That must have been when she met Cale’s father. Shea didn’t bring his name up, knowing Fallon still regretted the necessity of executing his half-brother.
“Henry’s the one who helped me track the men who killed my father. He helped finish the training my father started. When he deemed me ready, he put a blade in my hand, gave me a horse and told me to avenge my father.”
Shea lifted her head and looked up at his shadowed face. “And did you?”
His face shifted down until he was staring at her. There was a dark pleasure in his voice as he said, “Every last one. Trateri across our plains heard what I’d done and began to gather. From there, I hunted down the clans that had betrayed my father and destroyed them—wiped their names from our history and made sure they could never recover.”
Fallon fell silent after that, and Shea was content to let him. She pressed her hand flat against his chest and smoothed it across the hard ridges of his body.
“Is that why you’re so stubborn when it comes to me being a scout?” Her question was soft. She almost lost her courage at the slight tension in his body, but forced herself to stay the course. If they had any chance of lasting, they needed to be able to communicate—even about the hard things. Shea knew deep in her bones, she couldn’t go on as she had over the last few months. It would slowly destroy anything they attempted to build.
“Is that why you brought me up here?” he asked, his voice a quiet rumble against her ear.
Yes. And no. She knew they needed time to themselves, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t have an ulterior motive. How to put that into words, though?
She hesitated too long, and he took her silence as answer enough.
The moment shifted. He withdrew from her without ever moving a muscle. It was almost a physical feeling.
“No, that came later.” The answer came after a long moment, one where she thought he was going to ignore her question.
She lifted her head and looked up at him, holding her breath. He’d shared some things, but only in passing. She knew most of his family was dead, but not how, or why it affected the present.
He fell silent again. Shea didn’t push even though she wanted to. She had a feeling that the wrong words right now would cause him to close down and shut her out again.
“My mother was a lot like you,” he said. “She was strong and brave and not diplomatic in the least.”
She pinched him in retaliation for that last statement.
“She was a Lowlander?”
He made a ‘hm’ sound of agreement. “My father used to say that he was struck dumb the first time he saw her. She was standing in the door of her family home with an arrow aimed directly at his heart.”
His father sounded like he had an odd sense of the mating dance. She could imagine being struck dumb at the sight of someone pointing a weapon in your direction, but not then wanting them as your telroi.
“She sounds like my kind of woman.”
“She would have approved of you. She wouldn’t have let you know that, but she would have.” His hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers smoothing through her hair. “You know that my people have the custom of kidnapping our telrois from other clans or Lowland villages. She’s one of the few that came willingly. She gave up her family and life because she saw something in him that called to her. When he died, something broke inside her. She was not the same for a very long time. Some days I don’t think she ever got back to the person she was.”
Grief will do that. It was like a many-headed beast; every time you chopped off one, two more heads sprung up to bite you in the ass. Left unattended, it could reach deep inside, ripping out the vital parts that made up a person.
“She met Cale’s father in that time. Everyone knew the two of them were not a good match. He was ambitious but lacked the discipline to make his ambitions a reality. He latched onto her because she was the former wife of the Hawkvale and thought she would bring him the acclaim and recognition he craved.”
Shea leaned against Fallon harder, letting him take more of her weight—wishing that she could prevent the ugliness that was coming.
“When that didn’t happen, he changed, taking his frustration out on her. And me sometimes. Back then, I was small. He would taunt me about my inability to protect her. He did that until I was finally big enough and well-trained enough to put a stop to it. I took my mother and Cale and we left him. Henry helped with that too.” His voice was hoarse by then. Shea’s eyes smarted though all this happened years before she met Fallon. “I thought it was over then. My mother gradually became the woman I remembered. In the end I was wrong, that man was simply biding his time. Waiting until I was off getting our revenge before striking. He snuck into our tent one day and killed her and two others. He tried to kill Cale too, but Henry managed to get there in time to save him.”
Fallon fell silent after that. Shea rubbed her chin against his shoulder, trying to give him wordless comfort. It was a poor offering, given what he’d shared.
“I understand your desire to cling to this notion that you can keep me safe,” Shea finally said. She lifted her head to look up at him in the poor light. “It is a noble feeling, but you must understand that it is not possible to wrap me in swaddling to protect me from what’s out there. Just look at what happened earlier with the mist. There are no guarantees in the Broken Lands.”
“You cannot argue that the danger you are in increases every time you go outside the camp.”
“That is true, but your enemies are more likely to do me in, than anything out there. You know this or else you wouldn’t have put as many guards as you could spare on me.”
She could tell by the loaded silence he didn’t want to concede that point. Seeing a chink, she pushed on, “Fallon, you can’t make me into something I’m not. I’ll never be a pretty trinket on your arm or a ball of fluff sitting by your side. I deserve more; I am more.”
The shadow of his head dipped in the dark and Shea got the sense his intense eyes were focused on her.
“What is it that you like about being a pathfinder?”
Shea drummed her fingers against his chest. She’d never really thought about it before. It was just the world she was raised in—the world she was born into.
He didn’t wait for her answer. “Because from where I sit, you don’t appear to like it.”
Shea reared back. How could he say that? Yes, she might not be able to quantify what she liked about it, why it drew her, but that didn’t make it less the case.
“How can you say that? I’m a damn fine pathfinder.”
“Are you now?”
Shea opened her mouth to say yes, then shut it.
Sensing he’d scored a point, Fallon pushed his agenda, “You forget, my love, I talked with Eamon and your men before we ever began. I spoke with every one of my units that you led or worked with. I know what makes you tick, and you were one of the worst soldiers or scouts in my army.”