authorized the use of the boomers should the golden eagles attack again.”
“I thought you’d decided not to put those into circulation because of your limited access to the bullets.”
Fallon’s men had confiscated several of the weapons from villages throughout the Lowlands, but never in the numbers he needed to implement their use in his army. That, coupled with the fact that the maintenance, and the bullets used to fire the weapon were in short supply, had meant that they were an oddity the Trateri found interesting but ultimately useless.
“These circumstances have required a special response. Witt has been training several men in the use of the boomers—none quite measure up to your friend Dane yet, but he’s confident that they can acquit themselves well.” Fallon stepped around a clump of Trateri who were holding an impromptu briefing. “Caden is working directly with their commanders to make sure the weapons are handled with the appropriate respect and aren’t used for personal vendettas.”
Shea wouldn’t want to be one of them should a weapon go missing or be used inappropriately. Caden was a scary ball crusher when he wanted.
They stopped in front of a tent guarded by one of Fallon’s Anateri, one that was familiar from last night. Shea’s anger rushed back to the forefront. She didn’t wait for Fallon’s permission before she stalked toward the Anateri. He spared a glance for Fallon, asking without words for his permission, before he pulled back the tent flap so Shea could step inside.
“Was this you?” Shea didn’t wait for an answer before she was in Reece’s space, her hands clasped on his shirt. “Did you do this?”
Reece’s hands came up to grab hers as he tried to pull away. There was a cot in the room and he was unbound. They were nicer accommodations than Shea would have guessed, considering how angry Fallon had been with his presence when he first showed up.
“Shea, what are you going on about? Let go of me.”
She shook him again before Fallon was there, pulling her away. “Did you do this, Reece? If you did, so help me I will make you pay.”
Reece adjusted his shirt, pulling it straight with a dirty look aimed at Shea. “I’d call my present situation punishment enough, but I have no idea what you’re talking about, Shea.”
“The golden eagles, Reece. Did you call them?”
Fallon went still beside her. She didn’t spare him a glance. He wasn’t going to be happy when he learned how much she had with-held of the pathfinders’ capabilities.
Reece’s face went cold, his eyes icing over and his mouth turning down. His gaze went from Shea to Fallon’s. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She scoffed. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t,” he said through gritted teeth as he gave her a warning look.
She ignored his warning. If he’d done this, he’d gone too far. “Bullshit. There were children, Reece. One of those beasts tried to take a child.”
“Shea, stop.”
Not this time.
“You and I both know you have the ability to do something like this. Do you have a beast call? Does the guild know about this?”
“What is a beast call?” Fallon asked from behind her.
Reece shook his head as Shea lifted her chin. She didn’t care who knew. If her people had done this, if they had set the beasts on the Trateri and the Airabel villagers, her loyalty to them would be at an end.
“Don’t.”
Shea looked at Fallon. “A beast call is rare. There are only two that I know of and it’s exactly like it sounds. It can call beasts. The ones I know of both date back to the cataclysm.”
“Can it control them?”
Reece threw up his hands and sat back down, shaking his head.
Shea ignored him. “No, at least not that we’ve found. As far as we’ve seen, it simply summons whatever beasts are in the area. If there was a way to control them with it, that knowledge has been lost to us since the cataclysm.”
“Share all our secrets while you’re at it, why don’t you?” Reece said.
Shea glared at her cousin, words coated her tongue but didn’t spill out. She had many things to say but couldn’t get them through the anger that had taken hold of her.
“They would have eventually forgiven you for abandoning your post, you know,” he informed her. “But not now. You’ve gone too far, Shea.”
“I already knew.” Fallon’s words fell between them like a blast of cold water.
Shea paused and looked at him. He’d known? How?
Reece scoffed. “So, you’ve already told him. I shouldn’t be so surprised.”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” Shea said, not taking her eyes off Fallon, who appeared calm and composed.
“No, she didn’t. Your secrets aren’t as well-guarded as you assume, pathfinder,” Fallon said with a quirk of his lips.
Reece’s face was arrested as he studied Fallon. “Impossible. Only pathfinders know about the call, and only a few of them at that.”
Fallon lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Secrets have a way of coming out. For instance, if a single child survives after his town is inundated with beasts shortly after a fall out with the pathfinders, certain conclusions are drawn.”
Witt. Had to be. He was the only other person from the Highlands that Shea knew of. He and Fallon had some type of weird relationship that she still didn’t understand. The other man was sharp and observant. It didn’t surprise her in the least that he’d put that together. It made her wonder what other conclusions he’d managed to draw about the pathfinders’ guild and the secrets it held.
Reece’s expression smoothed out as he studied Fallon and Shea. His gaze shifted to Shea. “This doesn’t change things. You will find it very difficult to come back after this.”
She stepped closer to him and leaned down. “You assume I want to come back. My home is here. My people are the Trateri. There is no going back. I wouldn’t even if I could.”
Fallon’s eyes seared a hole into the side of Shea’s head. She didn’t look at him, keeping her gaze focused on Reece.
“You don’t mean that,” Reece said. His expression said he thought she was bluffing, that he couldn’t fathom a world where she didn’t want to return to the fold.
“I do mean it.” She let him see she was serious, because she was. She’d built a home with the Trateri, found a place to belong. As much as she’d tried, fitting into the Highlands was a lost cause. Even among the pathfinders.
His eyes widened slightly before his guard slammed shut. He looked away.
“Did you do this?” Shea asked again in a calmer voice than before.
“No, I’ve been here the entire time, and your friend there made sure I was thoroughly searched for weapons. His guards mentioned something about a relation to a ghost.”
Shea’s lips twitched. That would have been her fault. She’d surprised the Trateri when she first met them by her resourcefulness a time or two.
Shea looked at Fallon and received a nod saying that what Reece said was true. Her fingers tapped against her thigh. That didn’t mean he wasn’t responsible. She’d only seen the beast call once and wasn’t sure she could identify it if she saw it again. The Trateri who’d searched him could have very well missed it.
“I’ll have my men search him again,” Fallon said coming to the same conclusion Shea had.
“He could have left someone outside the perimeter as well,” Shea said, observing Reece carefully.
He’d recovered from his earlier surprise and was back to his smart-ass self. He made a gesture at his chest, as if to ask, ‘who me.’
She gave him a meaningful glance that said she wasn’t buying it. She knew her cousin, and he was as tricky as the day was long.
“It’s just me, Shea. Our elders thought you would be more inclined to listen to someone related to you.”
“I’ll have my men do a sweep of the surrounding forest,” Fallon told Shea. “See if there are any signs of his companions.”
It was unlikely they would find anything. Pathfinders could be ghosts when they wanted.
“You know something about this,” Shea told Reece, her eyes narrowing. It was there in his eyes, a slight tightness that gave him away. She would have missed it if she hadn’t grown up with him, if she hadn’t spent many a time falling for his tricks.
Reece met her eyes.
“We can always use force to get what we want,” Fallon offered, his voice a lazy threat.
Reece’s eyes flicked to Fallon. “Go ahead. See where that gets you.”
“It doesn’t make sense that the elders sent you to bring us back, to let Fallon into the Highlands,” Shea said, thinking out loud. There was something there, something just outside her reach that would make everything fall into place.
He groaned. “I told you why they wanted you and your barbarian Warlord.”
“There’s been an uptick of beast activity before. Forty years ago, we lost five villages to a surge of beasts and the pathfinders did nothing. This is different. You’re hiding something.”
What was it?
Reece was quiet, watching Shea carefully.
The beast call. Somehow everything came back to the beast call.
“You think another beast call, one not controlled by the pathfinders, has been found.”
It would explain many things, the increased sightings, the way some beasts were being found far from their normal hunting grounds. What it wouldn’t explain was how the golden eagles had been called into an environment so at odds with their territory. Beasts were ruled by instinct. This forest with its tight and twisting spaces would have set off every instinct the eagle had—unless whoever called it had a way of controlling it.
That should be impossible though. There had never been any evidence of a call exerting any control over a beast beyond summoning it, and that only if it wanted to come. Their normal territory was far from here. A call never should have been able to reach them and pull them so far off their normal course.
“You think I had something to do with what’s been happening,” Shea said, coming to a realization. He didn’t just think her previous mission had sent the beasts far from their normal territory. He thought she had deliberately and maliciously been calling them to her.
Reece’s watchful gaze didn’t move from her. So that meant she was right. Her former people thought she’d been, what, summoning beasts in her spare time. For what purpose? The only thing a beast ever brought when it intersected with people was death and destruction. Did they really think her capable of such a thing?
“Where would I even have gotten a beast call?” she asked, hurt tingeing her voice.
His eyes were steady on hers.
There was only one place.
“You think I picked one up in the Badlands.”
Fallon stepped closer to Shea, sensing the hurt behind her flat words. His presence at her back bolstered her, telling her she didn’t face this alone.
“You are the only one who survived. We don’t know what you picked up while you were wandering around that place. Our ancestors left many dangerous things there.”
“You know how I feel about those things.”
His shrug was careless, though his eyes were intense pools of dark. “You were lost there for over a month. The Badlands have a way of twisting people, and we both know that you’re not the same as when you went in.”
She drew back, his words as effective as a slap. She shook her head and walked out of the tent. She didn’t stop walking once she was out, continuing along her path for several minutes.
In some ways, he was absolutely right. The Shea before the Badlands had been very different, softer, and someone who had believed in herself and her dreams. The Shea of now was older, wiser, and knew that life wasn’t going to give her anything. If she wanted something, she needed to keep her head down and work at it, and even then, life had a way of snatching what you wanted right out from under you. Internal scars littered the inside of her mind from the things she’d lost—the things she’d given up.
“What happened in the Badlands?” Fallon asked from behind her once she’d slowed to stare at a blanket of giant mayflowers. They towered above her, their blue flowers nestled under the broad, flat leaf that shielded them from above.
Shea didn’t look at Fallon. She tilted her head up and stared at the maze of branches overhead. Today, the trees felt like giant sentinels that time had frozen, their branches rustling in the wind as the sounds of the forest rose around them.
“Thirty of us went in; only I came out.” The words were said to the world above her.
“You blame yourself.” Fallon’s words were a statement not a question.
“There’s no one else left to blame.”
They were quiet for a long minute.
“It was my idea. No one had ever successfully explored the Badlands. Just an excursion here and there on the edges.” Shea felt the need to explain. “Over a thousand years and we only have the barest glimpse into the world before the cataclysm. I wanted to see. I wanted to explore and make life better for everyone. The Badlands are one of the few untouched places; the chance to make a name for myself was ripe for the picking.”
“Until everyone died.”
Shea made a sound of agreement. “Until everyone died.”
That was the kicker. So many friends. People who followed Shea. People who trusted she knew what she was doing. Their voices still haunted her dreams.
“Why do they blame you for the current turn of events?”
Shea was quiet, not able to put into words the thoughts coursing through her head. “We have stories of what lies at the heart of the Badlands. They’re stories passed along for centuries. I thought they were myth, something made up by our elders to explain the unexplainable.”
Turned out she was wrong. Those stories were just the barest glimpse into what waited there.
“The elders think we penetrated the heart—that we were in danger of waking what slept there.”
“But you didn’t.”
Shea took her time answering. “I told them that we barely made it past the first marker. There are five total.”
“And the truth?”
“The group fell apart long before that. There was dissention almost as soon as we crossed into the Badlands.” Shea didn’t like thinking about that time. She’d prefer to bury what happened and move on. “Shortly after reaching the first demarcation, the golden eagles descended. We’d already lost several people. They carried off half of our number, leaving the rest to fight among ourselves.”
Fallon rested a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, saying without words that he was here. That she wasn’t alone.
“Some of us wanted to continue on; the rest wanted to go home.”
“You split up.” Fallon sounded sure of his answer.
She nodded. “Not at first. We tried to stick together and agree on a course of action. There were too few of us to have a good chance of surviving if we split up, so I made the decision to pull us out. I told the rest they’d follow, or I’d have them excommunicated from our guild.”
Shea had told the elders she was the only one to survive the eagles, that by some miraculous turn of events she had survived where the others had not.
“A few days later, three of our number decided they weren’t coming home, that they had come too far. They got up one night and disappeared into the mist that had descended while we were sleeping. I sent those who remained home while I went after the three.”
She should have left them to their fate. If she had, maybe things would have turned out differently.
“I tracked them several miles before finding two of their bodies. The third was too damaged to identify. The mist must have affected their senses, or maybe they just lost their caution, because they’d wandered into a bantum nest.”
The bantum was a beast whose smell, that of rotting flesh and garbage, preceded them. It was very easy to know when you were close to a nest. The pathfinders should have been able to easily avoid it.
“I don’t remember too much after that. Everything blurs together. I remember being afraid and constantly running from something. My people found me several weeks later, delirious and raving.”
“What about the men you sent back?”
She shook her head. “They never made it. We don’t know what happened to them.”
They’d probably gotten disoriented much as Shea had or been overtaken by the mist and been unable to find their way out. She never should have left them. It had been stupid of her.
“You blame yourself for their deaths.” It wasn’t a question. Not just theirs; everybody who went on that mission. “You must know that you would have probably suffered the same fate had you stayed with them.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not. I do know that none of us would have been there, if not for me. I planned that expedition, everything that happened can be laid at my feet.”
He arched one eyebrow, his expression understanding and chiding. “That’s an arrogant assumption.”
She scowled at Fallon.
“Did you force them to come, or were they volunteers?”
Shea’s quiet was answer enough.
“They chose to be there then. You can’t take their fate on your shoulders. That way lies madness and is an insult to who they were.”
Shea scoffed. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel the same responsibility for your men. I’ve seen you with the battle reports. You feel every death.”
“Of course. That is part of a leader’s responsibility, but I never make the mistake of shouldering the blame for their deaths. They chose to be here. They chose to follow me. I feel their deaths because they laid them down to defend my vision, but I don’t assume the guilt for them. That would desecrate the sacrifices they made.”
Shea looked away. She’d never considered it in that manner before. Always before, the deaths of the thirty men and women who had followed her into the Badlands was a weight dragging her down. A reminder that the last time she commanded people she’d failed them in every way possible.
“I’ve learned that sometimes, despite all your planning and training, things go wrong. Plans fall apart, and people sometimes die. That doesn’t mean we give up. It means we fight harder for what we want, that we take life by the throat and force it to surrender.”
It was an inspirational speech, but Shea wasn’t sure how much inspiration she could draw from it. The end result remained the same. Others died while she still lived.
“This beast call they’re concerned about. Is it possible that you picked one up and didn’t realize it?” Fallon asked.
Shea shook her head. “I don’t remember picking anything up, and I didn’t have a pack when I was discovered.”
“You said you were disoriented and delirious when they found you. It could very well be that one of those that first encountered you took the beast call without you being aware of it.”
“Anything is possible when it comes to the Badlands, but it’s highly doubtful.” She’d known every person on that discovery party for years. Many of them related to her in some way. It just didn’t seem likely.
“Either way, this beast call sounds like it’s the reason for the problems my men have been having in recent months.”
She was afraid of that. It meant she could guess the next words out of his mouth.
“We’re going to answer the pathfinders’ summons,” Fallon said, his mouth a grim line. There was a fierce light in his eyes as if to say he was looking forward to it. “If what they think is true and there is a mastermind setting the beasts on my men, I want to know.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Shea tried. The last thing she wanted to do was to send Fallon and his men into the Highlands. She didn’t think that would be good for them or the Highlands.
He gave her a fierce smile. “It never is. That’s what makes it so fun.”
“You’re not going to let me talk you out of this, are you?”
She really wished he would. He had no idea what was in store for him there. Nothing good would come of this. She was almost sure of it.
*
Fallon waited until Shea had set off to check on the friends she had among the Trateri before turning back to the tent containing Reece.
He stopped next to the Anateri guarding the entrance. “Let no one inside. Not even Shea.”
The Anateri shared a glance before giving a nod to show they understood.
Fallon ducked inside, his eyes immediately drawn to the prisoner. Reece had moved from the chair to the cot where he reclined with his hands folded behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling as if he could see beyond it to the sky above.
Fallon had caught Shea staring at the sky on more than one occasion but had never asked what so fascinated her. Seeing Reece do something similar reinforced the relationship between the two—a relationship Fallon found himself mildly jealous of, a feeling he wasn’t comfortable or familiar with.
“I’ve noticed Shea always looks to the sky in moments of rest or when she needs reassurance. It seems you do something similar. Why is that?” Fallon asked with a casual voice.
Reece didn’t stir from where he lay, simply turning his head slightly to keep Fallon in view. “Does she now? That’s interesting. I hadn’t realized.” He fell quiet again. Fallon waited with all the patience of a hunter, one accustomed to letting his prey set its own trap. “It’s probably a remnant of our training. The sky is an ever-changing canvas, but for those who know where to look, you can find set points that can tell you your location.”
“Like the West and East stars,” Fallon said. His people used the night sky to navigate as well. There was a star in the east and a star in the west that never changed its position in the sky. Using them, you could always be assured of the direction you were traveling.
“Just so.”
Fallon studied the other man, noting the micro expressions in his face and the way his eyes slid away from Fallon’s.
“You’re lying.” Fallon was sure of it. “I have no doubt that she and you can navigate by the stars, but that’s never her first choice. They’re good for a general direction check but useless during the day.”
Reece stared at Fallon for a moment, his thoughts hidden. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
Fallon crossed his arms, not perturbed in the least by the insult. He’d endured much worse things said about him. If the other man thought to gain information from Fallon’s loss of temper, he’d have to work much harder at his insults.
Reece sat up. “When we were children, Shea spent much of her time training in the various pursuits her parents deemed worthy of a pathfinder. She took it very seriously. Even back then she was focused and driven. It left little time for play.”
“Were you not in the same training?” Fallon asked.
Reece’s smile was humorless. “More or less, but my parents didn’t expect the same level of excellence of me. They used to send us out into the wilderness, with little more than a compass and knife for survival. Shea and I would entertain ourselves by watching the clouds and telling stories using the shapes we found there.”
Fallon found himself fascinated by this rare glimpse into Shea’s childhood. He’d noticed when she told him stories of her journeys, that they were always about the places she’d visited and the things she’d seen. There was rarely much insight into her as a person. He was charmed by this bit of whimsy Reece had revealed. It made him wonder if she would tell their children stories set in the clouds when it came time.
“But you didn’t come here to hear more about our childhood,” Reece said, with a canny look.
Fallon arched an eyebrow, grimly amused. “Guess you’re smarter than you look as well.”
Reece’s quirk of the lips was less than humorous. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Fallon grabbed a chair and pulled it over so he could sit facing Reece. He settled into it and observed Reece, letting the other man feel the full weight of his regard.
“I want to talk terms,” Fallon said, letting the other man see his resolve.
Reece’s lips broadened into a smug smile, the kind the cat gave a mouse that had just played into its paws. Fallon felt a small tug of amusement at the other man’s assumption that he had everything under control. Many men had thought similar things before, yet the Warlord was always the one to come out ahead. Reece and his fellow pathfinders would soon learn the full meaning of what it meant to poke a warlord.